Qualcomm Oryon is the name of a CPU core type that is designed by Qualcomm (read Nuvia) to challenge Apple’s dominance in the mobile PC market (read laptops). It can be found on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processor and is now on its way to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. So join me as we unmask this CPU.
A Brief History
For those who may have probably never heard this before, here’s a highly abridged version.
A group of engineers who worked at Apple and made them into the dominant force that we know in computing, quit to form their own company. These guys are revolutionaries, bringing 64-bit hardware computing to mobile. They proved beyond doubt that ARM based CPUs could perform as well as X86-64 CPUs.
They left Apple and formed Nuvia and almost immediately, Qualcomm swooped in and bought this new company. These guys were offered places in the company with stupendous pay packages to boot. Apple knowing these guys very well did everything to stop the takeover. Yes, they also had hopes of acquiring Nuvia too but failed. Even going to court couldn’t help them. Qualcomm took Nuvia and went to work.
In the not so distant past, Qualcomm made their own custom CPUs known as Krait. When Krait couldn’t keep up with the times, they resorted to buying and modifying ARM designs which they then named Kryo. Qualcomm stuck with Kryo for a long time whilst apparently casting jealous glances at Apple who were making custom CPUs and destroying the competition.
Qualcomm Oryon
So as soon as the opportunity presented itself, they stole in, swooped Nuvia and put them hard at work in making a custom CPU. The name of that CPU is Oryon.
For the first time in almost a decade, Qualcomm are back with a custom CPU of their own making from the ground up. Not something modified from ARM, but their very own CPU. Something built from the ground up in their own image and likeness.
The very first thing they did was to go after Apple’s dominance in the PC market. Oh yes, whatever the Apple M chips can do, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite could do better.
Apple M3 Vs Snapdragon X Elite
The Oryon CPU (well 12 of them) powered the Snapdragon X Elite which posted very impressive scores against the Apple M3 series. It did very well from performance to battery life, gaming and AI capabilities.
Microsoft gladly accepted the Snapdragon X Elite as the much awaited answer to the menace posed by Apple’s MacOS and its M series processors.
Oryon on Snapdragon Mobile
As I correctly reported in December of last year, these powerful Oryon cores are coming to Snapdragon mobile! So on to the Oryon CPUs themselves.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Leaks: New CPU, GPU and more
The Oryon CPU core is a powerful custom made CPU by Qualcomm built using ARM architecture. But it is not based on any existing design. You know how CPUs can be based on say Cortex A78 or Cortex X2 for example, this is not based on any of those. It is entirely custom made.
Oryon has got PC capabilities, as can be seen on the Snapdragon X Elite. It has a large amount of cache and can handle several tasks with a single clock cycle due to its large CPU bandwidth.
Qualcomm are bringing 8 of them to Android with 2 acting as the big cores and 6 acting as the efficiency cores.
From the leaks, it’s apparent that the big performance cores will be running at a crazy 4.09GHz. That is wild! The small battery efficiency cores have been downclocked to 2.78GHz which is still massive. Especially when you consider that the efficiency cores are the same as the big cores, only with a lower clock speed.
According to the leaks, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 with these Oryon cores are scoring 10,000 on GeekBench 6 and 3 million on AnTuTu 10. These numbers are mind-blowing.
Conclusion
With Oryon, Qualcomm could elevate smartphone performance to a different level. If they get the optimization right, this promises to change smartphones as we know it right. The possibilities are endless for phones having PC level performance. Think of the games we could play, tasks we could do, the impact of mobile photography, videography and so much more.
Next up we’ll look at the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 and Samsung are cooking as well but that won’t be tonight.
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