The close of another year brings us closer to the next-gen leap in smartphone processing capabilities, accelerating the latest and greatest phones to another level. The next few months are shaping up to be one of the more exciting periods in mobile chip design for a few years. We already know what Google’s AI-focused Tensor G3 and Apple’s powerhouse A17 Pro bring to the table, but the more unusual multi-core CPU designs in the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 have caught my eye for today’s discussion.
It’s been over a decade since Arm debuted big.LITTLE, mixing power-efficient small CPU cores with larger, more powerful cores in a single cluster. It’s easy to take that development for granted in the modern age of Arm DynamIQ, which allows for the mixing and matching of a greater number and variety of cores. The original aim was to balance power efficiency and push peak performance. However, the first point seems less pressing with the latest CPU cores if Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and MediaTek’s Dimensity 9300 are anything to go by.