Qualcomm's next flagship chip leaks again, this time on real reference hardware

Bilibili leaker @Nonx_Official, who has a track record of leaking Qualcomm QRDs on his Bilibili channel, has posted Device Info HW and DevCheck Pro screenshots from a QRD test unit built around the SM8975, the internal codename believed to belong to the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 (formerly tipped as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro).

The screenshots show an eight cores, tri-cluster CPU layout: three cores clocked between 288 and 3,744 MHz and three more between 288 and 4,032 MHz. Both groups apparently use the same core design but are binned for different clock ceilings. The middle cores can now reach clock speeds 25% lower than those of previous Qualcomm smartphone chips with Oryon cores, suggesting that Qualcomm focused on power efficiency at lower clock speeds this time. The top pair of performance cores can reach as high as 5,068 MHz. That lines up closely with an SM8975 unit that appeared on Geekbench last month, which also showed the same 2+3+3 arrangement topping out at 5.01 GHz. The two data points differ by less than 60 MHz on the fastest cluster, which could reflect pre-production variance.

The GPU is listed as an Adreno 850, again matching what the Geekbench leak suggests for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. The clock speed isn't detailed for this device, but Qualcomm has confirmed a 1.45 GHz clock for the upcoming GPU.

Qualcomm is expected to formally unveil the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 alongside the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 at its Snapdragon Summit event this month, so official confirmation of these specs should not be far off.