Qualcomm’s Chairman and CEO Cristiano Amon, on Monday, delivered his maiden keynote at Computex 2024, held in Taipei, Taiwan, to introduce the company’s latest Snapdragon X series of processors with a dedicated NPU (neural processing unit), powering the upcoming Copilot+ Windows 11 PCs. The CEO highlighted, “It’s a graduation day for Qualcomm as a leader in computing,” as Qualcomm is primarily known for its smartphone chips, and with the Snapdragon X series, it is entering the AI PC segment.
“PC is truly reborn, and it’s a new era for the PC, and that is happening with the combination of Snapdragon X Elite and Copilot+, which is one of the most significant transitions of the Windows, which is as significant as Windows 95,” Amon stated. Over 22 Copilot+ branded laptops with Snapdragon X Elite/Plus processors are launching this month from OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Samsung.
Qualcomm highlighted that Snapdragon X series-powered Copilot+ PCs could deliver multiple days of battery life (up to 30 hours of continuous video playback) along with several on-device generative AI experiences. The company also revealed that the Qualcomm Snapdragon X platform will not just be limited to laptops, but will also be coming to other personal computing platforms like AIO (all-in-one) PCs, mini PCs, tablets, and convertible laptops.
Qualcomm also demonstrated a possible generative AI-powered assistant that’s more life-like, which will run locally on Copilot+ PCs.
Qualcomm’s Hexagon NPU is also said to be more power efficient than the competition (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
The Hexagon NPU on the Snapdragon X series of processors is stated to be the “World’s fastest” and most efficient NPU for laptops, which offers up to 45 TOPs of performance. Compared to the competition, the NPU on the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 is said to offer 2.6x more performance per watt compared to Apple Silicon M3, and it offers 5.4 times more performance per watt compared to the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor.
Ahead of Qualcomm’s keynote, AMD introduced its Ryzen AI 300 series chips for Copilot+ PCs, which is said to offer up to 50 TOPs of performance, outperforming the Snapdragon’s Hexagon NPU. However, the company did not reveal anything regarding the power consumption.
Similarly, Qualcomm also claimed that the Snapdragon X Elite offers five times higher performance at lower temperatures. In terms of CPU performance, the Snapdragon X Elite, on Geekbench single-thread test, is reported to be up to 51 percent faster than the competition (Ryzen 9 7950HS and the Core Ultra 9 185H), while consuming 65 percent less power. .
Qualcomm claims to offer higher performance at lower power draw (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
According to a comparison shared by Qualcomm between the Apple M3 and the Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm’s product is reported to offer 2.6 times better NPU performance, 35 percent more memory bandwidth, 28 percent faster multi-threaded CPU performance, and 19 percent Better battery life.
Lastly, the company talked about battery life, whereas a Snapdragon X Elite-powered PC is said to deliver 60 percent more video playback time, 70 percent longer video calls, and while streaming videos, a Snapdragon X Elite-powered PC is said to last twice as long as an Intel Core Ultra 7 powered PC.
Qualcomm also addressed video gaming on Snapdragon X series-powered Copilot+ PCs. The company is said to have partnered with several game developers to optimize their titles and also stated that over 1,200 plus games already work well on ARM-based Copilot+ PCs.
The first set of Snapdragon X Elite/Plus powered Copilot+ PCs will be available in the market starting June 18 with a starting price of $999.
The writer is in Taiwan, Taipei, on the invite of Intel India.