Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 Gaming Platform: An Inflexion Point

Photograph Credit: Eliane Fiolet

On the final day of the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, nosotros spent some time with the Snapdragon G3x Handheld Gaming Developer Kit (gaming device), the first device running on the Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 platform. The programmer kit was launched in partnership with Razer, which has a thriving developer customs.

Let's talk about the G3x Gen 1 platform. It is a new gaming hardware platform architecturally close to today'south smartphones and supported by Snapdragon Game Studios. Information technology aims to leverage the best connectivity Qualcomm has (5G, WiFi 6E, etc.) with potentially significant differences in how the technology is physically packaged and how I think it can scale in the future.

The physical device differences betwixt the Developer Kit and smartphones are based on specific game ergonomics like avant-garde haptics and, more importantly, organisation cooling potential.

Micah Knapp, Sr Director Product Management at Qualcomm. Photo Credit: Eliane Fiolet

Photo Credit: Eliane Fiolet

Photo Credit: Eliane Fiolet

Fundamentally, smartphones absolutely need to be thin & light at the expense of cooling capabilities and sustained functioning. Essentially, Snapdragon G3x maximizes the silicon's potential with better thermals and possibly higher ability.

All phone designs stack three heat-generating components onto each other: the display, the processor, and the bombardment. In that location's very picayune space left for estrus-dissipation hardware such equally heatsinks, let alone fans.

"SNAPDRAGON G3X GEN ane MAXIMIZES THE SILICON'South POTENTIAL"

On the reverse, a gaming handheld like this developer kit allows much more liberty on all fronts, and information technology's big enough to have a very stiff cooling, larger batteries, and space betwixt components. OEMs don't have to follow the G3 design, and then we look to run across many variants.

From a software indicate of view, the G3x platform runs on Android. The existing software is compatible, and most game developers have nothing to practise as their games should run out of the box.

There are opportunities to button sustained performance higher, and game developers might add college graphics options or improve back up for physical controls. Today, touch controls can exist remapped to concrete controls automatically or quickly, so G3x would come out of the gate with a huge game library.

"A HUGE GAME LIBRARY"

Additionally, the handset can game stream from PCs, consoles, or cloud gaming services, just like phones and other customer devices. That's where advanced connectivity makes a big difference in terms of latency, for instance.

The question is, "who wants this?" For now, it's for gamers who want to play "on the go" without compromise. We don't yet know how many units this could correspond because it'due south a new marketplace. It's fair to speculate that the gaming market place size should let for a nascent niche market like G3x to be.

Every year, 1.4 Billion mobiles are sold (2020 numbers), and looking dorsum, it took ten years for Sony to sell 102 Million PS1 consoles, which was considered a smashing business success.

The Nintendo DS sold 20M units over its lifetime and is considered a legendary success. More than recently, Nintendo has sold 93M Nintendo Switch thus far. A platform like G3x could be highly successful even though very small compared to the overall phone marketplace. Note that console makers don't make money on the hardware merely the games' distribution, only that's another assay.

The G3x Gen one Developer Kit's internal specs remained undisclosed. Eyeballing the game demos' frame rates, information technology doesn't seem to run the highest-terminate smartphone CPU/GPU combo, possibly a Snapdragon 7xx equivalent. That'southward how it feels. It doesn't matter, as this prototype is meant for developers to gauge the ergonomics and potential of the system. Qualcomm and Razer say that the feedback has been extremely positive thus far.

Photo Credit: Eliane Fiolet

Photo Credit: Eliane Fiolet

Following the Snapdragon naming convention, we can imagine that a G8x platform volition someday be powered by a defended "gaming" chip much more than potent than high-end smartphones. The G3x naming could indicate that nosotros're looking at entry-level performance in the Snapdragon Thou platform.

Technically, Qualcomm could scale CPU and GPU cores to lucifer peculiar gaming workloads. Every game panel is designed that way, equally game execution is typically overweight on GPU and bandwidth. The CPU acts as an orchestrator, and co-processors like Hexagon or even the Internet service provider could offer huge game benefits if accessible to developers.

"Calibration CPU AND GPU CORES TO Friction match PECULIAR GAMING WORKLOADS"

Whatsoever functioning comparison with current smartphones is irrelevant until G3x consumer devices are near launching. We're still at the proof-of-concept phase here.

Many will see the Snapdragon G3 device as a Nintendo Switch competitor, but looking at the horizon shows a much broader moving picture. If you hold with the premise that Snapdragon G chips could (and I predict, volition) calibration CPU/GPU differently from smartphones to match gaming workloads, and so Snapdragon One thousand is not fifty-fifty limited to "handheld gaming."

Photo Credit: Eliane Fiolet

Photo Credit: Eliane Fiolet

In that location'southward no reason why Qualcomm couldn't build an Android-powered PS/Xbox competitor in the future, maybe backed by Google, Samsung, and many other OEMs. From a computational point of view, look at how Apple tree's M1 scaled to the M1 Max very quickly.

The Snapdragon C8x's (now on its 3^rd generation) evolution is a pertinent case of how the Snapdragon phone architecture is adapted to productivity laptops' needs and workloads with increasing success.

Snapdragon Thou could help Android succeed as a "box" where Android Television had mixed results. Information technology's too early to foresee how Qualcomm'south entry into the "dedicated gaming hardware" business will turn out. For now, in that location'due south a clear opening in no-compromise mobile gaming from which Qualcomm can enter, establish a foothold, and expand.

Broader success depends on the synergy between hardware, game development, and game distribution, requiring many iterations and adaptation. A sizeable number of today'southward AAA games are created by console makers such every bit Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, and they will leverage these sticky titles to retain customers. Others like Epic will comprehend a multi-platform arroyo.

Finally, the price of Snapdragon K devices volition play a huge part in adoption. Nosotros'll have to wait for the starting time consumer devices before assigning a value metric.

To conclude, I don't wait a substantial short-term impact on the gaming market in the side by side couple of years, just we might be looking dorsum to this 24-hour interval as an inflection bespeak in gaming hardware over the next decade. The introduction of the Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 may someday be compared to Sony'due south, then Microsoft's entry in the console business at their respective times.

There's no consumer product for now, merely developers can utilise for units via developer.razer.com

Filed in . Read more than almost Android, Game Consoles, Processors, Qualcomm, Snapdragon, Snapdragon Acme and SoC.

Source: https://www.ubergizmo.com/2021/12/snapdragon-g3x-gen-1-launch/

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