Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 mobile chipset with AI acceleration
The CPU will soon start showing up in Honor and Vivo smartphones.
Qualcomm just unveiled the latest mobile chipset to join its armada, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Obviously, this is a refresh of the mid-range Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 and brings some new features to the table. We’ve long known that Qualcomm chips were about to get on-device AI integration, and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 is no exception.
Nearly every aspect of this chip seems to have been designed with artificial intelligence in mind, with Qualcomm saying that the components “deliver across-the-board advancements to ignite on-device AI.” This should significantly speed up generative AI applications, with advertised benchmarks of just one second to create Stable Diffusion images from a text prompt.
Of course, a mobile CPU is more than just AI, despite what marketing wants you to believe, and the 7 Gen 3 seems powerful for a mid-range chipset. It boasts 2.63GHz peak CPU speeds, a 50 percent bump in GPU performance compared to the first gen and “incredible power efficiency” that should ease the strain placed on your phone’s battery. Qualcomm also boasts that the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 will help unlock “extraordinary camera capabilities” and allow for increased 5G integration.
Mobile chipsets are only as good as the phones they power, so Qualcomm has announced partnerships with OEMs like Honor and Vive. The company says there will be an announcement later this month to officially unveil the first smartphone that uses the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Maybe it’ll show up in the just-announced Honor Magic 6, which also boasts a built-in LLM.
