Qualcomm has been talking about it for nearly two years and it’s finally here: the Snapdragon X chip for PCs will arrive in 2024 and is expected to compete with Apple.
Qualcomm has officially unveiled its new chip for laptops of the future. Based on ARM architecture, like Apple’s M-series chips since 2020, the Snapdragon X Series chip for laptops promises significantly higher performance than current CPUs with record energy efficiency.
And of course, expect AI. Lots of AI.
Performance for battery life
The CPU of the Snapdragon X chip is based on 12 high-performance “Orion” cores clocked at 3.8 GHz, with the possibility for two of these cores to reach a boost frequency of 4.3 GHz. Qualcomm did not choose the big.LITTLE technology, which combines high-performance cores with lower-power cores for less demanding and background tasks.
With a 4nm manufacturing process (the same as the iPhone 15), Qualcomm promises performance twice that of Intel’s 13th generation processors with the same energy consumption. And compared to Apple’s M2 chips, Snapdragon X would be 50% more efficient in multi-threaded tasks.
Overall, the chip would consume 65 to 70% less energy while maintaining the same performance. Qualcomm aims to preserve the battery life of future laptops without sacrificing performance.
A promising new Adreno GPU
Within the Snapdragon X chip, you’ll find a built-in Adreno GPU of the latest generation with a theoretical power of 4.6 TFLOPS, surpassing what can be offered by the Xbox Series S or the PlayStation 4 Pro.
In terms of energy efficiency, the manufacturer aims to surpass Intel and AMD iGPUs with double the performance for the same power consumption. No more laptops struggling during gaming?
With this new GPU, a device featuring Snapdragon X will be able to support a 4K 120Hz internal display and three external 4K displays or two 5K displays. And like the latest generation graphics cards, AV1 encoding will be possible.
Finally, up to 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM will be supported with a bandwidth of 136GB/s, placing it between the M2 and M2 Pro.
A chip “designed for AI”
What would a chip be in 2024 without its NPU (Neural Processing Unit)? This computing unit will significantly accelerate tasks related to generative AI, such as LLMs (like GPT-4 from ChatGPT), as well as tools like Stable Diffusion or Midjourney.
Qualcomm promises performance 4.5 times superior to the competition. NPUs have not yet become mainstream in our laptops, so take this claim with a grain of salt.
This NPU will also accelerate the AI functions of creative tools like Photoshop and soon Windows Copilot.
An architecture for the future
The architecture will be compatible with 5G and Wi-Fi 7, as well as lossless audio. Finally, the manufacturer will offer Qualcomm Seamless technology, promising a seamless experience between different types of devices, a kind of software ecosystem to rival the simplicity of Apple’s ecosystem.
