On December 1, with the emergence of more and more customized mobile processors such as apple m and Google tensor, which has brought great pressure to manufacturers of long-term chip production, Qualcomm also needs to catch up. The company has just announced the upcoming 4-nm flagship chip Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 and promised to open a new era of mobile computing. Following the launch of Xiaolong 888 last year, Qualcomm hopes to distinguish its upcoming flagship mobile chip from previous generations by using a new naming scheme and a series of new features and functions. Qualcomm named its new chip Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 instead of Xiaolong 898. It is expected that a similar naming scheme will also be applied to Qualcomm's medium and low-end chips in the future. For Xiaolong 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm has upgraded almost all aspects of its CPU mobility performance. Qualcomm claims that the new kryo CPU of Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 adopts a high-performance arm cortex-x2 core, and its overall performance is 20% faster than that of Xiaolong 888. At the same time, its energy efficiency is improved by 30%, while the performance of the new Adreno GPU is greatly improved, with a 30% increase in graphics speed and a 25% increase in energy efficiency. In order to challenge the significantly improved AI processing power of competitors, Qualcomm said that Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 is equipped with a new generation 7 AI engine, which provides four times better AI processing power, twice the amount of shared memory and twice the tensor acceleration. Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 adopts a new third-generation sensing hub to provide better low-power AI performance. With AI and machine learning performance rapidly becoming one of the most important standards for mobile chips, Xiaolong 8 Gen 1's new AI engine may be one of the most decisive factors for mobile phone manufacturers to try to decide which chip will be used to power smartphones and tablets. Vinesh Sukumar, head of AI / ml product management at Qualcomm, said that the new AI features can easily handle more workload. The new sensor hub enables the chip to provide an always online camera experience for face and object detection while consuming low power. There is also a new "always safe" module in the sensor center, which allows applications to conduct financial transactions in a more secure way. At the launch of Xiaolong 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm, which once dominated the smartphone chip industry, is facing more fierce competition than ever as technology giants enter the chip market. Apple is unique in developing processors for mobile phones and embedding its own artificial intelligence experience. Apple's new MacBook Pro laptop uses an M-series processor based on ARM architecture, which sets a benchmark for the performance of personal computers. MediaTek is now the largest chipset supplier in sales. It has just released dimension 9000, which is the first real competitor of Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 processor. Meanwhile, Google has also joined the competition and launched its independently developed tensor chip, providing pixel 6 with a platform to display the company's smartphone vision. Qualcomm claims that another major advantage of snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the camera performance of snapdragon sight. It has a new 18 Bit ISP, which can capture up to 8K video through real-time HDR, and also supports improved low light level processing. The move to an 18 Bit ISP is similar to the dimension 9000 recently released by MediaTek, but Qualcomm also has other useful chip functions, such as a dedicated video scatter engine, a new ultra wide engine for correcting the distortion caused by ultra wide lenses, and so on. However, the biggest advantage of Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 over its competitors may be its integrated support for Qualcomm X65 5g modem. Theoretically, the maximum 5g speed can reach 10Gbps. Unlike MediaTek dimension 9000, which still does not support mmwave 5g, Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 can use independent and non independent 5g networks of sub-6ghz and mmwave 5g. It supports Wi Fi 6 and Wi Fi 6e at the same time, and can provide fast wireless transmission speed of up to 3.6gbps. With Xiaolong 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm seems to want to make new breakthroughs, although all these advances are based on previous technologies. Qualcomm's new chip may not completely change the way people use mobile phones, but with better performance, lower power consumption and various optimization of AI and camera performance, it will make mobile phones more attractive. The first batch of equipment equipped with Xiaolong 8 Gen 1 is expected to be on the market by the end of 2021. (Xinhua News Agency)