Qualcomm is taking the fight to Apple, Intel, and AMD. Its new Snapdragon X Plus and Elite ARM-based chips for laptop computers mark a significant jump in terms of both raw horsepower and ambitions, taking on rivals head-on and even giving them a run for money, if preliminary benchmarks are anything to go by.
Qualcomm flexes its arm
The Snapdragon X Plus is technically its new entry-level laptop chip, featuring 10 cores, 42MB of cache, and a maximum multithreaded frequency of 3.4GHz. Additionally, it boasts an NPU or neural processing unit capable of 45 tera operations per second (TOPS), giving on-device AI a big shot in the arm. Qualcomm in fact bills it as the world’s fastest NPU for laptops. Moreover, the Snapdragon X Plus supports LPDDR5x memory with a peak transfer rate of 8448 MT/s and integrates a 3.8 teraflop (TFLOP) Adreno GPU.
What really differentiates these Arm processors is the complete absence of a hybrid architecture seen in Apple Silicon and modern Intel chips where performance and efficiency are given separate cores each. The setup has been a big boon to battery life, particularly in the case of the Mac with Apple silicon.
A road less travelled — in the modern day
Qualcomm on the other hand asserts that all its Snapdragon cores prioritise performance. Despite lacking a hybrid setup, Qualcomm claims superiority over Apple, Intel, and AMD in performance, power efficiency, and battery life. More precisely, the Qualcomm Oryon CPU inside the Snapdragon X Plus can deliver up to 37 percent faster performance “compared to competitors,” while consuming up to 54 percent less power. Taking a step further, Qualcomm is also ensuring seamless PC gaming experiences with full compatibility with Windows on Arm.
The Elite experience
Qualcomm is simultaneously introducing three variants of the twelve-core Snapdragon X Elite, boasting a maximum multithreaded frequency of 3.8GHz and up to a 4.6 TFLOP integrated GPU. All models share the same NPU and support memory at identical speeds to the Snapdragon X Plus. Notably, the top two SKUs feature Dual-Core Boost, dynamically adjusting processor frequency up to 4.2GHz, similar to Intel’s Turbo Boost or AMD’s Turbo Core.
OEMs are expected to launch PCs powered by Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite starting mid-2024.
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