Qualcomm's new flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, can run a 30-billion-parameter AI model directly on a handset without routing requests to the cloud. The company unveiled the platform at its Snapdragon Summit on September 22, together with a step-down Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, according to Qualcomm's announcement.

Mixture-of-experts design outsizes Apple's WWDC release

The on-device model uses a mixture-of-experts architecture. Although the full network contains 30 billion parameters, only a slice activates for any given task, keeping the compute burden manageable on a battery-powered device.

Parameter count is the standard yardstick for comparing model scale. By comparison, Apple revealed a 20-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June, its most advanced third-generation foundation model.

Both new chips also feature new sensing hubs that run smaller models of up to 200 million parameters. Qualcomm said these hubs let a phone run a personal transcription tool locally and tell one speaker apart from another. They also build a memory of how a person uses the device in order to propose automated tasks, and the company said a full voice-in, voice-out agent can run through the chip. Those features are the substance behind the "agentic AI experiences" Qualcomm describes: software that can act on a user's behalf — proposing tasks or carrying a conversation from voice input to voice output — rather than only answering questions.

Nine brands sign on, led by Motorola's Signature 27

"Today marks a milestone as we introduce not one, but two new flagship mobile platforms, delivering agentic AI experiences that are immediate, personal, and adaptive," said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets at Qualcomm Technologies.

Both chips are fabricated on a 2-nanometer process and combine Qualcomm's custom Oryon CPU, a rearchitected Adreno GPU, and a Hexagon neural processing unit, the company said. The Extreme variant captures 8K video at 60 frames per second and 4K at 240 frames per second for slow motion. Both platforms include Qualcomm's voice bubble feature for voice isolation.

The platforms are lined up for devices from HONOR, iQOO, Motorola, OnePlus, OPPO, REDMI, RedMagic, vivo, and Xiaomi. Motorola announced the Motorola Signature 27, built on the Extreme chip, at the event, with general availability sometime this year. It is the only device announced at the event with availability timing attached, making its launch the first announced checkpoint for the Extreme chip in consumer hands.

As Cryptopolitan reported on September 22, Apple is positioning its new Mac mini and Mac Studio desktops as local AI machines for businesses, with no per-token cloud fees. Read together, the two moves share a premise: AI can run on hardware the customer owns rather than in a cloud that bills by the token.