Qualcomm hopes to beat Apple and establish "performance leadership in PC" with its upcoming Nuvia chips

Qualcomm is hoping to launch the first of its Apple M2-rivaling chips at the end of 2023. The silicon the company is working on is being designed by Nuvia, a startup that Qualcomm acquired last year. Qualcomm has, so far, found it extremely difficult to get any traction in the PC market with its Snapdragon SoCs. The company is looking to change that with the Nuvia chips.

Talking to CNET about their attempt to create powerful ARM-based PC SoCs, Cristiano remarked, “We're aiming to have performance leadership in PC on the CPU, period.” Cristiano also explained that Nuvia processors are different from their Snapdragon brethren as they are solely focused on CPU, GPU, and AI performance.

One of the reasons ARM processors haven’t gone mainstream in the PC market is the questionable compatibility. Many x86 programs that people use regularly either run poorly or don’t run at all on ARM-based Windows machines. But Apple launching the M1 MacBooks provided the much-needed incentive for developers to produce applications for ARM chips and Cristiano says he’s thankful for it.

Finally, ever-increasing desktop application support for ARM processors and the changing requirements for laptop computers due to the rise of remote work has compelled the Qualcomm CEO to call the current PC environment “a perfect alignment of stars” for its upcoming Nuvia processors.

We’ll have to wait and see if Qualcomm can deliver on its claims or if the Nuvia chips fail to rival Apple’s next-generation M2 processors.

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