Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. unveiled its latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona. From the new Qualcomm AI Hub, to cutting-edge research breakthroughs and a display of commercial AI-enabled devices, Qualcomm Technologies is empowering developers and revolutionizing user experiences across a wide range of devices powered by Snapdragon and Qualcomm platforms.

"With Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for smartphones and Snapdragon X Elite for PCs, we sparked commercialization of on-device AI at scale. Now with the Qualcomm AI Hub, we will empower developers to fully harness the potential of these cutting-edge technologies and create captivating AI-enabled apps," said Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager, technology planning and edge solutions, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "The Qualcomm AI Hub provides developers with a comprehensive AI model library to quickly and easily integrate pre-optimized AI models into their applications, leading to faster, more reliable and private user experiences."

Last October, Qualcomm introduced Snapdragon X Elite as its most powerful computing processor for PC, but the ARM-based mobile solution is still months away from launch—officially mid-2024. Company leadership has indicated that their custom Oryon CPU—for the "thin-and-light notebook market"—could be hitting retail at the same time as Microsoft's heavily rumored "Windows 12" inauguration. Several PC news outlets have picked up on a mysterious Qualcomm "ZH-WXX" platform appearing on Geekbench Browser—the February 22 entrant seems to be a prototype notebook that sports a "Snapdragon X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm Oryon CPU," and 32 GB of LPDDR5x memory.

There are no next generation operating system revelations here—the system was running a 64-bit install of Windows 11 Insider Preview. Overall Geekbench 6.2.2 tallies are 2574 (single-core), and 12562 (multi-core)—positioning the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite engineering sample just above AMD's Ryzen 9 7940HS top-end mobility-focused "Phoenix" APU in terms of performance. Geekbench Browser's "CPU Information" section identifies the alleged high-end Snapdragon X Elite processor as a "ARMv8 (64-bit) Family 8 Model 1 Revision 201" part. Average clock speeds were listed as 4.01 GHz (base frequency). Cluster 1 seems to contain eight Nuvia-designed Oryon processor cores, while Cluster 2 receives the remaining four units.

During a January 31 Earnings Call, Cristiano Renno Amon (President and CEO of Qualcomm) discussed the upcoming launch of his company's Snapdragon X Elite processor—an ARM-based SoC that is built "for AI" on next generation tablets, notebooks and ultra-slim laptops. The twelve onboard custom Oryon cores are part of a package that will become (in marketing terms): "the most powerful, intelligent, and efficient processor ever created for Windows in its class. With cutting edge responsiveness, navigate demanding multi-tasking workloads across productivity, creativity, immersive entertainment, and more..." Amon and his executive colleagues are targeting a middle-of-2024 launch of Snapdragon X Elite-powered devices, he also mentioned a next-gen version of Microsoft's operating system in the same sentence: "We're tracking to the launch of products with this chipset tied with the next version of Microsoft Windows that has a lot of the Windows AI capabilities. We're still maintaining the same date, which is driven by Windows, which is mid-2024, getting ready for back-to-school."

The rumor mill has "Windows 12" marked down for a summer 2024 launch period—last December, Taiwan's Commercial Times reported on a number sources within the PC manufacturing industry—alluding to a June release date. Intel Chief Financial Officer Dave Zinsner relayed a similar schedule to a Citi interviewer (reported by PC Gamer): "We actually think '24 is going to be a pretty good year for client, in particular, because of the Windows refresh. And we still think that the installed base is pretty old and does require a refresh and we think next year may be the start of that, given the Windows catalyst. So we're optimistic about how things will play out beginning in '24."

Qualcomm Snapdragon X is out to change the thin-and-light notebook market, and is out to eat the lunches of U-segment and possibly P-segment processors from Intel and AMD. The Arm based processor promises to be a competitor to Apple's M2 and M2 Max SoCs powering the latest generation of Macbooks, so Windows 11 and Chrome OS-based thin-and-lights could offer similar levels of performance and battery life. Geekerwan put the Adreno iGPU of the Snapdragon X Elite through a couple of benchmarks to show how they compare to the iGPUs of contemporary 15 W to 28 W class SoCs across Arm and x64 machine architectures, and a discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU.

In the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme benchmark, designed for graphics solutions of this class, the Snapdragon X Elite scored 39.2 FPS (average), compared to 60 FPS of the Apple M2 Max, 40 FPS of the Apple M2. The Core i7-13700H "Raptor Lake" is a 45 W mobile processor with an Intel Xe-LP based iGPU that has 96 EU. This chip scored just 22.5 FPS in this test. The surprise here is the Radeon 780M, the iGPU of the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, based on the latest RDNA3 architecture, with 12 compute units (768 stream processors). This chip did just 28 FPS, falling behind even the M2. The other benchmark is "Control" at 1080p with its lowest graphics settings, and here the results are fundamentally different. With "Control," we see the Snapdragon X Elite post a respectable 53 FPS, which is almost as fast as the 56 FPS by the Radeon 780M powering the Ryzen 7 7740HS, but ahead of the 43 FPS put by the Apple M2, and a whopping 145 FPS by the M2 Max.

At Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced the most powerful computing processor it has ever created for the PC: Snapdragon X Elite. This groundbreaking platform ushers in a new era of premium computing by delivering a massive leap forward with best-in-class CPU performance, leading on-device AI inferencing, and one of the most efficient processors in a PC with up to multiple days of battery life. As AI transforms how we interact with our PCs, Snapdragon X Elite is designed to support the intelligent and power-intensive tasks of the future that will enable powerful productivity, rich creativity, and immersive entertainment experiences from anywhere.

"Snapdragon X Elite represents a dramatic leap in innovation for computing as we deliver our new, custom Qualcomm Oryon CPU for super-charged performance that will delight consumers with incredible power efficiency and take their creativity and productivity to the next level," said Kedar Kondap, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Compute & Gaming, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Powerful on-device AI experiences will enable seamless multitasking and new intuitive user experiences, empowering consumers and businesses alike to create and accomplish more." PCs powered by Snapdragon X Elite are expected mid-2024.

Qualcomm is poised to significantly rebrand its PC chip lineup as it transitions from the existing 8cx series to the Snapdragon X Series, designed to differentiate its PC chips from Snapdragon processors in mobile devices. The new Snapdragon X Series will incorporate Qualcomm's Oryon CPU SKU, based on Nuvia's IP and praised for its advanced performance and power efficiency. In addition to the new CPU core, Qualcomm also plans to use a dedicated NPU for accelerating on-device AI applications. However, questions remain regarding the reactions of hardware partners, particularly in response to Qualcomm's request for proprietary power management integrated circuits (PMICs) to be used alongside Oryon SoCs.

This strategic rebranding also entails new logos and badges for the system, symbolizing the shift in the product lineup, and the company plans to introduce a simplified tiering structure for its PC ecosystem. Qualcomm currently holds a dominant position as an Arm-based SoC manufacturer for Windows-on-Arm devices. With this rebranding, Qualcomm hopes to position itself competitively in performance and in marketing as well, with established PC chip providers like AMD and Intel, potentially expanding Arm's market share in the PC industry. Further insights and details regarding the Snapdragon X Series will be revealed during the forthcoming Snapdragon Summit, scheduled from October 24 to 26.