Qualcomm unveiled its Snapdragon 8 Elite, which it claimed is the world’s fastest mobile centralized processing unit (CPU).

The CPU features Qualcomm’s second-generation custom Qualcomm Oryon CPU, which the company said will power new era of on-device generative AI. It’s built to handle the complexities of multi-modal AI seamlessly while prioritizing privacy. This means you’ll soon see amazing Unreal Engine 5 visuals in your mobile games.

Speaking at its annual Snapdragon Summit in Maui this week, Qualcomm said leading manufacturers and smartphone brands including Asus, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, RealMe, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, and more, are poised to launch devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, in the coming weeks.

Cisco Cheng, senior director of product marketing at Qualcomm, said in a press briefing that the new system-on-chip product is slated for mobile devices coming later this year where the priority is to balance efficiency and performance.

Cheng said that the Hexagon NPU has 12 times the performance of the previous generation. The Oryon CPU has three times the performance. And the Adreno GPU has three times the performance.

Overall, the device has more than 40 components embedded in a system-on-chip design, where customers can mix and match the features they want in their final designs.

Cheng also said the Oryon’s Prime core is a brand new microarchitecture that is 46% more efficient than the prior version. It runs at 4.32GHz.

“This ground-up approach and our well-established understanding of mobile experiences allow us to optimize every aspect of the CPU and all that it is attached to it,” Cheng said.

It also fetches data faster than in the past, allowing the core to execute the next instruction faster. Along side two Prime cores are six performance cores. Over the years, Qualcomm has reduced its number of “efficiency” cores and it has now replaced them altogether with the performance cores. The performance cores offer a balance of performance and efficiency, reaching higher speeds of 3.53GHz. It has a 24MB cache.

Qualcomm has also optimized for in-app experiences, multitasking, generative AI, video rendering and streaming, as well as gaming.

“No other use case will benefit more than gaming,” he said.

It will provide smoother gameplay with higher framerates and extend gaming time as much as 2.5 hours with 40% better battery efficiency and 40% better GPU performance. It supports Unreal Engine’s Chaos Physics system, running the game physics simulations on device in real time.

There can be as many as 9,000 objects on screen at once. The chip can store 12 megabytes of data directly on GPU. The result is longer sustained gameplay sessions, as well as better ray-tracing benchmark performance.

The Snapdragon mobile team has been working with Feral Interactive on the Grid Legends mobile racing game. It will launch exclusively with Qualcomm Adaptive Performance Engine 4.0 for Snapdragon 8 Elite users.

And for the first time ever, Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite solution will run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It enables a massive increase in film-quality environments in mobile games.

This platform debuts industry technologies such as the latest Qualcomm Adreno graphics processing unit (GPU) and enhanced Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, all of which deliver game changing performance improvements.

These new components empower the Snapdragon 8 Elite to transform user experiences with their devices – making on-device multi-modal generative AI applications a reality on smartphones powered by Snapdragon.

These technologies also fuel many other experiences across camera capabilities, with our most powerful AI-ISP, as well as next level gaming, super-fast web browsing and more.

Gen AI applications that have emerged in the past two years will run on Snapdragon 8 Elite. It is integrating multimodal gen AI applications and delivering these experiences directly on device, swiftly and with ultra-low latency.

Cheng said the new Qualcomm AI Engine will tap the Oryon CPU for latency-critical AI tasks. The Hexagon NPU has higher throughput across accelerators for faster inferencing performance. It lets AI and computer vision workloads to coexist in the memory. AI assistant experiences can run entirely on the device.

AI assistants running on your smartphone can also be tailored to you, running on the device itself to ensure privacy, Cheng said. AI expansion will expand a photo beyond your device’s borders, AI super resolution boosts clarity, and AI segmentations enhances and identifies individual objects in each scene.

The AI ISP (image signal processing) works with the Hexagon NPU for tasks like auto white balance. The ISP used to process an image and pass it to the NPU. Now the NPU can access the native raw sensor data and implement real-time AI enhancements at 4K and 60 frames per second. This results in more accurate results and flexibility for device makers to implement their own algorithms at any stage.

