Among the plethora of new mobile platform technologies announced today, including the AI Short Platform Snapdragon 8 generation 3 that will power a new generation of high-end smartphones, Qualcomm has finally lifted the veil on the highly anticipated first fruits of its acquisition of Nuvia and a grand entry into the PC platform computing arena, known as Snapdragon Elite. This new, always-connected, 5G-ready Qualcomm Snapdragon PC platform marks what could be a major disruptor in the market, with the company claiming significant performance-per-watt advantages over Windows PCs and Apple Silicon from the current generation equipped with Intel and AMD. Mac powered. Qualcomm also says this new mobile PC platform is specifically designed for AI workloads, with a powerful neural processing unit (NPU) and robust integrated graphics performance that could deliver up to 2x the performance of current competing X86 platforms.
Snapdragon X Elite debuts all-new Oryon processor and Amped Adreno GPU architecture
“Snapdragon “, notes Kedar Kondap, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Computing and Gaming, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
To achieve this, the company has architected a 12-core, single-threaded processor complex that can achieve 3.8 GHz boosts across all cores, and dual- or single-core boosts up to 4.3 GHz. These are custom Arm64-based CPU cores, not a standard Arm design, with 136 GB/s of overall memory bandwidth and support for fast LPDDR5x memory up to 8,533 MT/s .
Additionally, it is a balanced performance core architecture, rather than a hybrid design like the recent generation of Intel processors, where large performance cores and small efficiency cores are at play. , Qualcomm has apparently gone in big and has no plans to go home, since this CPU architecture is set to power generations of PC platforms and mobile devices for years to come. The new Snapdragon X Elite SoC is also built on a cutting-edge 4nm process node, presumably TSMC.
Snapdragon X Elite: Bold CPU performance claims and a huge step up from the previous generation
There is an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, and ironically, in his Snapdragon Summit keynote today, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon suggested to the audience “to take a picture” slides that he showed, several times in fact, regarding Qualcomm’s very bold performance claims. Amon proclaimed “there’s a new sheriff in town”, regarding the PC.
This is called not hiding. So let’s let the images do the talking, because Qualcomm seems to be walking the talk for this new PC platform…
To sum things up, Qualcomm makes the following high-level claims, based in part on lighter benchmarks like Geekbench, but in general overall toofor single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads versus the competition:
- Beating Apple’s M2 Max and Intel’s Core i9-13980HX in single-threaded performance
- Achieves the peak multithreaded performance of Apple’s M2 Max with 30% lower power consumption
- Achieves peak multithreaded performance of Intel Core i9-13980HX with 70% lower power consumption
In practice, if we take this performance at face value, this should translate into significantly better overall performance in everyday common workloads, especially when considering the tight thermal constraints of laptops, coupled with to class-leading battery life. Time will tell, once I have one of these machines in hand for my own testing routines, but my business partner Marco Chiappetta is currently in beautiful Maui, and I hear he will be getting started in hand this week, so stay tuned.
And when it comes to graphics performance, apparently Qualcomm doesn’t make a difference here either…
Generally speaking, AMD has an advantage over Intel, in terms of integrated graphics performance (IGP) for Ryzen processors, so Qualcomm is making these bold claims of up to 80% faster at similar power measurements compared to a new Ryzen 9 7940HS, once again, color me and I can’t wait to prove it.
Snapdragon X Elite’s Generative AI and Integrated NPU
And of course, chip leadership today is almost synonymous with AI performance leadership, and client devices are the new frontier for enabling richer, AI-assisted experiences on PC. To that end, Qualcomm claims that Snapdragon The Hexagon NPU onboard the Snapdragon
And once again, you guessed it, Qualcomm claims it will smoke out the PC laptop competition with a more than 100x increase in AI performance compared to current generation devices. I should note that we need to keep these claims in perspective, relative to what Qualcomm currently has access to for relative benchmark comparisons. For example, we can’t assume that this level of performance lead for Qualcomm will be the same once Intel’s Meteor Lake platform arrives, but regardless, we can’t help but to be impressed by what Qualcomm claims to offer when Snapdragon X Elite devices arrive next year. 100X compared to current devices? Yeah, take a photo.
Snapdragon X Elite arriving mid-2024
Microsoft and Lenovo today spoke out in support of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite platform at the Snapdragon Summit. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sat down with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon to talk about the benefits of Snapdragon X Elite and new modern AI. PC infused.
I’d say it’s pretty safe to say that many of the usual suspects will have devices on the market in mid-2024, when Qualcomm notes the product will be available. Although not specifically mentioned, we have seen laptops powered by Microsoft’s Snapdragon, Lenovo, HP, Samsung and others, based on Qualcomm’s previous generation Snapdragon 8cx platform. I’d bet we’ll see an even higher level of adoption and design when Snapdragon X Elite arrives next year. I just wish it was sooner, because I can’t wait to take this new Snapdragon beast for a spin myself.