Qualcomm has started accepting preorders for its Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows, based on the Snapdragon X Elite processor. Initially announced in May, the device is now available for preorder through Arrow at a competitive price point of $899. Despite its relatively high cost compared to typical mini PCs, it undercuts most recent laptops equipped with Snapdragon X processors, making it an attractive option for both developers and power users alike. Measuring a mere 199 x 175 x 35 mm, it comes equipped with 32 GB of LPDDR5x RAM, a 512 GB NVMe SSD, and support for the latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5 technologies. The connectivity options are equally robust, featuring three USB4 Type-C ports, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, an HDMI output, and an Ethernet port.

This mini PC's heart lies the Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-00-1DE) processor. This chip houses 12 Oryon CPU cores capable of reaching speeds up to 3.8 GHz, with a dual-core boost potential of 4.3 GHz. The processor also integrates Adreno graphics, delivering up to 4.6 TFLOPS of performance, and a Hexagon NPU capable of up to 45 TOPS for AI tasks. While similar to its laptop counterpart, the X1E-84-100, this version is optimized for desktop use. It can consume up to 80 watts of power, enabling superior sustained performance without the constraints of battery life or heat dissipation typically associated with mobile devices. This dev kit is made primarily to optimize x86-64 software to run on the Arm platform; hence, removing the power limit is beneficial for translating the code to Windows on Arm. The Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows ships with a 180 W power adapter and comes pre-installed with Windows 11, making it ready for immediate use upon arrival.

Particle, a leading IoT edge-to-cloud platform provider, has launched Tachyon, its first Qualcomm Snapdragon powered single-board computer (SBC) designed to make cutting-edge chipsets and AI tooling widely accessible to consumers and businesses.

Tachyon brings the power of a modern smartphone to the far corners of the world with speedy hardware, a powerful AI accelerator, built-in high-bandwidth 5G and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, and a Linux-powered Ubuntu operating system. By providing a complete edge-to-cloud infrastructure, Particle enables customers to focus on what matters most: their application.

Qualcomm has provided new details about the Adreno X1 GPU integrated into their latest series of processors, Snapdragon X Elite/Plus. The Adreno X1 is the first custom-designed GPU from Qualcomm for Windows on ARM systems. The highest configuration of this GPU, known as the "X1-85," features "8" indicating the GPU level and "5" denoting the SKU.

The Adreno X1 boasts up to 6 shaders, 1536 FP32 ALUs, and can handle 96 texels per cycle. It delivers up to 4.6 TFLOPS of peak performance and processes 72 million pixels per second. It supports major graphics APIs, including DirectX 12.1 (Shader Model 6.7), DirectX 11, Vulkan 1.3, and OpenCL 3.0.

Today, Lenovo launched the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, its first next generation Copilot+ PCs powered by Snapdragon X Elite. As the PC industry enters a new phase of the artificial intelligence era, Lenovo is poised to offer new levels of personalization in personal computing across its PC portfolio. Intelligent software-powered local processing of tasks, and increased productivity, creativity, and security, these Copilot+ PC's combine to deliver a whole new experience in PC interaction. Lenovo is expanding its already comprehensive portfolio of AI-ready devices, software, and optimized services with two new laptops for consumers and business users—the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6.

Powered by Qualcomm Technologies' new Snapdragon X Elite processor featuring the 12-core Qualcomm Oryon CPU, Qualcomm Adreno GPU and a dedicated Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (neural processing unit), the new laptops deliver leading PC performance per watt with the fastest to date AI NPU processing up to 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS). With the latest enhancements from Microsoft and Copilot+, users can now access Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities even when offline, offering seamless productivity and creativity. The latest Lenovo laptops allow users to tap into the extensive Copilot+ knowledge base, empowering them to explore endless creative possibilities. By leveraging generative AI and machine learning, Copilot+ assists in composing compelling text, crafting engaging visuals, and streamlining common productivity tasks. With the ability to work offline with the same fluidity as online, the Yoga Slim 7x and the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 set new standards in AI PC innovation, promising a futuristic and streamlined user experience for end users.

Courtesy of ASUS Vietnam (via @rquandt on X/Twitter), we now have an idea of what ASUS' first Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite notebook will look like, but also what the main specifications are. It will share the Vivobook S 15 OLED branding with other notebooks from ASUS, although the leaked model carries the model number S5507QA-MA089WS. At its core is a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 SoC which is the base model from Qualcomm. The SoC consists of 12 Oryon cores, of which eight are performance cores and four are energy efficient cores. A peak, multi-threaded clock speed of 3.4 GHz and 42 MB of cache, as well as a 75 TOPs AI engine rounds off the SoC specs. The SoC is also home to a Qualcomm Adreno GPU, but so far Qualcomm hasn't released any useful specs about the GPU in the Snapdragon X Elite series of chips.

