A Qualcomm made a shocking announcement during its annual event, the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, last Tuesday (24). They revealed the launch of the powerful Snapdragon X Elite chip, which incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. This semiconductor, based on the Arm architecture, is part of the next generation of PC experiences, integrating the series Snapdragon from the company. It succeeds the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 line of notebook chips.
For those in a hurry:
- Qualcomm claims the Snapdragon X Elite is the most powerful processor they have ever created.
- Designed for computers with Microsoft's Windows operating system, it demonstrates superior performance in some tasks, outperforming chips from Apple for Mac and being more energy efficient compared to Intel's.
- The chip has been redesigned to optimize AI-related tasks such as summarizing emails, creating text and generating images; these AI capabilities will also be incorporated into Qualcomm's smartphone chips.
- It is worth noting that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (for mobile devices), also announced at the event, also makes use of AI capabilities.
- PCs powered by the Snapdragon X Elite are scheduled to hit the market in 2024.
According to Engadget, the X Elite offers an impressive 42MB of total cache memory and LPDDR5x memory with 136GB/s bandwidth. Equipped with 12 Oryon cores, the chip delivers up to twice the CPU performance compared to Intel's 13th-generation Core i7-1360P and i7-1355U processors, while consuming up to 68% less power.
Regarding the M2 chip Apple, Qualcomm claims its semiconductor delivers up to 50% faster multithreaded performance.
The biggest innovation, however, lies in the X Elite’s ability to handle AI-related tasks. Qualcomm senior vice president Alex Katouzian said the chip is capable of processing models with 13 billion parameters, a metric that reflects the sophistication of AI systems that generate text or images.
Other notable features include support for AV1 video encoding/decoding in 4K HDR, 5G connectivity with download speeds of up to 10Gbps, Wi-Fi 7, and Qualcomm's built-in Sensing Hub.
A new era of AI chips
As reported by Reuters, during a video appearance at the event, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella highlighted that these chips will pave the way for the era of “AI PCs” for both businesses and consumers.
It's worth noting that the Snapdragon X Elite's launch comes shortly after Microsoft, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices pushed Qualcomm to develop new chips capable of handling a range of new AI features in Windows, the world's most widely used PC operating system.