Qualcomm today announced the new Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 processor for midrange smartphones. Billed as the most powerful 7-series chip, the 7 Plus Gen 3 is an improvement over the 7 Gen 3 with a 15 percent faster CPU and 45 percent faster graphics (while consuming 5 percent less power), though an even bigger draw is that it will bring on-device generative AI capabilities to more smartphones.
In a press release sent out to the media, Qualcomm says the new chip, which is based on 4-nanometre technology, will support a “wide range of AI models including large language models (LLMs) such as Baichuan-7B, Llama 2, Gemini Nano and Zhipu ChatGLM.” The 7 Plus Gen 3 is the first 7-series chip to have these capabilities.
“Today, we embark on the latest expansion in the 7-series to create new levels of entertainment for consumers – integrating next-generation technologies for richer experiences,” Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. said in a prepared statement. “Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 is packed with support for incredible on-device generative AI features and provides incredible performance and power efficiency, while bringing Wi-Fi 7 to the Snapdragon 7 Series for the first time,” he added.
From a pure tech perspective, the 7 Plus Gen 3 bags the same prime Cortex-X4 core from the 8-series clocked at 2.8GHz. It is paired to four performance cores at 2.6GHz and three efficiency cores at 1.9GHz. The chip has a Snapdragon X63 5G modem with Fast Connect 7800 and 3GPP Release 17 5G. It can support a 4K display at 60Hz or 2K (1440p) at 120Hz. Memory-wise we’re looking at up to 24GB LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage support.
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