Gary Explains: Qualcomm, MediaTek, Raspberry Pi, and Qualcomm Again

At the heart of every smartphone, tablet, and many laptops is a System-on-a-Chip (SoC). More than just a CPU, an SoC also contains other key parts to make a complete system including a GPU, a 4G/5G modem, an image processor, a video encoder/decoder, a machine learning accelerator, and more.

We have had two big SoC announcements in the last few weeks, from Qualcomm, and from Media:

Qualcomm also unveiled a new set of Arm-based SoCs destined for laptops and detachable computers:

There was some controversy about the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 as Qualcomm was less than forthcoming about the internals of the chips, especially its CPU configuration. Charlie Demerjian put it like this: So we asked about the cores in the 8cx Gen 3 via email and the response made things clear, “We are not disclosing for compute or gaming platforms.”

We do know a few things. 1) The 8cx gen 3 uses 4x 3.0 GHz Prime cores + 4x 2.4 GHz Efficiency Cores. Also, it has 14MB total cache (8MB L3+6MB System cache). 2.4GHz is quite high for a Cortex-A55 core, so it looks like the 8cx gen 3 doesn’t use those cores. 2) Then Ryne Hager got the scoop from a talkative engineer, the 8cx gen 3 uses 4x Cortex-X1 cores and 4x Cortex-A78 cores.

Qualcomm’s announcement came just a few days after MediaTek’s announcement:

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W offers 5 times the performance in the same form factor as the original Pi Zero. It includes 512MB of RAM, Wi-Fi 4, Bluetooth, and access to the traditional Pi GPIO pins.

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W has the same processor as the Raspberry Pi 3, but it is clocked at 1.0GHz rather than 1.2GHz. Can the Pi Zero 2 W be overlocked to match or even beat the Pi 3? Yes! Here is how.

Qualcomm and Microsoft have launched a new Snapdragon PC aimed at developers who want to test, profile, and debug their apps on Windows 10 and Windows 11 for Snapdragon.