Qualcomm mistakenly revealed dates for its next Snapdragon Summit
Qualcomm has historically released its flagship chipsets at the tail end of the year, usually holding a press junket in Hawaii during the first week of December. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 was announced last December 1, the Snapdragon 888 went public the same date a year before while the Snapdragon 865 did not come to the fore until December 4, 2019. However, new leaks suggest that Qualcomm might break tradition and release the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip a few weeks earlier.
The chipmaker uploaded details of its next Snapdragon Summit on its official website (via GSMArena). The listing has since been taken down, but based on screenshots, the 3-day event is set to take place between November 14-17. If this pans out, Qualcomm looks to be announcing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 at least two weeks earlier than usual.
Rather than being a PR stunt, it looks like the company didn’t intend to release any information about the summit just yet as Qualcomm historically doesn’t announce events this early. We’re just not sure if we can count on those dates being right.
After all is said and done, the release date is hardly as much of a head-scratcher as the chipset itself. Previous reports suggest that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will have four different CPU islands, making for a more complex design than the 8 Gen 1. It will supposedly use a single Cortex-X3 core, a pair of A720s, two A710 cores, and three A510s to make for eight cores in four clusters (1+2+2+3). For comparison, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has a 1+3+4 configuration that includes one Cortex-X2 prime core, three Cortex-A710s, and four low-power Cortex-A510s.
The CPU weirdness is considered Qualcomm’s attempt to retain 32-bit app support (AArch32). 32-bit apps are being phased out, but they’re still a major part of the Chinese market, where the chip is expected to be present in a number of flagship devices. However, since newer cores like the unannounced Cortex-X3 and Cortex-A720 will likely lack 32-bit support, the Gen 2 will retain a pair of A710s to fill the gap.
