The Snapdragon Tech Summit 2022, held in Hawaii in mid-November, delivered the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 — and this time Qualcomm had moved to TSMC’s 4nm process, directly addressing the thermal concerns that had followed the Gen 1. The result was a chip that ran cooler, consumed less power, and hit performance numbers that made Android benchmarkers lose sleep.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 introduced a new heterogeneous CPU cluster: one prime core at 3.2GHz, four performance cores at 2.8GHz, and three efficiency cores at 2.0GHz. The Adreno 740 GPU brought hardware-accelerated ray tracing to mobile for the first time. And the Hexagon DSP added dedicated hardware for on-device generative AI — a capability that would prove far more relevant within 18 months than anyone predicted.
Snapdragon Insider content around the Gen 2 Summit was extensive: deep-dives into the ray tracing architecture, the Sensing Hub’s always-on AI capabilities, and a preview of what the Spectra ISP could do for astrophotography. Samsung used the Gen 2 for its Galaxy S23 series globally — a significant vote of confidence after partly using its own Exynos chip the previous year.
The 8 Gen 2 marked a turning point: Qualcomm was no longer playing catch-up on efficiency. It was setting the pace. qualcomm.com/snapdragon/news