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MagyarSnapdragon Summit | New Snapdragon X Elite compute platform for Windows laptops: Qualcomm gets serious about competing with Intel & AMD (Update: Singlecore performance comparison now included) ↺
Flashback to December 2016: Microsoft announces the partnership with Qualcomm for Windows 10 on ARM. Unlike the earlier failed Windows RT effort, the new version of Windows would feature a emulation layer for x86 applications, and the devices would now be based exclusively on Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs.
Roughly seven years later, Windows on ARM still lives in a niche. While Windows 11 brought a major advancement for the platform, as it now also features an emulator for powerful x64 apps, the CPUs Qualcomm has delivered thus far were not powerful enough for a true breakthrough. 2022's Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 delivered an OK performance in devices like the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s, but it still could not quite compete with Intel's and AMD's established x86 offerings.
Today, Qualcomm announces the successor to said 8cx Gen 3 - with a new name, as announced a few weeks back. The new hope for a Windows on ARM breakthrough is called Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. And this time, Qualcomm does not want to just compete with Intel and AMD - Qualcomm wants to beat them.
The Qualcomm Oryon CPU: twelves CPU cores, up to 4.3 GHz
At the heart of the Snapdragon X Elite are the Oryon CPU cores - the result of Qualcomm's Nuvia acquisition of 2021. The new CPU has a 64 Bit architecture with twelve cores produced in an unspecified 4 nm process. Those twelve cores can reach clock speeds of up to 3.8 GHz, or 4.3 GHz if only one or two cores are used. That is quite a step up from the preceding Snapdragon 8cx, which maxed out at 3 GHz on its four big cores (2.4 GHz on the four small cores).
Of course, it is a given that the new platform will beat the old one. More interesting is the comparison against the competition. Here, Qualcomm claims up to two times the multicore performance at a power consumption of around 15 W compared with the Intel Core i7-1355U and Intel Core i7-1360P, and 60 percent better multicore performance at around 30 W compared with the Intel Core i7-13800H. Qualcomm also claims 50 percent faster peak multicore performance compared with the Apple M2 in the MacBook Pro 2022.
Though these numbers are certainly impressive, it is interesting to note that Qualcomm did not share any performance comparisons versus the current AMD Ryzen 7040U series CPUs. Also, all of these performance comparisons are for multithreaded tests, which might suggest that the x86 competition still has the edge in singlethreaded tests - this remains to be seen.
Update, 10/25/2023: Qualcomm has made an additional claim about the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite on stage at Snapdragon Summit, showing off a single-core performance comparison for the first time - where the Oryon chip apparently handily beat the Apple M2 Max. If the CPU can deliver on these synthetic benchmarks in everyday use, this certainly bodes well for the upcoming platform.
Adreno GPU and Hexagon NPU: Qualcomm bets on AI
Qualcomm is less shy to draw the comparison with AMD when it comes to the GPU. The new Adreno GPU of the Snapdragon X Elite is supposed to deliver up to 4.6 TFlops of performance. It supports DirectX 12, up to three external UHD screens, an internal 120 Hz 4K screen and HDR10. Compared with the Intel Core i7-13800H and its Iris Xe, Qualcomm says that the Adreno GPU delivers twice the GPU performance at around 30 Watt of power consumption, while it is 80 percent faster than the AMD Ryzen 7840HS and the Radeon 780M at the same level of power consumption.
The advantage compared with the competition is even bigger when it comes to AI. The Hexagon NPU of the Snapdragon X Elite will deliver an AI performance of up to 45 TOPs - 4.5 times more than the competition according to Qualcomm. In a world where the next version of Windows will likely bet big on locally computed AI functions, this can turn out to to be an important differentiator for Qualcomm.
WiFi 7, PCIe 4.0, USB4 and up to 64 GB LPDDR5X - available in Summer 2024
When it launches, the Snapdragon X Elite Compute platform will support the WiFi 7 standard as well as 5G. In terms of memory, laptops with Snapdragon X Elite will feature up to 64 GB of LPDDR5X-8533, with a bandwidth of up to 136 GB/s.
Qualcomm announced Snapdragon X Elite today, but it will still take some time until we will be able to test it. Laptops with Snapdragon X Elite will launch in mid 2024 according to Qualcomm.
Source(s)
Qualcomm
