Summary
- Qualcomm is set to release the Snapdragon X Elite, its first custom Arm64 CPU for full Windows on Arm functionality, promising improved performance and power efficiency.
- The Snapdragon X Elite aims to compete with Intel processors, offering double the performance and energy efficiency compared to certain Core i7 models, as well as superior integrated graphics performance.
- The chipset, featuring Qualcomm's custom Oryon cores, 12 in total, is expected to be available in laptops by mid-2024, with major partners such as Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell, and HP on board. Exciting developments are anticipated in the PC market in 2024, with Intel and Microsoft also introducing significant changes.
It's been nearly seven years since Microsoft and Qualcomm announced the initiative to run full Windows on Arm processors, emulating x86 apps to make it happen. The results have been mostly underwhelming, but that's about to change, according to Qualcomm. At its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, the firm announced the Snapdragon X Elite, which includes its first custom Arm64 CPU.
Right now, you're probably asking why you should care now after Qualcomm has made similar promises since the first Snapdragon 835-powered PCs hit the market a little less than six years ago. And yes, a lot of those promises are the same.
You still aren't getting a native Google Chrome browser, and the response from Qualcomm is still that it's aiming for the hardware to get good enough that you won't notice it's running in emulation. We're also getting the same promise about competing with Intel, like we got for three generations of the Snapdragon 8cx, which was supposed to compete with a Core i5.
"Snapdragon X Elite represents a dramatic leap in innovation for computing as we deliver our new, custom Qualcomm Oryon CPU for super-charged performance that will delight consumers with incredible power efficiency and take their creativity and productivity to the next level," said Kedar Kondap, who leads computing and gaming at Qualcomm. "Powerful on-device AI experiences will enable seamless multitasking and new intuitive user experiences, empowering consumers and businesses alike to create and accomplish more."
Why you should still care
The Snapdragon X Elite is the fifth flagship processor generation from Qualcomm, the first four being the Snapdragon 835, Snapdragon 850, Snapdragon 8cx, and Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (Gen 2 was a clock speed bump). The first two were essentially rebranded phone processors, and the second two were designed for PCs, and decent for their day. Unfortunately, Qualcomm tends to launch biennially while Intel is on an annual cadence.
The firm uses its Kryo cores, which are cores licensed from Arm and tweaked a bit. Almost every Arm chipset vendor licenses its cores from Arm. If you've ever heard of Cortex-X3 or something like that, that's an Arm core.
The one company (until now) that doesn't is Apple, at least in the PC space. Instead of licensing the cores, it's licensing the instruction set. Basically, instead of using an off-the-shelf design, it's making its own design that speaks the same language. This also means that instead of using a design that gets shown off by Arm eight months before announcement, it can develop everything in-house.
The custom CPU cores are called Oryon, and up until now, that's pretty much all we've known about them. But if we see anything from the Snapdragon X Elite that we've seen from Apple Silicon like the M1 and M2, we're looking at power on par with an x86 laptop, with a lot more battery life.
Qualcomm wants the Snapdragon X Elite to displace Intel
Qualcomm is making some big promises with the Snapdragon X Elite. The chipset should offer up to double the performance of a Core i7-1355U or Core i7-1360P, all while consuming a third of the power. Compared to a Core i7-13800H, it's promising 60% better performance, still while consuming a third of the power of the 45W Intel CPU. The company also noted that it'll offer 50% better multithreaded performance than an Apple M2, but didn't speak on single-core CPU performance.
As for the integrated graphics, the Snapdragon X Elite is promised to offer double the performance of a Core i7-13800H (Qualcomm used the i7-13800H in its materials, but the Core i7-1360P has the same graphics) while consuming a quarter of the power. Compared to an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, it's promising 80% better performance at a fifth of the power.
For those that don't understand what the U, P, H, and HS means, these are chips you'd find in thin and light laptops, especially since the comparisons are with integrated graphics. U-series is 15W, P-series is 28W, and H-series is 45W. Often, you'll find H-series chips paired with dedicated graphics in gaming laptops, but that's not what Qualcomm is talking about here.
Indeed, performance per watt is one of the key advantages of Arm processors. The biggest shortcoming of the x86 architecture is that it uses so much power, so if an Arm chip can match the performance of a top-of-the-line x86 chip, it's going to offer a better experience overall.
The specs
As mentioned above, the Snapdragon X Elite uses Qualcomm's custom Oryon cores, 12 of them in fact. They're all clocked at 3.8GHz (two can be boosted to 4.3GHz), so there are no "little" cores this time. Interestingly, the idea of big and little cores is a staple to Arm chips, and it's something that Intel has emulated with its Hybrid Architecture.
It has 42MB total cache, 8 channels LPDDR5x, and 136GB/s memory bandwidth. It's also the first compute chip from Qualcomm to support USB4, meaning that you can get up to 40Gbps data transfer speeds.
The 5G modem included is the Snapdragon X65, which is the last-gen model from Qualcomm. It also only supports PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, while competitors are supporting much faster PCIe 5 SSDs.
Using DisplayPort 1.4, the Snapdragon X Elite supports up to three external 4K UHD displays up to 60Hz, or two 5K displays. While almost any Intel PC processor supports three external displays, Apple's latest M2 only supports one, no matter the resolution.
The Adreno GPU will get you up to 4.6TFLOPS, it supports upgradeable drivers, and it supports the latest technologies like DirectX 12.2, OpenCL 3.0, and Vulkan 1.3. As usual, Qualcomm didn't talk a whole lot about what's under the hood there.
Then there's the Hexagon DSP, which it's not calling an NPU. It's promising 45TOPS INT4 support, a 2.5x faster Tensor accelerator, and 2x larger shared memory.
Snapdragon X Elite availability
You can expect to see laptops with Snapdragon X Elite chipsets in mid-2024. All major partners are on-board, including Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell, and HP.
Indeed, those partnerships are a big deal. In previous flagship PC platform generations from Qualcomm, we've only ever seen two or three major products launch. With the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, it was the Surface Pro 9 with 5G and the ThinkPad X13s.
One of the longest holdouts for a Windows on Arm device has been Dell, a company that probably has the closest partnership with Intel out of any PC OEM. Having it as a partner out of the gate is a big deal.
Indeed, 2024 is going to be a very interesting year for PCs. Not only is Qualcomm launching the Snapdragon X Elite, but Intel will be introducing some big changes with its Meteor Lake processors, and Microsoft will be launching Windows 12.