Despite a few glitches in its latest products, Qualcomm is very proud of its latest creation, the Snapdragon X Elite.
On the occasion of the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm invited a large number of the international press, either in person or remotely. It was too good an opportunity for the American company to finally present a product it has been brooding over for many months, and which should enable it to return to the forefront. What's more, the Snapdragon X Elite - as the product in question is called - could well have far-reaching consequences for the world of notebooks and computing in general.
On a strictly technical level, the Snapdragon X Elite doesn't boast any revolutionary features. As is increasingly the case, the beast is based on 64-bit ARM architecture. The CPU is a Qualcomm Oryon, with 12 cores and 42 MB cache. Their operating speed is 3.8 GHz, with a boost capable of reaching 4.3 GHz on one or two cores maximum. The GPU part of the Snapdragon X Elite uses a Qualcomm Adreno whose computing power is estimated by the American brand at 4.6 TFLOPS FP32: this means it's more powerful than the chip in an Xbox Series S. An NPU (neural processing unit, i.e. an artificial intelligence gas pedal) is also on the menu: it's a Qualcomm Hexagon with 45 TOPs.
The Snapdragon X Elite also relies on up to 64 GB of LPDDR5X at 8533 MT/s, can be accompanied by a Snapdragon X65 5G modem, WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 and benefits from such modern technologies as AV1 encoding. More important than all these technical considerations, Qualcomm is confident in the performance of its processor and didn't hesitate to present a number of very flattering slides at the Snapdragon Summit. In particular, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon emphasized the performance boost to be expected over its main competitors. This means better performance than Apple's M2 Max, or equivalent performance with 30% lower power consumption. Compared to the Intel Core i9-13980HX, we're talking about equivalent performance with 70% lower power consumption.
Such values obviously need to be confirmed, since - for the time being - the information comes from the main player, Qualcomm. However, discovering a new player on the Windows processor market is all the more interesting in that it proposes a new way of looking at things: as we said, the Snapdragon X Elite is based on ARM architecture - like Apple's M2s - so there's no longer any question of the famous x86 of AMD/Intel processors with which our PCs have lived for... practically ever. An architecture which, without wiping the slate clean, is very promising and could well remove some of the obstacles encountered by recent x86 generations. Hasn't Apple benefited considerably from its switch to M1/M2 following the abandonment of Intel processors? It's too early to say, but it's certainly promising.
Software support is obviously the other big question mark. A question mark that shouldn't last too long, however. We know that Microsoft is also looking to revitalize Windows, whether on our desktops, laptops or mobile devices, which have always been resistant to Microsoft systems. No, on the software side, everything leads us to believe that Microsoft will largely support these ARM initiatives. The real question is more to do with the manufacturing process: Qualcomm is indeed counting on TSMC's 4 nm process, but the Taiwanese company is already largely occupied by major customers such as Apple, AMD and NVIDIA. Will it be able to keep up with (possible) strong demand for the Snapdragon X Elite? Finally, of course, Qualcomm will need to verify the performance of its baby, and above all, ensure that the competition doesn't manage to retaliate between now and the baby's actual launch.
If all goes well for Qualcomm, the Snapdragon X Elite is indeed scheduled for release in the middle of next year. At that time, Apple should be able to count on the reinforcement of M3 chips, but above all, the Windows/x86 world should be able to count on the deployment of Intel's Meteor Lake (due out at the end of 2023) or even AMD's StriX Point. In other words, both in terms of processors and software, the future of our machines looks bright.