It also brings AI features previously only available on the cloud right into the device.

“We call this Insight AI” to elevate photography to new heights, Cheng said. You can capture natural skintones in the toughest lighting conditions, like when you’re heavily backlit, Cheng said. You can eliminate objects in a video using an “eraser” feature. You highlight the object and you can erase it without ever having to send video to the cloud.

It has a second-generation 5G AI processor, as well as AI-enhanced WiFi 7, for better connectivity at lower power consumption.

“We are so excited to bring the power of Qualcomm Oryon to our Snapdragon mobile platforms for the first time. Earlier this year we debuted it in PCs, delivering remarkable experiences and unparallel battery life to PC users, energizing the industry and getting the attention of consumers,” said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets, Qualcomm, in a statement. “Today, our second generation of the Qualcomm Oryon CPU debuts in our flagship mobile platform – it’s a major leap forward and we expect consumers to be thrilled with the new experiences enabled by our CPU technology.”

He added, “With leading CPU, GPU and NPU capabilities, the Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers dramatic performance enhancements and power efficiency. In addition, it revolutionizes mobile experiences by offering personalized, multi-modal generative AI directly on the device enabling the understanding of speech, context, and images to enhance everything from productivity to creativity tasks while prioritizing user privacy.”

Los Angeles is known for glitz, but there’s also a lot of grit in the air — literally. Thousands of containers are moved off and on ships at the area’s two major ports every day, almost always transferred via pollution-spewing diesel trucks. This has made Los Angeles a hotbed for all kinds of new electric vehicle and charging infrastructure projects.

A new startup called Nevoya is pouncing on the opportunity.

“It’s the best place in the country” for electric trucks, founder Sami Khan told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “The incentives are the strongest,” he remarked, “and there’s just a huge market here.”

It appears Nevoya is already making some headway. The startup’s carrying goods on electric trucks in the LA area for Fortune 500 companies that Khan declined to disclose. Nevoya also revealed to TechCrunch that it raised $3 million in a seed round led by Third Sphere and RedBlue Capital, with Necessary Ventures, Ciri Ventures, and Never Lift coming aboard as well.

Nevoya is billing itself as the “first zero-emissions technology and trucking platform” in the U.S. The startup is exclusively buying electric trucks — all Freightliner eCascadias, so far — to offer to shippers who want to move goods cleanly. It’s also using artificial intelligence software to optimize the usage, routing, and charging of its trucks, which Nevoya says allows it to keep its prices lower than diesel.

Khan and his co-founders make up a triumvirate of complementary expertise that seems appropriate for such an endeavor. Khan spent a few years at McLaren Applied, the British automaker’s innovation arm, but he also spent a half-decade working in private equity. John Verdon led business development and commercial partnerships at Waymo. And Tom Atwood built a predictive analytics startup that sold to supply chain company Project44, where he spent the last two years working on route optimization and infrastructure planning software.

The funding will go toward growing operations, but not to acquiring trucks. Khan said those purchases will be made with debt — a strategy he’s comfortable with following his experiences in private equity. Khan believes this approach also makes Nevoya more attractive to investors in an environment where there’s still a lot of hesitance around hard tech. While he said his team “kissed a lot of frogs,” that process led them to investors like RedBlue — which is run by the former founding partner of transportation startup fund Maniv Mobility, Olaf Sakkers.

“Those guys were people that we had a first conversation with, and within a week it was at a term sheet, because they got it, and they understood,” he said. “The size of the pie, and the opportunity, is so, so huge.”

Khan stressed that competing with diesel trucks on cost will be hard. But that pressure is mitigated by how easy it has been to strike up conversations with companies that ship goods through the LA area.

“All of these Fortune 500 brands are looking to reduce their Scope 3 emissions (indirect emissions) and effectively have no solutions,” he said. With Nevoya, the promise Khan makes to these companies is: “There is no difference to your business, because we take care of the charging. We have the drivers. We have the trucks.”

