On Wednesday, Qualcomm announced the imminent arrival of its Snapdragon x Plus laptop processor along with more information about its previously announced Snapdragon x Elite chips. While this isn't the first time we've seen Qualcomm processors in a laptop, it is the first time the company could have a chip that rivals Apple, Intel, and AMD in speed.
The Snapdragon x Plus is Qualcomm's entry-level laptop chip. It has 10 cores, 42 MB cache, a maximum multi-threaded frequency of 3.4 GHz, and an NPU with 45 tera operations per second (TOPS, or how many math calculations it can solve in a second) to help with sophisticated generative ai applications. . But keep in mind that TOPS is an arbitrary measure that may seem more impressive than it is because it doesn't necessarily take into account the type or quality of those calculations.
The Snapdragon (TFLOP is also a mathematical measurement; it's shorthand for how many trillion floating point operations it can calculate per second. It's also an arbitrary measurement, but it sure sounds impressive!)
The chipmaker will also launch three twelve-core Snapdragon All three have the same NPU and support the same memory at the same speed as the Snapdragon x Plus. The top two models have what Qualcomm calls Dual-Core Boost, up to 4.2 GHz, which sounds a bit like Intel's Turbo Boost or AMD's Turbo Core. These features dynamically adjust the processor frequency, delivering more power to the processor only when it needs it.
What stands out most about these Arm processors is that they do not have a hybrid architecture like Apple Silicon and Intel chips, which divide their total number of cores into cores dedicated to performance and dedicated to efficiency. Both companies have touted this architecture as a great way to reduce power consumption and increase battery life, and it is. But Qualcomm says all of its Snapdragon cores are “performance cores” and claims they still outperform Apple, Intel and AMD in performance, power efficiency and battery life, and that PC gaming should “just work” with Windows on Arm. even through emulation.
I was able to get some practice with both the Snapdragon x Plus and Elite, running benchmarks and playing games. This was a highly controlled hands-on demonstration spread across several (reference) laptop prototypes, and Qualcomm chose the available programs to “test” the new chips, so I wasn't convinced that these Snapdragons were more powerful in practice than they thought. What are they. the other chip makers offer, and I won't be in any way until I get my hands on a finished product.
But damn, they seemed competitive. If it were an Intel Ultra Core, Apple M3, or AMD Ryzen 8000 series, I'd be worried. Based on the numbers I saw at the demo event, the Snapdragon It was too close when I compared them to Intel's Core Ultra 9 185H chip and AMD's Ryzen 9 8945HS chip in either benchmark: single-core and multi-core.
The only game I was able to try on a Snapdragon x Elite processor was Control, but I was impressed with how smooth it ran and how responsive it was through emulation. The graphics settings weren't maxed out, but since I was playing with a controller and the average frame rate was 30fps, it was running like a highly optimized console game should.
I mentioned this briefly. during a recent Vergecast, but I don't think its supposed ability to run generative ai programs faster than Intel or any other ai chip is the Snapdragon x Series chips' claim to fame. Apple has shown that installing an Arm-based SoC in a laptop can dramatically increase battery life, decrease power consumption, and run much cooler than x86 processors from Intel and AMD. But Windows laptops have all the weird, funky form factors that would directly benefit from a chip that rivals Apple Silicon in power, performance, and temperature. Its greatest potential is to take the innovative shoots of foldable and dual-screen laptops and help turn them into a giant ecosystem. Microsoft has so far struggled to make any Attractive Windows Arm laptop.
Maybe this time they will succeed.
