I’m at the 10th annual Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii (special thanks to Qualcomm for flying me halfway around the world for being here), and that’s the time of year again: new laptop chips have officially arrived.
With the first generation of Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips that were already in the hands of consumers after a 2024 launch on Computex, it was only natural that Chipmaker Qualcomm would go to another round; While the original X Elite chips were good, the competition for being the company that runs the best laptops was fierce. But sure enough, we now have confirmation that other-gen snapdragon-laptop is actually in-depth.
However, it is slightly different from the last time: While the first generation of Snapdragon X-Lineup was overwritten by Elite Chip, the star of the show here is the new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, which appears to be a big step up from first generation processors. There is also a regular X2 elite, and although Qualcomm’s team would not fall for my bad tricks (read: polite requests for comment), it is reasonable to expect a more budget-friendly Snapdragon X2 Plus in the coming months.
A natural progression
In his introductory keynote, the day before the big disclosure message teased Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon the reveal, which noted that “doing a big chip means nothing if we can’t do the next year” – which probably suggests that Qualcomm will aim for an annual cadence with new Snapdragon -Processor Generations, similar to the usual release plans for the most important competitions for the most important competitions.
The new chips are described by Qualcomm as “the fastest and most effective processors for Windows -PCs” (note that “PCS” includes laptops as well as compact desktop devices), and the performance I have seen so far certainly lives up to this claim.
I can’t talk about specific benchmark numbers yet (they are embargoed until the 29th, so see this space!) But what I can share is that Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is built for advanced Premium-Ultrabooks, with up to 18 kernels and 53MB cache memory offering up to 75% faster CPU performance than the current ISO POW. It is the first arm-compatible CPU that reaches a 5.0 GHz watch speed, an impressive milestone.
There is also a new on-chip Adreno GPU that gives a huge 2.3x increase in performance per day. Watt over the previous gene integrated GPU, which means that games should largely be an option on these devices-self-Qualcomm maintains that their target audience is professionals, not players.
AI to the Snapdragon -fyren
AI is not surprisingly also a central focus here. In his opening of the main knone, Amon stated that “we are the company that will bring AI everywhere”, with reference to improved local AI capabilities in not only laptops but also phones, wearables and even cars.
To this end, both Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme will contain a brand new neural treatment unit (NPU) capable of 80 trillion operations per Second (tops). This almost doubles the AI ​​performance of existing Snapdragon -chips; The current Gen X Elite’s built-in NPU offers up to 45 tops, while Apple’s newer M4 chip manages only a relatively weak 38.
Battery life improvements were also something Qualcomm was eager to smooth out. The standard x2 elite chip allegedly requires up to 43% less power than the previous generation x elite one already very effective chip, which means we could possibly see portable battery life that extends well to multi-day use between charges.
Perhaps most interesting, the X2 generation will debut a new feature called Snapdragon Guardian Technology. This new system uses both WI -FI and 5G connection to let users manage, locate, lock or dry their device remotely -a potentially invaluable feature for business users who handle sensitive documents on their laptops.
In any case, the future looks bright for Qualcomm – I will be here at the summit all week, and I have already seen some exciting things, so expect more coverage from me in the coming days. I think Intel should be worried …