ASUS has paired the SoC with 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory of an unknown clock speed, although Qualcomm officially supports speed of up to 8,448 MT/s in a to PC users unusual configuration of eight channels at 16-bit wide, for a bandwidth of up to 135 GB/s. For comparison, Intel's latest Core Ultra processors max out at LPDDR5X 7,467 MT/s and up to 120 GB/s memory bandwidth. Other features include a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, a glossy 15.6-inch 2,880 x 1,620 resolution, 120 Hz OLED display with 600 nits peak brightness and a 70 WHr battery. It's unclear what connectivity options will be on offer, but judging by the screenshot below, we can at least expect an HDMI out as well as a pair of USB Type-C ports, a micro SD card slot and a headphone jack. As far as pricing goes, Roland Quandt is suggesting a €1,500 base price on X/Twitter, but we'll have to wait for the official launch to find out what these Arm based laptops will retail for. ASUS Vietnam has already removed the page from its website.

Qualcomm claimed that most Windows games will run (via emulation) on its upcoming series of ARM-based Snapdragon X Elite processors—during a "Windows on Snapdragon, a Platform Ready for your PC Games" presentation at the recently concluded GDC 2024 event. Issam Khalil (principal engineer) did not mention specific titles, but divulged that the Snapdragon Studios division has spent time working through "top games" on Steam. Qualcomm laptop-oriented Adreno GPU design is being hyped up as demonstrating an "80% performance uplift versus AMD's Radeon 780M iGPU," but the overall Snapdragon X Elite package is often compared to Apple's M3 chipsets (also ARM-based).

Reference laptops—running early Snapdragon X Elite silicon—have been distributed to favored partners. A semi-public showcase—recorded by Devin Arthur—revealed some promising gaming performance credentials on one of these devices. The self-proclaimed "Snapdragon Insider" was invited to the company's San Diego, California headquarters—Arthur happily reported that a red "23 W Snapdragon X Elite model" was demoing: "Baldur's Gate 3 running at 1080p hovering around 30 FPS, which is perfectly playable!" Specific visual settings were not listed in Arthur's substack article, or showcased during his brief video recording—but Qualcomm's claims about the Adreno GPU beating Team Red's best iGPU could be valid. Windows Central reckons that Control and Redout 2 have been demoed on Snapdragon X Elite devices.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., unveiled today the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 Mobile Platform, bringing on-device generative AI into the Snapdragon 7 series. The Mobile Platform supports a wide range of AI models including large language models (LLMs) such as Baichuan-7B, Llama 2, and Gemini Nano. Fueling extraordinary entertainment capabilities, Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 also brings new select Snapdragon Elite Gaming features to the 7-series including Game Post Processing Accelerator and Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2, enhancing game effects and upscaling gaming content for desktop-level visuals. Plus, this platform brings top-notch photography features with our industry-leading 18-bit cognitive ISP.

"Today, we embark on the latest expansion in the 7-series to create new levels of entertainment for consumers - integrating next-generation technologies for richer experiences," said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 is packed with support for incredible on-device generative AI features and provides incredible performance and power efficiency, while bringing Wi-Fi 7 to the Snapdragon 7 Series for the first time."

Qualcomm's Weibo social media account has teased an upcoming new product launch: "the spring dragon raises its head, and everything is reborn! The new Snapdragon flagship is about to be released. Let's welcome the New Year and the new era. On March 18, please stay tuned for the Snapdragon flagship new product launch conference." News outlets believe that a variant of the current top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (SM8650-AB) chipset will be introduced next week. Smartphone tech tipster, Digital Chat Station, revealed that a mysterious Qualcomm Snapdragon "SM8635" model was in the pipeline. Early February speculation pointed to a possible "Snapdragon 8s Gen 3" moniker—the added "s" implies that this mobile processor could emerge as a cheaper "sub-flagship" model.

Geekbench 6.2.2 results—posted by a trio of Realme "RMX3851" android smartphones—revealed speculated "8s Gen 3" specifications, including a 3.01 GHz "Big" Core clock, an Adreno 735 integrated GPU, and a 1+3+4 cluster configuration. The pre-release samples could not keep up with finalized Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 hardware in performance gauntlets. A mid-range "Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3" SoC could make an appearance on March 18, but tipsters believe that the event will be dedicated to a single new product. Digital Chat Station reckons that Qualcomm will market the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 "as a Little 8G3."

