In October last year, Qualcomm unveiled a new processor built for PCs: the Snapdragon X Elite. When "Qualcomm, PC", these two words that were not highly related in the past are put together, it will make many people feel very fresh, and the Snapdragon chips that were only heard in smartphones, tablets, TWS earphones, and cars in the past are finally going to be on the PC?
In fact, Qualcomm's layout of the PC platform began as early as 2016, but in the early days, Qualcomm played a "porting strategy", such as placing the Snapdragon 835 chip used on the mobile phone on the PC, and then also launched the Snapdragon 8cx computing platform, but it was not successful.
The PC chip landscape is changing
In the final analysis, it is difficult to wrestle with the mature X86 in terms of the number of installed and influential ARM architecture chips on PCs. Windows, which has the largest system share in the PC market, is not optimized for ARM-based chips. However, with the success of Apple's M-series chips and the performance of MacBook in battery life and performance release, it has been recognized by the public.
The success of Apple's M-series chips on PCs has undoubtedly "set an example" for all ARM architecture manufacturers (Image source: Apple's official website)
The potential of ARM-based chips has made X86 chip manufacturers and Microsoft feel a sense of oppression, especially driven by the wave of AI PCs. You know, the AI function on smartphones is much faster and more popular than PCs, and now everyone is beginning to pay attention to NPU, its simplified predecessor ISP has been working silently in mobile phone SoC chips for many years.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that Qualcomm chose to re-inject into the PC at this time, first, there is Apple's successful experience in the ARM architecture chip, and second, it is the entry window of AI PC innovation. However, since the release of the Snapdragon X Elite processor, except for occasional appearances at press conferences and small-scale events, there is still some time before its devices are launched on a large scale.
And it is not difficult to see from the naming that the Snapdragon X Elite is likely to be the flagship product of the Snapdragon X series, and the price of the PC terminal that matches it will not be low, which is easy for Qualcomm to take advantage of the AI PC window period to become popular in the PC market. However, due to the ecology and price, consumers do not buy it, after all, compared with the status of the mobile phone market, it can only be regarded as a "new brand" in the PC field, and it will take time for users to accept it.
Qualcomm presents its second product: the Snapdragon X Plus
Because of this, Qualcomm's expansion of the Snapdragon X product lineup is logical, and the product it brings is the "Snapdragon X Plus", just by looking at the processor suffix, you can know that the positioning of the new product is lower than the previously released Snapdragon X Elite processor.
Snapdragon X Plus specific parameters (Image source: Qualcomm official)
This is also true in terms of specific hardware specifications, first of all, the Snapdragon X Plus and the Snapdragon X Elite use the same 4nm process technology, but the CPU and GPU specifications are different. In terms of CPU, the Snapdragon X Plus uses 10 Oryon cores, with a maximum frequency of 3.4GHz and a total cache of 42MB. Compared to the Snapdragon X Elite, the Snapdragon X Plus has 2 cores down, the top frequency has also been reduced by 0.4GHz, and the ability to dual-core turbo frequency to higher frequencies has also been removed.
In terms of GPU performance, the Snapdragon X Plus has a computing power of 3.8 TFLOPS (Snapdragon X Elite is 4.6 TFLOPs), but the performance of the two in device-side AI applications is estimated to be very close, because the NPU computing power is 45 TOPS.
Snapdragon X Plus multi-core performance is 10% ahead of Apple M3 (Image source: Qualcomm official)
Even if the specifications in terms of performance have been reduced, according to the test data released by Qualcomm, the Snapdragon X Plus can still compete with the Apple M3 and Intel Ultra 7 processors. In the multi-threaded benchmark test of GeekBench v6.2, the Snapdragon X Plus is 10% ahead of Apple's M3 chip, which is also based on the ARM architecture.
