Qualcomm announces Snapdragon X2 Elite and Extreme for Windows PCs

Last year, after well over a decade of trying, Qualcomm finally made Windows on Arm laptops a thing, putting both Intel and AMD on notice and shoving Intel out of consumer-grade Microsoft Surface machines. Today, we’re learning about the second generation of the chip that made it happen, one which’ll now come in two distinct flavors: the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme.

Qualcomm is making a gigantic claim right in the headline of its press release: it says these are “the fastest and most efficient processors for Windows PCs.†I’m sure Intel and AMD will have something to say about that!

But for now, the company claims its 3nm chips offer up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than the previous-gen Snapdragon X Elite, while using 43 percent less power, and with up to 2.3x the GPU performance from a new 1.85GHz GPU. On the CPU side, it’s using a 3rd-gen Oryon CPU that’ll also feature in Qualcomm’s new mobile flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite 5 chip, but here with up to 18 cores, 12 of which can run up to 4.4GHz, or up to two of them at 5GHz. You can see more specs below, and at Qualcomm’s website and overview PDF.

There’s also a new 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU, for AI tasks, that offers 37 percent more performance with a 16 percent power consumption improvement, the company claims.

Qualcomm’s characterizing all of this as a “legendary leap in performance,†claiming the Elite Extreme in particular offers “up to 75 percent faster CPU performance†at the same power. But it doesn’t say who the competition is, or which chip it was up against, at least not in the press release. And while Qualcomm claims these power savings will lead to “multi-day battery life,†that’s also what the company said about last year’s Snapdragon X Elite.

(We saw 14 to 18 hours from last year’s laptops, so perhaps that’s multi-day defined as “two eight-hour workdays.â€)

Still, these sound like very solid improvements, and some of them come from distinct new portions of the silicon. Gaming on Arm, which still needed work last year, will get a boost from a dedicated new 18MB of high speed cache that Qualcomm’s calling “Adreno High Performance Memory.â€

When Qualcomm had its coming out party with Microsoft last year, though, the laptops arrived later that year. That’s not happening this time around: they’re “expected to be available 1H26,†the company writes.

Qualcomm’s announcement also doesn’t mention whether these chips will feature in its hinted-at collaboration with Google on Android for PC, but it’s possible the company will mention that at its Snapdragon Summit, which is streaming as I write this.

Original Source: https://www.theverge.com/news/785068/qualcomm-announces-snapdragon-x2-elite-and-extreme-for-windows-pcs

Original Source: https://www.theverge.com/news/785068/qualcomm-announces-snapdragon-x2-elite-and-extreme-for-windows-pcs