Leak
3 publications · September 5, 2026
Qualcomm teases Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro with improved NPU and integrated cooling
Key points
- Qualcomm will announce the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Gen 6 Pro at its September 22 Snapdragon Summit
- The Gen 6 Pro features a redesigned Hexagon NPU with a transformer-focused Element Accelerator and 50% larger shared memory for agentic AI
- A leaked die photo shows the Gen 6 Pro is significantly larger than the Gen 5, with an integrated Heat Pass Block cooling solution similar to Samsung's Exynos 2600
- The new design retires the traditional Package-on-Package implementation in favor of integrated DRAM cooling
- Qualcomm says the architecture allows powerful on-device AI without massive RAM requirements
Summary
(AI)
Qualcomm has begun teasing the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro ahead of its September 22 launch, focusing on AI and cooling. It confirmed upgrades to the Hexagon NPU (AI processor), including 50% more shared memory to help AI agents handle longer tasks.
A leaked photo of the chip, published before Qualcomm’s teasers, shows the Gen 6 Pro is physically bigger than the last one. It uses a Heat Pass Block, a cooling design built in with the memory, instead of stacking memory on top of the chip as before. This should help with heat and cut memory needs for on-device AI. It is not confirmed whether the standard Gen 6 also gets the cooling block.
Sources
4 articles from 3 publications
