Qualcomm will introduce its next-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chips at its annual Snapdragon Summit on September 22. Ahead of the event, the company has shared details about a major upgrade to the Hexagon NPU in one of the new processors.
The upgraded NPU is designed for agentic AI, which requires devices to handle longer tasks and multiple AI tools. Qualcomm says it uses a transformer-focused Element Accelerator and 50% more shared memory.
The larger memory pool keeps frequently used model data closer to the NPU. This should reduce memory bottlenecks as AI agents handle longer context, more tools, and several tasks at once.
Qualcomm says the Element Accelerator was built for transformer workloads used by modern generative and agentic AI. It works with scalar, vector, and matrix extensions to speed up key operations in large AI models.
As a result, AI agents should be able to respond faster and handle reasoning tasks more efficiently. Qualcomm also says the design can deliver richer AI features without hurting mobile power efficiency.
The new Hexagon NPU also offers up to 50% faster prefill for INT4 models. It is designed to work well with Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models, which activate only part of their parameters for each token.
Qualcomm says the NPU is built for always-running AI, long-context reasoning, multimodal models, and concurrent agents. It also targets low-latency action loops, where AI needs to respond quickly to user requests.
The company has not yet confirmed which Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip will receive these specific NPU upgrades. However, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Gen 6 Pro will be officially unveiled on September 22.
