Qualcomm is introducing the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 mobile processor, scheduled for a full presentation at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui on September 22. The chip is designed to execute 30 billion parameter mixture-of-experts AI models directly on smartphones, activating approximately 3 billion parameters per inference step.
The hardware features a redesigned Hexagon NPU equipped with an Element Accelerator for transformer workloads and a 50% increase in shared memory, supporting context windows of up to 32K tokens. The CPU utilizes custom Oryon cores in a 2+3+3 configuration, while the Adreno GPU incorporates new Matrix cores for AI-assisted graphics.
Both standard and Pro versions of the processor are expected to be manufactured using TSMC’s 2nm process node. The Pro variant includes additional Matrix ALU blocks to support AI Frame Fusion capabilities. Qualcomm positions this local processing architecture as a method to enhance user privacy by enabling agentic AI workflows without cloud data routing.
