Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 was the first 5nm chipset for Windows on ARM devices, and it was introduced at the end of 2021. Its performance is comparable to those of its Android-compatible siblings because it makes use of ARM-designed cores. However, the Nuvia acquisition by Qualcomm will shortly bear fruit with the release of the 8cx Gen 4.

There have been speculations that the business is developing a 12-core chip, and those rumors have proven to be true. Kuba Wojciechowski claims that they will be split between 8 high-performance (3.4GHz) and 4 low-power (2.5GHz) cores. They are “Oryon” in marketing terms (instead of “Kryo” like the existing Android chips), and they are based on Nuvia’s Phoenix design.

The next generation Snapdragon 8cx will be a powerhouse. Wojciechowski states that each block of four cores will have its own 12 megabytes of shared L2 cache, in addition to 8 megabytes of L3 cache, 12 megabytes of system-level cache, and an additional 4 megabytes for graphics.

In an 8-channel setup, you can use up to 64GB of LPDDR5X RAM at a maximum clock speed of 4.2GHz. Since Nuvia’s original (and ongoing) focus is on chip design for servers, its products tend to include large amounts of memory.

The Adreno 740, the same GPU as the 8 Gen 2, will be incorporated into the chipset. However, 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes will be available for use with an external GPU.

NVMe drives will have access to an additional 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes (which can be split into two 2x channels), although cheaper 2 lane UFS 4.0 storage is also supported. Extra PCI Express 3.0 lanes will be available on the chip for connecting various add-ons. There will be no 5G support in the newest 8cx generation.

The wired alternatives appear to be the best ones available. It has three USB 4 connectors with DisplayPort 1.4a and two USB 3 (10Gbps) ports. The latter will allow it to power a 3x display arrangement consisting of 5K, 4K, and 4K resolutions.

More tidbits, if you will. Both the Adreno 740 and the improved Hexagon Tensor Processor, which is capable of 45 TOPS in INT8, will be suitable for machine learning applications. Qualcomm is collaborating with Microsoft and Adobe to solve the issue of Windows support.

Apparently, the chipset can decode videos at 4K/120fps and encode them at 4K/60fps in a number of different codecs, including AV1 (which is absent from Apple’s M2 chips).

By 2024, Windows laptops and tablets should be able to run on the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4. Hopefully, we’ll get to hear more about Qualcomm’s new technology from the company’s official channels later this year.