After Qualcomm released the PC platform Snapdragon X Elite in October last year, the popularity of AI PCs has been climbing.
AI PCs powered by Snapdragon X Elite are not yet available, and the all-new Snapdragon X Plus has been officially unveiled.
The release time is a few months apart, but PCs with both processors will be available in the middle of this year, making consumer expectations continue to rise.
The reason for the high expectations for Snapdragon laptops is simple - high performance, long battery life.
After years of development, the performance of the laptop has been enough to meet the needs of daily use, and the pain point is the battery life.
At present, Apple's MacBook is the most prominent battery life of laptops on the market, and Apple relies on its self-developed Arm architecture M series processors to achieve high performance and low power consumption.
Many consumers want to have a long-lasting laptop running Windows. The Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus are just what they need, with the added power of AI performance.
The Snapdragon X Elite is not afraid of the latest rivals
The Snapdragon X Elite was released with a comparison of Apple's M2 processor and Intel's flagship Core processor, and the performance and power consumption advantages were pleasantly surprised.
After the release of the Snapdragon X Elite, both Apple and Intel released a new generation of processors, which did not make the Snapdragon X Elite look any inferior.
Compared to Apple's latest M3 processor, the Snapdragon X Elite CPU continues to lead the way with a 28% higher test result in Geekbench multi-threading.
Compared to Intel's latest generation Core processor Core Ultra 7 155H, in the Geekbench v6 single-threaded test, the Snapdragon X Elite consumes 65% less power than the competition when reaching the same peak performance, and the Snapdragon X Elite CPU performance is 54% higher than the competition at the same power consumption.
Using the same Geekbench v6 multi-threaded test, the Snapdragon X Elite achieves the same peak performance as the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with 60% lower power consumption, and the Snapdragon X Elite CPU performance is 52% better than the competition at the same power consumption.
Even the Snapdragon X Elite has an advantage over Intel's top-of-the-line Core Ultra 9 185H. In the single-threaded performance test, the Snapdragon X Elite consumes 65% less power at the same peak performance of the Core Ultra9185H, and outperforms the competition by 51% at the same power consumption.
In the multi-threaded performance test, the Snapdragon X Elite achieves the same peak performance of the Core Ultra9 185H with 58% lower power consumption and 41% higher performance at the same power consumption.
In other words, compared to the x86 PC processor, the CPU of the Snapdragon X Elite has higher performance at the same power consumption, and the Snapdragon X Elite only needs lower power consumption to achieve the same performance.
The same is true for GPUs, which also consume half as much power as the competition at the same peak performance compared to the Core Ultra 7 155H, which is 36% ahead of the competition at the same power.
When it comes to specific applications, the same application can have a shorter boot time and longer battery life.
The Snapdragon X Elite's battery life is at least 40% longer than the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and more than twice as long in multiple use cases such as local video playback, web browsing, YouTube streaming, and Teams video calling.
启动Cisco WebEx、Firefox、Teams或是 Adobe Photoshop，骁龙X Elite至少比英特尔酷睿Ultra 7 155H快7%，至多快接近70%。
Qualcomm has also partnered with Google to optimize the Chrome browser based on the Snapdragon X Elite, which is 20% more responsive than the Core Ultra7 155H.
As the time for AI PCs powered by Snapdragon X Elite to hit the market is getting closer, Qualcomm has launched the Snapdragon X Plus.
Snapdragon X Plus covers a larger market
The Snapdragon X Plus is positioned slightly lower than the Snapdragon X Elite and aims to cover a wider range of high-end segments.
In comparison, both Snapdragon X processors use a 4nm process, and the performance of the NPU is currently the highest in the industry at 45 TOPS.
One significant difference is that the Snapdragon X Elite uses a custom 12-core Qualcomm Oryon CPU with dual-core enhancement technology. The Snapdragon X Plus is equipped with a 10-core Qualcomm Oryon CPU with a maximum clock speed of 3.4GHz and a total cache of 42MB.
However, the performance of the Snapdragon X Plus is still 10% higher than that of Apple's M3 processor.
Compared to the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, using Geekbench multi-threaded testing, the Snapdragon X Plus consumes 54% less power than the competition when reaching the same peak performance.
GPU performance, in WildLife Extreme testing, compared to the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, the Snapdragon X Plus outperforms the competition by up to 36% at the same power consumption, and consumes half the power of the competition when the PC reaches the same peak performance.
In terms of connectivity, the Snapdragon X Plus supports the same advanced connectivity technologies as the Snapdragon X Elite, including Wi-Fi 7, high-frequency concurrent multi-connectivity, and 5G connectivity that supports sub-6GHz and mmWave speeds up to 10GB/s.
Imaging capabilities, like the Snapdragon X Elite, the Snapdragon X Plus also supports 18-bit dual ISP and MIPI cameras, providing advanced image and video capabilities for a high-end user experience.
In terms of audio, the Snapdragon X Plus supports leading Snapdragon Sound features, including Bluetooth 5.4 audio transmission, and more.
"The Snapdragon X Plus will extend Snapdragon's product leadership to more devices and users. "With up to 45 TOPS of AI computing power, we can provide users with a better AI experience." ”
In addition to image quality enhancement, AI filters, AI noise reduction and other rich applications, Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite are in the field of software development and programming, software developers can use the NPU computing power of 45TOPS on the device side to generate code in real time. The 7 billion parameter large language model can run at a speed of 30 tokens/second on the device side, and students can complete their homework with the help of device AI without accessing the cloud.
"Games are not the focus of the first Snapdragon X platform releases at the moment, but they can still provide excellent support for casual games. Nitin Kumar said.
When it comes to user experience, although Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus have the advantages of high performance and low power consumption, they are different from x86 Arm architecture processors, and they cannot avoid the compatibility of Windows running on Arm and possible performance loss.
Nitin Kumar said, "We are working closely with Microsoft around Windows PCs powered by Snapdragon to ensure a user experience. For x86 architecture application translation, we have achieved satisfactory performance through our cooperation with Microsoft. It is believed that the performance loss of these translation applications is also difficult to perceive on commercial terminals. At the same time, we are also working with a number of ISVs to promote the expansion of Snapdragon's native applications. ”
In the past few decades, the PC market has been dominated by x86 processors, until Apple's Arm-based M-series processors are launched, which shows everyone that Arm-based processors can balance high performance and low power consumption in the PC field.
The launch of the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus coincides with the shift of the PC market towards AI PCs, and Qualcomm has the potential to change the landscape of the PC market.
In addition to performance, consumers and customers alike expect a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage from the Snapdragon X.
"Both platforms have dedicated NPUs with a computing power of up to 45TOPS, and from the perspective of enterprises, a large number of AI workloads can be run locally on the terminal side without connecting to the cloud, thereby effectively reducing cloud expenses and thus reducing the total cost. Nitin Kumar said to Leifeng.com.
Waiting for the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus notebooks to be launched in the middle of the year, the direction of the AI PC market will be clearer. Leifeng.com