On July 30, Qualcomm held its Snapdragon for India even where it disclosed the Qualcomm Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 SoC. The latest addition to the lineup is aimed at sub-USD 100 smartphones and even though offers some interesting specs at this budget. The company also announced the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus-based products for the Indian market officially, announcing several partners. Now, there are new details regarding the future of the Snapdragon X Series.
At the end of the event, Kedar Kondap, SVP and GM, of Compute and Gaming at Qualcomm, teased that there will be exciting news at the IFA 2024 in Berlin. Qualcomm’s press conference at the annual fair will present new Snapdragon X series chips. The company’s event happens on September 4th at 1 PM. Qualcomm is expected to introduce some new SKUs in the X Elite and X Plus categories which could further drive adoption from more PC OEMs across various price tiers. Currently, there are broadly 4 SKUs under the compute lineup featuring the Oryon CPU. The X1E-78-100 is the most popular in terms of OEM adoption.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus was introduced earlier this year, and the X Elite was announced last year. Intel is also gearing up to launch its “Lunar Lake” mobile CPU at its IFA event on September 3rd event. It will compete against the likes of the Snapdragon X series and Apple M-series. Finally, the AMD Stryix Point Ryzen AI 300-based products at also set to hit the market in the next month. The market of “mobile-based” CPUs for computers is finally gaining steam.
The Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite Explained
The Snapdragon X Elite is already running in models from several renowned laptop manufacturers, including the latest Dell XPS 14. This marks a comeback for Qualcomm and Microsoft in this sector, following some unsuccessful attempts with ARM processors.
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The chip meets the requirement of 40 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) to be a Copilot+-enabled computer. This means it can run various AI features locally, thanks to integration with the operating system and performance optimized by the NPU (Neural Processing Unit). In the Elite version, the chip consists of 12 cores and 12 threads, with a frequency ranging from 3.8 GHz to 4.2 GHz and an Adreno GPU. In some tests, it even outperformed the Apple M2. There is also a less powerful version of the processor, the X Plus, designed for budget-friendly laptops with lower performance needs.
The Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 is a mid-range ARM processor (SoC) designed for Windows laptops, released in April 2024. It features 10 Oryon CPU cores (10 threads) with a maximum speed of 3.4 GHz. Key highlights include the 3.8 TFLOPS Adreno X1-85 GPU, the 45 TOPS Hexagon NPU, and a high-speed LPDDR5x-8448 memory controller.
The more advanced X Elite series, such as the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100, are believed to be built on the same base with the same NPU. However, they offer more CPU cores, higher GPU and CPU clock speeds, and potentially higher power targets.
Architecture and Features
Qualcomm Oryon cores are partially based on Nuvia IP and likely utilize the ARM v8.7 microarchitecture. Like modern AMD and Intel processors, the Snapdragon chip supports USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4. However, it is still unclear if it is compatible with GeForce or Radeon discrete graphics cards.
The Qualcomm SoC reportedly has 12 PCIe 4 lanes and 4 PCIe 3 lanes for connecting various devices. It supports NVMe SSDs with speeds up to 7.9 GB/s. Additionally, most laptops using this chip are expected to feature 16 GB of LPDDR5X-8448 RAM. The SoC also includes a 45 TOPS NPU for accelerating AI workloads.
Qualcomm’s IFA 2024 event on September 4th starts at 1 PM CET (4:30 PM) IST, and the company should reveal more details in the coming months.