Qualcomm will no longer use ARM processor cores for Snapdragon 8 Gen 4

In January 2021 we learned of a surprise acquisition by Qualcomm, which was taking over Nuvia, a little-known company founded by engineers who worked on Apple’s A-range processors. Their creation is Oryon, a high-performance alternative to ARM cores that Qualcomm plans to use for future chipset models, starting with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.

The good news is that the $1.5 billion investment in Nuvia, a company that has taken on the development of an alternative for the processing cores integrated with Apple’s M1 chipset, has proved very inspiring for Qualcomm. The less good news, however, is for OEMs (and end consumers) who could end up paying more for future flagship phones. The reason is easy to intuit: propelled into a dominant position over the high-end Android chipset market, Qualcomm could raise prices.

According to information obtained from sources, the SD8 Gen 4 prototype with Oryon cores delivers up to 40% higher performance than the rival Apple M2, or up to 9100 points in the Geekbench 5 multi-core test. Somewhat less impressive (or still to be optimized) would be the 2070 points score achieved in the single-core test. It’s worth noting, however, that the Apple M2 delivers its performance from a much more generous budget on the power consumption and cooling capabilities side, this is not a s martphone chipset. Instead, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is expected to equip the Galaxy S25, along with other Android flagship phones.

According to the source cited, the SD8 Gen 4 will feature an octa-core CPU with two high-performance Nuvia Phoenix (Oryon) cores and another six Oryon M cores optimized for power efficiency.