Even as Nevoya is still working to get to cost parity with diesel, Khan said these big companies almost don’t care. “They want to decarbonize so badly that they are willing to pay a premium, and so for those [customers], we are actually going out at a rate that is higher than diesel.”

“What is so exciting about building this business is that you will get through the door at any shipper in the United States,” Khan said. “We have not failed there once — as soon as you say you have electric vehicles, they pick up the phone. They escalate.”

As it signs on more companies, Nevoya’s software can efficiently piggyback shipments from different customers to get the most out of the electric trucks in its fleet. That helps it lower costs.

Khan said Nevoya is currently hopping around different charging locations — this is another place where the optimization software will really have to shine — but eventually wants to build its own charging infrastructure. At that point, Khan said he could see Nevoya moving into smaller-class trucks, too.

Nevoya is also eyeing geographic expansion in the United States. It’s starting that push with a market that is about as different as its home base as one can find: Texas.

Despite the myriad social and political differences, Khan views Texas as a similarly well-suited state to drum up business. It may not have the pot-of-gold incentives like California, but Khan said Texas’ looser regulatory framework and cheaper electricity put it on par with the financial modeling his team has done for operating in Nevoya’s home state.

If you want to subscribe to Disney Plus or Hulu on your iPhone, you can’t do that anymore. Support documents for Disney Plus and Hulu now say that new and returning subscribers to those streaming services can’t sign up through Apple, as reported by MacRumors.

I’m not currently paying for Disney Plus, so out of curiosity, I tried logging into my account through the iOS app to see what would happen. After entering my email and password, I was greeted by a message that says: “Unfortunately, this app doesn’t support in-app sign up. Finish setting up your account on the website. Create and manage your account at disneyplus.com/next.” Hulu’s iOS app also pushes you to the Hulu website if you try to log in without an active subscription.

Presumably, the company is making this change to stop Apple from taking a cut of new subscription revenues for Disney Plus and Hulu. However, if you already subscribe to those services through Apple, Disney says you’ll still be billed through Apple.

Disney didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Disney is just the latest company to stop new subscriptions through its iOS apps. Netflix stopped letting users subscribe through its iOS app in 2018 and cut off Apple billing for legacy subscribers earlier this year. Spotify also doesn’t let people subscribe through the iOS app — in the app, it includes the cheeky message that “we know, it’s not ideal.”

Tons of reports and rumors have gone flying around concerning the upcoming AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, including release dates, clock speeds, and more. But thanks to a new leak from the motherboard manufacturer, we may now have a good idea of the specs it’s packing.

Maxsun, which manufactures the motherboard for the processor, has seemed to reveal some juicy information regarding the chip. Interestingly enough, it’s referred to as the AMD Ryzen 9 9800X3D in the leak but most likely it’s the Ryzen 7. According to the listing, it has a TDP of 120W and 96MB of cache, including 32MB of L3 cache and 64MB of 3D V-Cache. This means the cache size is still the same as in previous models, which honestly isn’t great.

As important as it is to have a great desktop or laptop for work and play, you also need to consider the surface you work or play on. A great gaming desk can make a real difference if you’re a gamer, but if you’re an office worker or someone in between, just having an excellent desk is a significant upgrade for your day-to-day life.

Whether you’re looking for a sit/stand desk to improve your posture, something affordable to tuck into a corner, or a big gaming desk with all the bells and whistles, here are some of the best computer desks you can buy.

Convenience Concepts Modern Student Desk

Best cheap computer desk

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Furinno Go Green Home Computer Desk

The best budget corner desk

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Sauder Selection Collection Computer Desk

The best traditional desk

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Welwick Designs 52-inch L-Shaped Dark Walnut Computer Desk with Keyboard Tray

The best L-shaped computer desk

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Uplift Desk

The best adjustable computer desk

The Uplift standing desk has evolved a lot over the years, and in 2024 has become the most impressive standing desk we’ve ever had the pleasure of trying out. It’s been writer Jon Martindale’s main standing desk for years, now, and beat out his original, more affordable option with its sheer build quality, and impressive sit/stand mechanism. The dual-motor design is quiet and smooth, with impact detection and strong lift ability that lets you mount a range of displays, electronics, and gadgets (or even climb on it if needed) without trouble.