The energy efficiency ratio advantage of ARM architecture chips is still obvious (Image source: Qualcomm official)
On the other hand, the Snapdragon X Plus still retains the advantages of the ARM architecture's "high energy efficiency ratio" in comparison with the CPU performance of AMD and Intel of the traditional X86 architecture, in other words: the same power consumption is stronger and the same performance is lower, which is completely consistent with the performance of the previously released Snapdragon X Elite.
"Our platform has ultra-low power consumption, and the battery life of both the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus is significantly ahead of the competition compared to the x86 competition. Nitin Kumar, vice president of product management at Qualcomm Technologies, introduced.
Battery life may be the biggest advantage of the Snapdragon X platform (Image source: Qualcomm official)
According to the official data, the Snapdragon X Elite can double the battery life of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H in some application scenarios (such as Teams video calls). Overall, the Snapdragon X Plus is the "Snapdragon X Elite" with weakened CPU and GPU but consistent NPU performance. Although it looks very good in terms of parameters, if you want to get the most out of the processor, you can't do without software adaptation.
If you want to share the cake with Intel, Qualcomm still needs time
Nitin Kumar told Titanium Media App: "We first adapted the most commonly used applications by users, such as Microsoft Office 365 related suites have been transplanted to Windows PCs equipped with Snapdragon in the form of native applications, and others including Adobe Family Bucket have also been adapted, and browsers also provide support for Edge and Chrome, but there is currently less support for games, and the adaptation at this stage is mainly based on casual games." ”
In addition, Titanium Media APP also noticed that looking at Qualcomm's adjustment at the hardware level, it is not difficult to find its main strategy in the PC field: the degree of emphasis on AI exceeds that of traditional computing power. Qualcomm is clearly hoping to overtake in corners through AI, which is why it will use the exact same NPU specifications on the two processors that have been released.
Nitin Kumar also answered: "For example, in the field of software development and programming, software developers can use the NPU computing power of 45TOPS on the terminal side to generate code in real time, and the NPU can also play a role in image quality enhancement, AI filtering, AI noise reduction and other applications, in addition, Snapdragon X Elite also supports a large language model with a scale of 7 billion parameters to run on the terminal side at a speed of 30 tokens/second." ”
In addition, as for the launch plan, Nitin Kumar said that Qualcomm CEO Ammon will attend the Taipei International Computer Show in Taipei in June and give a keynote speech to introduce the latest developments of the Snapdragon X series products. At the same time, commercial devices equipped with the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus platforms are also expected to be launched in the middle of this year.
For Qualcomm to vigorously enter the PC field, it must be something that everyone is happy to see. According to the latest statistics from Canalys, in the fourth quarter of 2023, Intel CPU shipments reached 50 million units, an increase of 3% in shipments, accounting for 78% of the market share of the entire industry. The direct competitor AMD shipped 8 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 1%, and the market share was 13%, Intel is basically more than 6 times the shipment volume of AMD.
Although Apple and AMD are accelerating their layout, the situation of "one dominance" in the PC chip market has never been broken. Nowadays, Qualcomm is also actively involved, which can obviously give users more possibilities, especially for those users who want to compete with Apple's MacBook battery life but are trapped in the software ecosystem and have to stay under the Windows system, perhaps Qualcomm is the most anticipated "variable".
Snapdragon X platform compatible apps (Image source: Qualcomm official)
But it is also undeniable that as a latecomer in the PC field, Qualcomm, Microsoft and various software suppliers still need to do a lot of work, the biggest advantage of the Windows platform over Mac OS is the breadth of applications brought by openness and compatibility, and the ARM chip in this regard is obviously unable to compete with the X86 architecture chip, even if it has the possibility of translation compatibility, it is difficult to ensure the effect in efficiency and stability.
For Qualcomm, long battery life and AI capabilities may be the "function points" that can attract users in the early stage, but for long-term competition, these are far from enough. (This article was first published on Titanium Media APP, author by Deng Jianyun, editor by Zhong Yi)