I am at the tenth annual Snapdragon summit in Maui, Hawaii (special thanks to Qualcomm for flying in the middle of the world to be here), and it is that time of the year again: the new portable chips have officially arrived.
With the first generation of Snapdragon X Elite and more chips already in the hands of consumers after a 2024 launch in Computex, it was natural that the Qualcomm chips manufacturer would like to go to another round; While the original elite chips were good, the competition to be the company that promoted the best laptops was fierce. But indeed, we now have confirmation that second generation Snapdragon laptops are really incoming.
However, it is a bit different from the last time: while the alignment of Snapdragon X of the first generation was headed by the elite chip, the program star here is the new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, which seems to be a great step forward of the first generation processors. There is also a regular elite X2, and although the Qualcomm team would not fall in love with my cunning tricks (read: Applications of Cortés Comments), it is reasonable to wait for a more friendly Snapdragon X2 with the budget in the coming months.
A natural progression
In his main introductory note the day before the announcement of Big Revely, the CEO of Qualcomm, Cristiano Amon, mocked the revelation, commenting that “making a great chip means nothing if we cannot do it next year”, which probably implies that Qualcomm will point to an annual cadence with new generations of Snapdragon processors, similar to the usual liberation programs of the Intel and AMD -key competitors.
Qualcomm describes the new chips as “the fastest and most efficient processors for Windows PCs” (keep in mind that in this context, ‘PCs’ includes laptops, as well as compact desktop devices), and the performance that I have seen so far is certainly up to that statement.
I still can’t talk about specific reference numbers (those are shipped until 29, so look at this space!), But what I can share is that the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is built for a high -end Ultrabrooks Premium Premium, with up to 18 nuclei and 53 MB of cache memory, which offers up to a faster CPU performance than the current CPU. It is the first CPU compatible with the arm to reach a 5.0 GHz watch speed, an impressive milestone.
There is also a new Adreno GPU in Chip that provides a huge increase of 2.3x in the performance per watt on the integrated GPU of previous generation, which means that the games should be an option on these devices, although Qualcomm maintains that its target audience are professionals, not players.
Ai for Snapdragon’s boy
It is, as expected, also a key approach here. Amon declared in its main opening that “we are the company that will bring the way everywhere”, citing local capabilities of improved not only on laptops but also on phones, laptops and even cars.
To that end, both the Snapdragon X2 Elite and the X2 Elite Extreme will have a new Neural Processing Unit (NPU), capable of 80 billion operations per second (TOPS). This almost doubles the performance of the existing Snapdragon chips; The NPU incorporated of gen x Elite gene offers up to 45 tops, while Apple’s most recent chip only manages a relatively weak 38.
The improvements in battery life were also something that Qualcomm was anxious to promote. According to reports, the standard X2 chip requires up to 43% less power than the elite of the previous X generation, a very efficient chip in the power, which means that we could see the useful life of the battery that extends well in use of several days between the loads.
Perhaps the most interesting, the X2 generation will debut a new feature called Snapdragon Guardian Technology. This new system uses Wi -FI and 5G connectivity to allow users to administer, locate, block or delete their device remotely, a potentially invaluable feature for commercial users who handle confidential documents on their laptops.
In any case, the future seems brilliant for Qualcomm: I will be here at the summit all week, and I have already seen some exciting things, so I expect more coverage of me in the next few days. I think Intel should be worried …