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is about to make landfall in the ultraportable notebook segment, powering a new wave of Windows 11 devices powered by Arm, capable of running even legacy Windows applications. The Snapdragon X Elite SoC in particular has been designed to rival the Apple M3 chip powering the 2024 MacBook Air, and some of the "entry-level" variants of the 2023 MacBook Pros. These chips threaten the 15 W U-segment and even 28 W P-segment of x86-64 processors from Intel, such as the Core Ultra "Meteor Lake," and Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point." Erdi Özüağ, prominent tech journalist from Türkiye, has access to a Qualcomm-reference notebook powered by the Snapdragon X Elite X1E80100 28 W SoC. He compared its performance to an off-the-shelf notebook powered by a 28 W Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" processor.

There are three tests that highlight the performance of the key components of the SoCs—CPU, iGPU, and NPU. A Microsoft Visual Studio code compile test sees the Snapdragon X Elite with its 12-core Oryon CPU finish the test in 37 seconds; compared to 54 seconds by the Core Ultra 7 155H with its 6P+8E+2LP CPU. In the 3DMark test, the Adreno 750 iGPU posts identical performance numbers to the Arc Graphics Xe-LPG of the 155H. Where the Snapdragon X Elite dominates the Intel chip is AI inferencing. The UL Procyon test sees the 45 TOPS NPU of the Snapdragon X Elite score 1720 points compared to 476 points by the 10 TOPS AI Boost NPU of the Core Ultra. The Intel machine is using OpenVINO, while the Snapdragon is using Qualcomm SNPE SDK for the test. Don't forget to check out the video review by Erdi Özüağ in the source link below.

In what is a solid hint that Arm-based SoCs such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon X don't just intend to serve as cheaper alternatives to x86-based U-segment processors from Intel and AMD, but also compete in the high-end on virtue of their performance and battery life advantages; Samsung is designing a line of premium thin-and-light notebooks around the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Snapdragon X crams in the company's most advanced Arm CPU IP, and the latest generation Qualcomm Adreno iGPU; with Qualcomm claiming to offer 2x the CPU and graphics performance over x86 processors in its price-class, at 1/3rd the power (in other words, over 2x the battery life). It also packs a powerful NPU with 45 TOPS AI inferencing performance on tap. The Snapdragon X Elite is essentially Qualcomm's answer to the M3.

With the Snapdragon X Elite, Samsung has designed the new Galaxy Book 4 Edge, and WinFuture has some specs. Apparently the notebook comes in a 14-inch thin-and-light form-factor. The Snapdragon X Elite will be paired with 16 GB of LPDDR5/X memory, and 512 GB of NVMe-based SSD storage. Comms will include a 5G MODEM for connectivity anywhere; and possibly Wi-Fi 7 BE. Although we can't tell from the company images, it stands to reason that Samsung is using an AMOLED touchscreen display. WinFuture reports that Samsung plans to price the Galaxy Book 4 Edge at €1,759, which should put it in competition with several models of M3-powered MacBooks. The best part? The notebook is powered by Windows 11, and comes with a Microsoft-supplied translation layer for running legacy PC apps on it.

A mysterious Qualcomm Snapdragon "SM8635" model emerged earlier this month—courtesy of ever reliable smartphone tech tipster Digital Chat Station. They claimed that the unnamed mobile chipset had posted an AnTuTu score of roughly 1.7 million, with specifications including one Cortex-X4 core clocked at 2.9 GHz and an integrated Adreno 735 GPU. TSMC's 4 nm process node was also mentioned—not a particularly big revelation since the latest Snapdragon flagship is a 4 nm part. Early guess work pointed to possible Snapdragon 8s Gen 2 or Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Lite guises, but a Geekbench Browser leak indicates that SM8635 is destined to become "Snapdragon 8s Gen 3," in Digital Chat Station's opinion.

A Realme "RMX3851" android device was tested in Geekbench 6.2.2—stated specifications include a 3.01 GHz "Big" Core clock, Adreno 735 GPU, and a 1+3+4 cluster configuration. Many believe that the SM8635 is positioned as a cut-down alternative to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (SM8650-AB), given that Realme specializes in producing value-oriented "near flagship" specced smartphones. Wccftech has spent hands-on time with various Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered devices: "You can see in (Realme's Geekbench entry) that the alleged Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 does not perform on the same level as its elder brother, which scores higher in both single and multi-core. For the sake of reference, I have seen the elder sibling going as high as 2,329 in single-core tests and 7,501 in multi-core tests. So, this chipset is performing at half the speed, but of course, this seems like a device that is not completely ready, so the final scores might improve." Further (insider) leaks or an official Qualcomm announcement will confirm whether the posited "Snapdragon 8s Gen 3" moniker is a good guess, although another leaked chip suggests another path. Roland Quandt reckons that a similarly configured "SM7675" SoC will be joining the Snapdragon 7 Gen family.