Possibly something to bond to the die for DRAM stacking?View attachment 112322
Does anybody know what's that unlabelled block in the center?
This is the Snapdragon X Elite, which is a laptop chip. They don't stack DRAM on this one.Possibly something to bond to the die for DRAM stacking?
I compared the die areas of the sub-systems in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Snapdragon X Elite. This comparison makes sense, because;
1. They are made on the same node (N4P)
2. They were both unveiled at 2023 Snapdragon Summit
3. They have similar IP in the NPU, GPU, ISPz etc...
The objective of this comparion was to find out what components in X Elite result in it's larger die area.
Die shots by Kurnal.
8 Gen 3
View attachment 112005
X Elite
View attachment 112006
Metric 8 Gen 3 X Elite Difference SoC 137 mm² 172 mm² +35 mm² CPU 21.8 mm² 50.9 mm² +29.1 mm² GPU 27.8 mm² 25.9 mm² -1.9 mm² NPU 9. mm² 9.0 mm² 0 mm² ISP 15.1 mm² 8.9 mm² -6.2 mm² VPU 7.6 mm² 5.6 mm² -2 mm² DPU 4.5 mm² 7.5 mm²? +3 mm² Memory
Controller3.6 mm² 7.9 mm² +4.3 mm² Modem 14.7 mm² -14.7 mm² Sum +11.6 mm²
The only other thing that springs to mind is a copper ethernet NIC, but it seems a bit beefy for standard gigabit NICs.This is the Snapdragon X Elite, which is a laptop chip. They don't stack DRAM on this one.
That's the mystery I ran into when I did a die area comparison of 8 Gen 3 and X Elite.
Snapdragon mobile chips such as the 8 Gen 3 and 8 Elite do not have this mysterious block.
Something something cache coherency.Does anybody know what's that unlabelled block in the center?
That should be the VPU. The VPU in the diagram is mislabeled.Does anybody know what's that unlabelled block in the center?
The Low Power Island (Sensing Hub) isn't labeled. It's either LPI in the Top-Right and DPU in Middle-Bottom. Or perhaps vice-versa.Then what's the name of the block that has been mislabelled as the VPU?
Has Samsung finally given up on the competition?
According to recent news I’ve heard, Qualcomm’s Nuvia has become so powerful that Samsung has effectively abandoned the idea of its Exynos competing with Qualcomm’s flagship chips. A source described it as ‘a gap so large that it cannot be bridged'.
That stuff must be inside the SLC cache block. That's why it's so large despite being only 6 MB capacity.Something something cache coherency.
It's never free! Especially when you deal with separate L2 piles.
If it is ROG phone then probably thanks to the optional cooling module unless its a yet to be announced model.This Asus device with Snapdragon 8 Elite is hitting record high single core scores;
Geekbench Search - Geekbench
browser.geekbench.com
All this power is useless unless Qualcomm partners with Valve to bring proton to Android.Rumour: Adreno 840 in Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 will have 18 CUs.
That's 50% more CUs than the Adreno 830 in 8 Elite. A whopping 2304 FP32 ALUs.
Does not necessarily mean that peak performance will be 50% higher, as that depends on the clock speed, but the efficiency uplift from widening the GPU by 50% will be terrific.
Also what does this bode for the Snapdragon X Elite Gen 2's GPU?
An old rumour claimed it would have an overclocked Adreno 830. I don't believe that's true, for 2 reasons;
1. It was an old rumour (from last year).
2. An overclocked Adreno 830 GPU for the X Elite Gen 2 wouldn't simply be competitive against it's rivals in 2026.
18 CUs is interesting, because this seems to hint that they have changed the slice size.
Adreno 830 has 3 slices with 4 CUs each, for a total of 12 CUs.
If Adreno 840 has 18 CUs, it could be;
1. 6 slices with 3 CUs each
2. 3 slices with 6 CUs each
Full Steam on Android. 🤤All this power is useless unless Qualcomm partners with Valve to bring proton to Android.
Forget that, just fix their ghastly drivers.All this power is useless unless Qualcomm partners with Valve to bring proton to Android.
| 3DMark SNL | Power | |
| X Elite | 2500 | 30W |
| M3 | 3500 | 25W |
| Lunar Lake | 3300 | 30W |
| Strix Point | 3300 | 50W |
| 8 Elite | 2600 | 11W |
| X Elite Gen 2* | ~5000 | ~20W |
It could as well use 0 Watts if you cannot run games on it It's the same problem that Intel GPUs were facing originally and are still facing to lesser degree. They don't need to have chart leading performance, but something decent that will launch my games from the beginning of the century if they want me to consider them for daily driver [or make external gpus available].But one area where the GPUs of future Snapdragon X SoCs could shine is power efficiency. It comes from Adreno's legacy as a mobile GPU architecture. If Qualcomm properly scales up the GPU for X Elite Gen 2, it could have a serious efficiency advantage over the competition
Let's wait till it actually comes outPerhaps this thing should have come first in the place of the Dev Kit.
We worked closely with our partners to improve their tuning for Chrome and Speedometer. In particular, our collaboration with Qualcomm was very fruitful: By combining optimized scheduling policies with improved hardware performance, their newest Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform realized a 60-80% improvement in Speedometer 3.0 compared to its predecessor, resulting in class-leading web performance.