JANUARY 2022 PCWorld 21roadmap, that was the overall weakness I
felt we had for quite a while,” Thompson
said of the Snapdragon roadmap before
acquiring Nuvia.
Thompson also claimed that the
company’s graphics technology was on pace
to improve, too. In terms of the Adreno
integrated graphics core onboard the
Snapdragon chips, Qualcomm performs
somewhat better against the competition
than its CPUs at present—somewhere
between an 8th-gen and a 10th-gen Intel
Core processor, when measured by the
3DMark “Night Raid” benchmark.
Thompson, though, said that Qualcomm
could do better. “I just want to make it clear
that our graphics will scale up to desktop-
style gaming capabilities,” he told investors.
He didn’t elaborate further.
Thompson had some advice for
reviewers, however, noting that the
company’s own tests had shown that
competing graphics solutions offered higher
benchmark scores when tested just once.
When tested over a prolonged period of time
via looped benchmarks, however, he said that
the Snapdragon mobile processors generated
better overall sustained performance.
Thompson also said that the company will
continue to improve its AI capabilities over
time. Today, AI has several applications: It can
be a way in which Google Assistant parses
your spoken commands and queries, or it can
be a way in which a photo is computationally
enhanced to bring out detail. The latter is
known as semantic segmentation, and is
responsible for the visual improvements that
make skies bluer, sharpens the edges of
buildings, and so on. Thompson also showed
an 8K30 video, which he said Snapdragon
processors support, and promised HDR
enhancement would arrive soon.Thompson showed how Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU performance actually improved over time.