Qualcomm Rumored To Be Running Into Problems With Its Custom Oryon Cores, Which May Result In The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4’s Delay

Qualcomm’s custom Oryon cores were announced back in 2022 and were positioned to be Apple’s first and only real M-series competitor. Unfortunately, it turns out that developing in-house cores is easier said than done, and though the chipset maker dominates the 5G baseband market, it is rumored to be running into problems in this area, which can potentially delay the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 launch.

Engineering sample of Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 shows previous performance issues; latest rumor indicates Qualcomm has not been able to fix them

The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 is said to be available for Qualcomm’s partners in three configurations, with the most capable one featuring a 12-core CPU that has eight performance and four power-efficiency ones. According to Revegnus, the company is not doing so well with what we would assume would be the development side of things, though the post does not specify the details. However, it is hardly surprising that the San Diego firm would run into problems when designing in-house cores.

Samsung has attempted to gain the better of its rivals with its Mongoose rivals, only for it to stick with ARM designs after failing on multiple occasions. Google has reportedly delayed its own custom solution by a whole year, while other smartphone makers such as Xiaomi and OPPO have outright severed development work. Only Apple appears to be making generational progress with its custom SoCs.

It seems like Nuvia is not doing well.

— Revegnus (@Tech_Reve) August 22, 2023

Even an early engineering sample of the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 with its 12-core suffered from single-core and multi-core performance issues in Geekbench 5, and based on the latest rumor, it appears that Qualcomm has been unable to progress on that front. As far as we can remember, the aforementioned benchmark leak is the only one surrounding Qualcomm’s upcoming chipset, with no follow-up results.

We previously reported that the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 launch may be forced after Apple unveils the M3, meaning that the official announcement may not happen until the middle of 2024. Assuming Qualcomm sticks with its intended launch timeline, it will end up severely behind Apple’s M1 and M2 releases, playing catch-up instead while losing to a more powerful and power-efficient silicon in the form of the M3. Hopefully, for the ARM-powered notebook space, Qualcomm can iron out the problems before the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 ends up being a disappointment.

Written by Omar Sohail