Well this aged well
If it’s true 8 Gen 4 is running at around 4GHz or more (and again even just 4GHz is high in this case given Oryon right now) doing so under 6W for GB and SpecInt, and is architecturally mostly similar enough to Oryon & on N3E —
Then we know something was f*cked up with X Elite’s power delivery or physical design and fabric.
Moving to N3E will give them a bit of headroom like + 5-10% more frequency iso-power from currently but that’s not enough to get them into shape with what they’re currently doing lol. Absolutely not enough.
Anyway if they can pull off A17 Pro ST at similar power without using more (P core anyway) L2 [16MB] & SLC [24MB] than Apple, that’s amazing and means something really was sloppy about X Elite. But right now I don’t have those expectations if I had to gamble, just not impossible that they improve some lowish hanging fruit they blew up.
Mahua and Glymur;Another possibility is they have more than one configuration and that X Elite Gen 2 will have both an M4/5 and an M4/5 Pro competitor. The leaked Dell roadmap mentioned an "Oryon V2" and "Oryon V2 UI", the latter of which targeting a 40W TDP and shipping in the next gen XPS 14 which will also feature an Intel PTL-P SKU with 12 Xe3 cores. And the year after has Oryon V3 appearing in an 80W flavor in the XPS 16 which could be a Max competitor.
Maybe Oryon V2 UI is just a higher TDP version of Oryon V2, I'm not actually sure what the rumors are on that front yet, but if instead its another chip then your option C with higher clocks would fit right in there.
My source just updated me with XE G2 roadmap which are supposedly launching in H1 2026. There are two SoCs planned:
1. SoC codenamed Glymur:
- Higher tier than Hamoa
- 18 cores CPU (6L+6L+6M), cluster of six
- 192-bit LPDDR5x (don't know final speed yet)
- Full DX12U features including hardware RT
2. SoC codenamed Mahua
That's all I know atm, at least we have an idea what Qualcomm are planning in 2026. Again, treat this as rumor until real thing happens.
- Hamoa successor
- 12 cores CPU (6L+6M), cluster of six
- 128-bit LPDDR5x (don't know final speed yet)
- Full DX12U features including hardware RT
Given the 12 full Oryon cores, I see the X Elite as M3 Pro competition. Whatever the V2 replacement for that chip is, beating the base M GPU is not a worthy goal if they plan to not support discrete GPUs. They are cutting off a large section of the market that would appreciate the multithreaded performance if it only has base thin and light GPU power.
Mahua and Glymur;
Rumor has it they didn't implement granular DVFS for the original SDX Elite and just power gated entire clusters. They also reduced the L1i to 128kb, presumably for efficiency, and they have a bit of a deficit in L2 capacity to the Apple A18 CPU cluster; both places they could boost for Glymur...Well this aged well
Though they made architectural changes too but still
Yeah, I found that quite intriguing. I guessed they did it in order to keep L1i latency constant. Because Oryon-L clocks higher than Oryon, the memory latency in terms of clock cycles would regress (unless they made an improvement in Oryon-L to the absolute latency in terms of nanoseconds).They also reduced the L1i to 128kb, presumably for efficiency,
Looking at the M4 Pro with it's 10P+4E CPU, it seems to me that Glymur (12L + 6M) will be more of an M5 Pro competitor, not M5 Max competitor, CPU wise.and they have a bit of a deficit in L2 capacity to the Apple A18 CPU cluster; both places they could boost for Glymur.
I think Glymur is well sized for what software it is likely to be running: NOT AAA games.Yeah, I found that quite intriguing. I guessed they did it in order to keep L1i latency constant. Because Oryon-L clocks higher than Oryon, the memory latency in terms of clock cycles would regress (unless they made an improvement in Oryon-L to the absolute latency in terms of nanoseconds).
Looking at the M4 Pro with it's 10P+4E CPU, it seems to me that Glymur (12L + 6M) will be more of an M5 Pro competitor, not M5 Max competitor, CPU wise.
On the GPU front I am not sure. Glymur has 192 bit LPDDR5X, whereas M4 Pro has 256 bit LPDDR5X. So I think M5 Pro could outstrip Glymur in terms of GPU performance.
I find Glymur to be a bit unusual. It will be Qualcomm's halo chip for the Snapdragon X2 generation, no doubt. But I feel like they did not fully commit to the idea. Why not go for a 256b memory bus, to put in an even larger GPU and to head-to-head with M5 Pro/Strix Halo ?
But there's the dilemma of who will but it for the large GPU. The Adreno X2 GPU architecture will be an improvement over X1 no doubt, but it will be still behind Nvidia/AMD for gaming and Nvidia/Apple for professional workloads.
Mahua on the other hand looks like it's shaping up to be an excellent SoC for thin-and-light laptops. 6L + 6M CPU and a good GPU hopefully....
Again, this is going by the leak- assuming it is true. It might not be.
Doesn't work with modern game engines. next.with some kind of SLI-like option for enthusiasts to tie multiple cards together.
