Danny Weber
Qualcomm's rumored SM4875 chip may bring a 4 nm process, LPDDR5, UFS 3.1 and a dedicated Hexagon AI block to affordable smartphones.
Alleged specifications for a new Qualcomm mobile processor aimed at affordable smartphones have surfaced online. According to a confidential document obtained by NotebookCheck, the chip carries the model number SM4875 and the codename Poros, and could launch as the Snapdragon 4 Gen 6. Qualcomm has not officially announced it.
The processor is said to use TSMC's 4 nm process. Its CPU would combine two high-performance Kryo Gold cores based on Cortex-A78 with six power-efficient Kryo Silver cores based on Cortex-A55. The layout is familiar, so the platform's biggest gains may come from graphics, memory and other components rather than the CPU cores themselves.
Graphics are expected to be handled by an Adreno 6-series GPU. Its exact performance remains unknown, making it too early to judge gaming capabilities. Another notable upgrade could be a dedicated Hexagon DSP with hardware acceleration for AI workloads.
This AI accelerator could let manufacturers run more features directly on the phone instead of sending data to the cloud. Such capabilities may reach devices priced below $300 and support photo processing, speech recognition, translation, generative tools and other machine-learning tasks. The exact feature set would still depend on each device maker.
The Snapdragon 4 Gen 6 is also rumored to support LPDDR5 memory, UFS 3.1 storage, 5G Release 17 and sub-6 GHz connectivity. One possible limitation is USB 2.0. The timing of an official launch and the first smartphones using the platform remains unknown.
© A. Krivonosov