Qualcomm Bypasses "Oryon 2" for More Powerful Third-Gen AI PC Chips

[AleksandarK]

At its recent Investor Day, Qualcomm talked about the third generation of its "Oryon" CPU cores, completely disregarding the second-generation Oryon cores for its AI PC project. The company projects these processors will debut in 2025, targeting devices priced as low as $600 to broaden its market presence. Qualcomm hopes to capture 30-50% of the serviceable addressable market (SAM) for non-x86 AI notebooks by 2029, a significant extension from its earlier, more ambitious 2027 target. Qualcomm's Oryon 3 CPUs will succeed the Snapdragon X Plus chips and are expected to deliver substantial performance and efficiency improvements. While no performance hints were dropped for the third-gen, the second-gen Oryon cores receive about a 30% boost in processing power and 57% greater efficiency compared to the first-generation Oryon chips. This indirectly indicates that Oryon 3 will record an even higher performance jump.

However, the Oryon 2 generation will skip the PC segment, appearing instead in Snapdragon 8 Elite smartphones. Despite these advancements, the road to higher market share is fraught with challenges. Qualcomm faces competition from potential entrants like MediaTek and NVIDIA, both expected to join the non-x86 notebook market by 2025. Furthermore, the company's revenue projections for the PC segment—$4 billion annually by 2029—pale compared to Intel's $29 billion in PC chip sales in 2023, highlighting the scale of competition in this space. Qualcomm's strategy also includes diversifying its revenue streams beyond PCs. By 2029, it targets $8 billion in automotive chip sales, $4 billion in industrial applications, and $2 billion from VR products. With competition in the Arm-based AI PCs heating up, companies must increase performance dramatically to get a head start.



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[Daven]

So we got Mediatek, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Intel and Qualcomm all fighting over the same (similar?) piece of the CPU laptop/desktop pie. Did I leave anybody out?

Edit: Oh and I don't buy the non-x86 market label. No one is buying an Apple laptop, Qualcomm laptop and an AMD laptop simultaneously because the markets are different. It's the same work/market and if I buy an Apple laptop, I'm not buying an AMD laptop and vice versa.

 

[R0H1T]

There's no Mediatek/Nvidia for now.

 

[sephiroth117]

So we got Mediatek, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Intel and Qualcomm all fighting over the same (similar?) piece of the CPU laptop/desktop pie. Did I leave anybody out?

Edit: Oh and I don't buy the non-x86 market label. No one is buying an Apple laptop, Qualcomm laptop and an AMD laptop simultaneously because the markets are different. It's the same work/market and if I buy an Apple laptop, I'm not buying an AMD laptop and vice versa.

ARM offers a very viable, efficient alternative to x86 and it works really greats for Macs, it's normal for them to invest in it.

Otherwise, Market different for non-x86 and x86, I'd say yes and no.

For Gaming, sure.

For Work, in some cases only x86 is viable (CAD softwares etc.) but otherwise in many cases a macbook and x86 laptop compete in that same market

A software engineer can purchase either an x86 or a mac for his or her work for instance.

 

[ScaLibBDP]

So we got Mediatek, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Intel and Qualcomm all fighting over the same (similar?) piece of the CPU laptop/desktop pie. Did I leave anybody out?

Edit: Oh and I don't buy the non-x86 market label. No one is buying an Apple laptop, Qualcomm laptop and an AMD laptop simultaneously because the markets are different. It's the same work/market and if I buy an Apple laptop, I'm not buying an AMD laptop and vice versa.

>>...So we got Mediatek, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Intel and Qualcomm all fighting over the same (similar?) piece of
>>the CPU laptop/desktop pie. Did I leave anybody out?...

Google - Android for RISC-V project with a Tier-1 priority ( My opinion: There is a very strange silence and it is possible that Google is having technical problems with RISC-V ISA, or gets ready for a major release of a smartphone with a RISC-V CPU )

RISC-V International - It actually fails to advance in PC and HPC markets ( I would rate it as a stagnation due to a terrible fragmentation of RISC-V ISA Extensions ) / Also, for example, DC-ROMA RISC-V notebook is a toy for a couple of days to play

 

[Kaotik]

They didn't "bypass" 'Oryon 2', that's what's inside Snapdragon 8 Elite in the phones, misleading headline

 

[JohH]

It would be neat if Samsung or Google started shipping their phone SoCs for Chromebooks at a low price. The weaknesses of lower performance and bad (external?) modem wouldn't be as big of an issue in that market.

I looked up some benchmarks and the much maligned Exynos 2400 is 40% faster than my 9750H but at less than 10W instead of 45-60W.

 

[kondamin]

They didn't "bypass" 'Oryon 2', that's what's inside Snapdragon 8 Elite in the phones, misleading headline

Title is ok, as it means they aren’t going to be using that generation for laptops\desktops

>>...So we got Mediatek, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Intel and Qualcomm all fighting over the same (similar?) piece of
>>the CPU laptop/desktop pie. Did I leave anybody out?...

Google - Android for RISC-V project with a Tier-1 priority ( My opinion: There is a very strange silence and it is possible that Google is having technical problems with RISC-V ISA, or gets ready for a major release of a smartphone with a RISC-V CPU )

RISC-V International - It actually fails to advance in PC and HPC markets ( I would rate it as a stagnation due to a terrible fragmentation of RISC-V ISA Extensions ) / Also, for example, DC-ROMA RISC-V notebook is a toy for a couple of days to play

RISC v is still very early stages, frame work just realeased a mainboard powered By it for their laptop system And there are plenty of small systems for sale.
very liltte reason for a regular user to spend ano money on it though.

 

[Draconis]

Edit: Oh and I don't buy the non-x86 market label. No one is buying an Apple laptop, Qualcomm laptop and an AMD laptop simultaneously because the markets are different. It's the same work/market and if I buy an Apple laptop, I'm not buying an AMD laptop and vice versa.

I for one am hoping that Windows on ARM finally takes off. We already have users that an ARM laptop would work well for (365 suite and that's it) but the current Snapdragon X offerings are to expensive to consider over a x86 unit. If WoA takes off I'm hoping the see budget friendly decent main stream offerings. If that happens we will definitely purchase a mix of ARM and x86 laptops.