They also reduced the L1i to 128kb, presumably for efficiency
That Qualcomm slide is the only one which suggests Oryon-L has 192 KB L1i cache. That's probably a typo, because;Did they? I only see Qualcomm powerpoint where they say prime cores have 192KB L1i$ and efficiency cores have 128KB. Data caches still pretty much unknown size.
| Oryon-L | Oryon-M | |
| L1i | 128 KB | 64 KB |
| L1d | 128 KB | 64 KB |
Another upgrade this year is a 5,400mAh silicon battery, which is a significant increase from the Xiaomi 14’s 4,610mAh capacity.
Love to see the much improved battery capacities in the upcoming generation of smartphones. Apparently this is enabled by new battery technology of adding silicon/carbon.The Pro model earns its moniker thanks to several premium additions, starting with a 6,100mAh battery. That’s a notable upgrade over the 14 Pro’s 4,880mAh battery.
Does this mean he will do a review of the 8 Elite?David Huang has added 8 Elite Spec Int scores to his blog. If anyone cares: https://blog.hjc.im/spec-cpu-2017
I have no idea to be honest. Would be nice, though.Does this mean he will do a review of the 8 Elite?
I'd like a microarchitectural deep dive.
The news is Qualcomm is enabling support for 8 Elite in mainline Linux (ie. the version desktop Linux runs on, not the version bundled in Android) already, which AFAIK they haven't really done for their mobile chips before. On paper, this would make it much easier to get something like an ARM version of SteamOS running on 8 Elite devices than it would have been on prior Qualcomm phone chips, which would make actual PC gaming possible.
Few caveats though, as the Linux support Qualcomm is talking about is far from complete at this stage and due to how phone bootloaders work just having support from the chip doesn't mean a phone will actually be capable of installing a Linux distro. Plus while x86 > ARM translation is already possible on Linux even for games including some intensive ones, today there isn't really a distro that makes this a straightforward process. Rumors that Valve is working on SteamOS for ARM, but it's not there yet.
Perf/watt of Phoenix M doesn't seem so great vs A720, which is already a year old core.
Also the IPC is lower than the X4 interestingly. A bit of a surprise there.Perf/watt of Phoenix M doesn't seem so great vs A720, which is already a year old core.
Based on 8 Elite, we can construct a hypothetical X Elite 2;Die Area of the various components of the 8 Elite
Component Area (mm²) SoC 124 Oryon-L core 2.2 Oryon-M core 0.88 12 MB L2 5.57 GPU 21.9 ISP 9.21 NPU 9.18 DPU 3.87 VPU 5.86 64 bit LPDDR5X 3.66 Modem 12.0
DPU = Display Processing Unit
VPU = Video Processing Unit (Encode/Decode)
Measurements are based on the dieshot published by Kurnal, and his labelling of the sub-components. Also, I cannot vouch that these numbers are 100% accurate, so treat then as estimates.
| 8 Elite | X Elite 2 | |
| CPU | 22 mm² 2L + 6M 12 MB + 12 MB Oryon G2 ARMv8 | 44 mm² 6L + 6M 18 MB + 12 MB Oryon G3 ARMv9 + SME |
| GPU | 22 mm² 12 CU 3 slices 12 MB GMEM Adreno 8 | 44 mm² 24 CU 6 slices 24 MB GMEM Adreno 8 (X2) |
| NPU | 9 mm² | 18 mm² |
| ISP | 9 mm² | 6 mm² |
| VPU | 6 mm² | 12 mm² |
| DPU | 4 mm² 1 × 4K 1× 8K | 8 mm² 1 × 4K 3 × 8K |
| Modem | 12 mm² | 0 |
| Memory controller | 4 mm² 64 bit LPDRR5X | 8 mm² 128 bit LPDDD5X |
| SLC | 8 MB | 8 MB |
| Total SoC | 124 mm² |
That's in INT. FP IPC should be better.Also the IPC is lower than the X4 interestingly. A bit of a surprise there.
Well, good luck getting X4 to run over 4 GHz. IPC is just part of the equation.Also the IPC is lower than the X4 interestingly. A bit of a surprise there.
True but still, it’s quite close (about 6% higher using peak frequency for comparing both Int and Fp of Phoenix-L to the X4 in the 9300+).That's in INT. FP IPC should be better.
Indeed, but when comparing it like for like, the X4 at least efficiency wise does pretty well. The proper comparison is the X925 anyway, and we know what’s efficiency compared to that is less on both Int and Fp.Well, good luck getting X4 to run over 4 GHz. IPC is just part of the equation.
For Phoenix-L:True but still, it’s quite close (about 6% higher using peak frequency for comparing both Int and Fp of Phoenix-L to the X4 in the 9300+).
On another note, the scores represented there in terms of pts/GHz for all seem to be higher than if one were to divide by peak frequency (dividing by peak frequency helps Phoenix-L). I’d be curious to know what the frequencies were when these scores were reached.
Indeed, but when comparing it like for like, the X4 at least efficiency wise does pretty well. The proper comparison is the X925 anyway, and we know what’s efficiency compared to that is less on both Int and Fp.