Monday, June 2nd 2025
Rumor of 18-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Flagship Emerges; on Claimed 64 GB RAM Test Platform
During a recent Computex keynote presentation, Qualcomm announced the next edition of its Snapdragon Summit. This year's event will take place in Hawaii, starting on September 23 and concluding on the 25th. The company's 2024 new product showcase took place last October, so an earlier than expected scheduled follow-up has caused industry observers to raise a collective eyebrow. Insiders foresee an unveiling of Qualcomm's next-gen flagship notebook/slimline laptop processor; mid-April leaks produced a smattering of elevated (generational) performance numbers. Late last week, Roland Quandt weighed in with fresh pre-release theories: "SC8480XP aka SD X2 Elite in testing with 64 GB RAM... looking like (an) 18-core thing, more and more."
Not long ago, the tenured semiconductor industry watcher linked the alleged Snapdragon X2 Elite flagship chip to a SK Hynix 48 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD-equipped SiP (System-in-Package) test platform. Mid-March "import-export database records" pointed to early evaluations of 18-core processor designs. The very best current-gen Snapdragon X Elite SoC leverages a 12-core "Oryon" design. Additional murmurs have driven speculation about diversified Snapdragon X2 Elite chips; allegedly powering desktop applications. Q1'25 rumors suggested the existence of setups configured with 120 mm AIO cooling solutions.
Sources:
Roland Quandt (on Bluesky), Notebookcheck, Tom's Hardware, Wccftech, HotHardware
Not long ago, the tenured semiconductor industry watcher linked the alleged Snapdragon X2 Elite flagship chip to a SK Hynix 48 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD-equipped SiP (System-in-Package) test platform. Mid-March "import-export database records" pointed to early evaluations of 18-core processor designs. The very best current-gen Snapdragon X Elite SoC leverages a 12-core "Oryon" design. Additional murmurs have driven speculation about diversified Snapdragon X2 Elite chips; allegedly powering desktop applications. Q1'25 rumors suggested the existence of setups configured with 120 mm AIO cooling solutions.
8 Comments on Rumor of 18-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Flagship Emerges; on Claimed 64 GB RAM Test Platform
Otherwise, QC will remain a niche in the consumer computer space. Where they are right now reminds me of late-2000’s ATI just after being acquired by AMD. A bit awkward, not great marketshare, but putting up good performance numbers and being endeared by the community.
… Except, this time, unlike ATI/AMD, nobody in this space actually likes QC… so counting on community favor probably won’t get them very far. QC need to learn the lesson from Team Red’s unfortunately fateful decision not to develop in software 15 years ago unlike their famously hated, green rival. We can see how that turned out for everyone.
The driver situation, as you wrote, is also quite weird with the whole support being basically shifted to OEMs.
Qcom (slowly) managed to get the core parts of the SoC up streamed, but any peripheral (which is dependent on the model/manufacturer) was done by the community whenever one dev got a device and decided to tinker with it.
So you could get a working cpu, but no guarantees of display, wifi, keyboard, etc etc.