From Tom's Hardware: Unnamed sources have reached out to developer Kuba Wojciechowski with an extensive set of specifications for the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 SoC. This is an important processor for the PC industry that promises to deliver a similar impact for Windows PCs to that of Apple Silicon in the MacOS and iOS device universe. The SD 8cx Gen 4 is being developed as the first PC processor that features Arm cores optimized by the Nuvia team, now part of Qualcomm. Nuvia was formed by three senior Apple execs who departed the Cupertino company after the first Apple Silicon (M1) projects had been successfully delivered.
In brief, Wojciechowski stated that the information he shared back in November, about the codename ‘Hamoa’ desktop PC processor with up to 12 (8P+4E) Nuvia Phoenix-based Oryon cores, still stands. Now he has added that the Performance cores are being tested at around 3.4 GHz, and the Efficiency cores at approximately 2.5 GHz. The cores are clustered in blocks of four, with 12MB of shared L2 cache, and there is also 8MB of L3 cache. Additionally, the SD 8cx Gen 4 design features, 12MB of system cache and 4MB for graphics purposes, according to the Twitter thread.
As ever with leaks, take the news with a pinch of salt until it can be verified.
The extensive leak also suggests that the top model(s) of Qualcomm’s next gen chip for PCs, i.e. those featuring the full complement of 12 cores, will also support discrete GPUs over 8 lanes of PCIe 4.0. Another 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 can be allocated for NVMe storage use, and PCIe 3.0 is there to support stuff like the Wi-Fi card and/or modem. Apparently, Wi-Fi 7 is supported by the upcoming SoC and those who want cellular connectivity will have an external X65 option. Systems packing an SD 8cx Gen 4 will be able to support up to 64GB of 8-channel LPDDR5x, according to the recent leak.
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