It is expensive, especially if you opt for the real wood surface and add-on accessories, but if you want a customized desk to work and play at with the option of standing to save your posture and burn some calories, the Uplift is the best option out there.

Uplift Desk

The best adjustable computer desk

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Convenience Concepts Modern Student Desk

Best cheap computer desk

If you are looking for the most affordable desk you can find because you just spent every penny on an office chair, supplies, games, and so on, then this Convenience Concepts model is probably just what you need.

The Designs2Go No Tools Student Desk is very affordable, and because it comes lined with pre-made holes, it can be put together without any extra tools or strenuous labor. The desk also includes enough space for your accessories and books without being too cumbersome, though the surface is probably better suited for a laptop since it measures only 15 inches deep. The lack of space helps keep weight to a minimum, however, which makes it easy to move around should you need to transport it.

Convenience Concepts Modern Student Desk

Best cheap computer desk

Arozzi Arena Gaming Desk

The best kids computer desk

This svelte gaming desk is available in a variety of colors, making it easy to pick a scheme that will match your gaming rig. The shape is conducive to focused gaming and helps keep peripherals a little closer at hand (plus, it matches curved monitors quite nicely).

The Arozzi Arena Gaming Desk‘s surface is designed with a water-resistant material that serves as a mouse pad, so feel free to use your mouse anywhere on it. While the legs are simple, they are also height-adjustable, and three hidden cable management cutouts are included to help with organization. All of these features make it a solid entry-level gaming option — and a fun-looking computer desk for your child. It’s a minimalistic but effective computing desk that may be just what you’re looking for — just don’t go over 176 pounds.

Arozzi Arena Gaming Desk

The best kids computer desk

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Furinno Go Green Home Computer Desk

The best budget corner desk

Here’s a great desk for when you don’t really want a computer desk at all but still need an occasional computer work area. This Furinno desk can easily serve as a table in the entryway, bedroom, dining room, or anywhere else.

The Furinno Go Green Home Computer Desk just happens to have the right space and proportions for plunking down your laptop or setting up your PC for a work session. It includes the use of recycled materials in its composition, so it can also meet a preference for environmentally friendly furniture if necessary.

Furinno Go Green Home Computer Desk

The best budget corner desk

Sauder Selection Collection Computer Desk

The best traditional desk

While the popularity behind standing desks makes total sense (the products do have their benefits), consumers shouldn’t discount the value of working at a traditional computer desk.

Consider the Sauder computer desk if you’re looking for a classic desk at a budget-friendly price. The desk features a brushed maple finish and ample storage space for your office space. Manufacturers built this furniture to stand the test of time and store your essential items.

This particular piece is durable and also multifunctional. You’ll find sliding drawers for sleek-looking storage and a desktop grommet hole to help hide your computer cords.

The Sauder computer desk also features a slide-out keyboard and mouse tray function. If you prefer to keep a tidy desk space or like the minimal look, you can simply slide the drawer out of sight to create a cleaner-looking desk area. On top of that, you can also easily slide a desktop in the side door or hold any additional items within its storage.

Sauder Selection Collection Computer Desk

The best traditional desk

Welwick Designs 52-inch L-Shaped Dark Walnut Computer Desk with Keyboard Tray

The best L-shaped computer desk

If you need more storage space out of your computer desk but want something more modern-looking, you should consider this L-shaped computer desk from Welwick Designs. It has a sleek, space-saving design that will fit perfectly into the corner of your office or bedroom.

This desk comes with six roomy cubbies for accessories or book storage, three adjustable shelves, a gliding keyboard tray, and organization options for your cords. It is on the expensive side (nearly $500), but if you need the storage space, the price seems worth it.

