Qualcomm's next high-end chip is called Snapdragon 898, Armv9 core not all that fast: rumor

Qualcomm's next high-end smartphone chipset will be called the Snapdragon 898.

This intel comes from industry insider Ice Universe. It was earlier believed that Snapdragon 888's successor would be known as the Snapdragon 895. Regardless, the SoC bears the model number SM8450.

Per a previous report, the chip will be based on Arm's new Armv9 architecture and Ice has corroborated that. He implies that the primary Kryo 780 CPU cores will reach clock speeds of around 3.09GHz.

The prime core will be based on the Arm Cortex-X2 CPU, which is the successor to the Cortex-X1 core on which Snapdragon 888's Kryo 680 is based. Arm claims that it is 16 percent faster than the X1.

For reference, Snapdragon 888's primary processing core runs at up to 2.84GHz, and its slightly boosted version - the Snapdragon 888 Plus - offers maximum clock speeds of 2.995GHz. If the performance difference between the Snapdragon 865 and 865 Plus is any benchmark, the Snapdragon 888 Plus is nearly 10 percent faster than the standard variant.

In that context, the aforementioned 3.09GHz frequency might not sound that impressive, but it's worth remembering that the Snapdragon 898 will also benefit from the 4nm process. Qualcomm's current flagship chips are based on the 5nm node.

The other cores will likely also be based on Arm's new designs and this will boost performance further. The chip is expected to feature the Adreno 730 GPU and judging solely by the name, it will be a notable improvement over the Adreno 660. The chip is also rumored to integrate the 4nm X65 5G modem.

Today's flagship smartphones are plenty fast enough for the average user but since the Armv9 is the first new architecture in a decade, expectations are high for the chips that will employ the new designs.