Qualcomm has unveiled its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 system-on-chip (SoC), for flagship smartphones, and the silicon finally supports the AV1 video decoder in hardware, which will help to make the standard mainstream in smartphones and other consumer devices. The SoC runs on an octo-core CPU, using the Cortex v9 instruction set, which Qualcomm says is 35% more powerful while 40% more power-efficient than its predecessor. The graphics processing unit is a new Adreno design, with support for Vulkan 1.3. The image signal processor (ISP) can capture 8K HDR video at 30 frames per second, and the display output supports 4K at 60 Hz and QHD+ (1440p) at 144 Hz. The SoC is built by TSMC, using a 4-nanometer design. The…