Secretlab Magnus

Best gaming desk

If you want a desk built for gaming, the SecretLab Magnus is hard to beat. Its strong metal design means it can handle a range of gaming hardware, with ease, and its magnetic accessory system is easy to use and makes customizing the desk more simple. It comes with RGB lighting and effective cable runs as standard, though, so you don’t need to augment this desk to make the most of it.

It comes in a range of color and size options, and there are also a range of mousing surface designs you can opt for to customize your gaming desk for added personality. It’s a very heavy desk, though, so this might be one you want to build with a friend.

If you want the ability to sit and stand while you play, there’s an upgraded Secretlab Magnus Pro with built-in motors and adjustable legs.

Secretlab Magnus

Best gaming desk

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Vivo 32-inch Desk Converter

Best desk converter

If you don’t want to buy a whole new desk just to get the ability to sit and stand at it, you can always augment your existing desk with a desk converter, like this excellent model from Vivo. It has a large, 32-inch base that is big enough for multiple monitors — or just one large ultrawide — although it is also available in smaller and larger sizes, depending on your needs.

You get a range of vinyl finishes, from wood grain to metallic. It’s sturdy and strong, able to take up to 33 pounds on its lifting mechanism — that’s enough for even some of the larger monitors out there. There’s also a built-in keyboard and mouse tray, to keep your arms at the right height for good posture. It’s fully height adjustable, too, so you can make it the right height for your needs, rather than trying to fit yourself to the desk’s demands.

Vivo 32-inch Desk Converter

Best desk converter

Frequently Asked Questions

Qualcomm has officially announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform today, and among the improvements the chipset brings over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, GPU performance is getting a significant increase in its performance capabilities.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform has long been the standard when it comes to peak mobile gaming. Often boasting impressive mobile gaming performance in a number of ways. From enhanced ray-tracing effects to general top-tier graphics performance across the board compared to the competition. With the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm is promising some genuinely intriguing stats for gamers.

For example, ray-tracing performance on the Snapdragon 8 Elite saw an increase of 35%. For gamers, that should mean noticeably enhanced ray-traced lighting effects in mobile games. Things like better reflections on surfaces such as puddles of water on the ground, better shadows, and more pronounced lighting overall that better mimics the way light would behave in the real world.

Granted, not all mobile games make use of ray-tracing. It’s also worth mentioning that it could be a little while before gamers see any titles available that make use of these new hardware features. Nevertheless, it’s an exciting prospect in the realm of mobile gaming. Which has not only grown to be the most popular gaming platform globally but has quickly been closing the gap between console and PC game quality and what’s capable on mobile devices.

GPU performance on the Snapdragon 8 Elite is increased by 40%

While ray-tracing performance specifically will be a nice improvement for mobile games going forward, it’s Qualcomm’s statement about the raw GPU performance boost that’s a little more attention-grabbing. Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 8 Elite has an increase in GPU performance by 40%. This is compared to the GPU performance on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which we saw in phones like the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition.

What this means for the gamer is better overall performance in their games. Mobile games will be able to both look and run better with the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s enhanced Adreno GPU. So potentially less lag and just a generally smoother gameplay experience. As well as higher-fidelity graphics. Consumers will get to see these increases in a handful of devices that have already been announced. Including the ROG Phone 9 series, which ASUS announced this afternoon.

Power consumption has been decreased as well

Another big improvement for the new Snapdragon 8 Elite is power consumption. Despite the powerhouse performance of the GPU in phones like the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition, one area that can always use improvement is power consumption. If you’re playing mobile games, especially demanding ones, these can be a heavy battery drainer. With the Snapdragon 8 Elite, power consumption has been reduced by 40%.

What that will boil down to is a battery inside these new phones that will last longer during gaming sessions. How much longer will depend on the game. Not to mention other factors that consume battery power like display brightness. Still, it likely means companies like ASUS will be able to do more with less. Potentially squeezing out more battery life without having to increase the battery size or capacity. And thereby not having to increase the thickness of the device to accommodate a larger battery.

It’s these kinds of tech improvements that can make computing exciting for the mobile gamer. Because who doesn’t love the capability to play games for longer?