Qualcomm Further Targets Laptop Market with Snapdragon X Plus Platform
With on-device AI crucial to the success of the next generation of laptops, the new Snapdragon X Plus Platform marks an opportunistic move from Qualcomm.
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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus is a new Arm-based chipset that sits underneath the previously announced Snapdragon X Elite, which itself comes in three variants with differences in clocks and GPUs. It provides a 10-core Qualcomm Oryon CPU and a Qualcomm Hexagon 45 TOPS NPU (Neural Processing Unit) – which the company says is the world’s fastest NPU for laptops – to deliver impressive performance for Windows PCs. Critically, it also does this while being more power efficient than its competitors, meaning longer battery life for users - a sensitive metric when it comes to buying decisions.
TOPS stands for trillions of operations per second, which shows the sort of area chip development has moved into. At launch, Qualcomm presented a range of data points highlighting Snapdragon X Plus performance, including:
10% faster than Apple M3
28-37% faster CPU performance than competition at ISO power*
39-54% less power at CPU peak performance than competitor*
36% faster GPU performance than competition at ISO power
50% less power at GPU peak performance than competitor
These are impressive numbers. Of course, they are slightly lower than the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite, which boasts a 28% speed increase over the Apple M3, but the point is that they still deliver greater performance than their competitors at what presumably will be a lower price point than the Elite. This enables the Qualcomm tech to feature in a wider range of laptops targeted at a wider range of users.
Its introduction further reflects the sea change of movement away from cloud-based AI solutions to on-device ones. Qualcomm demonstrated new AI-optimised applications and features running on the new system. Use cases included code generation; music generation from prompts and pre-existing music; and live captions in 100 languages in real-time during livestreams. All of these were accomplished using on-device AI and give an indication of the sort of performance users can expect from the new generation of machines.
OEMs are expected to launch PCs powered by Snapdragon X Plus, alongside devices powered by Snapdragon X Elite, starting mid-2024. HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft all supplied supporting quotes at the Elite launch, so it is reasonable to expect some high profile releases from blue chip manufacturers.
This is a bold, even opportunistic move by Qualcomm to further accelerate into the wider compute space with a more nuanced offering. On paper, and in demonstrations, the performance is impressive, but execution is key here and the bold claims will have to live up to initial benchmark results. Let’s see if the results stack up in the wild once they’re in users hands.
M3-powered MacBooks are widely seen as the industry benchmark for performance at the moment, and being able to outdo those is a definite positive for the company, especially at a range of differing price points. It is a positive for Microsoft too, as it may help halt the flow of end users leaving Windows for currently superior Mac power. And the fact that power consumption is not only curtailed but reduced is even more impressive.
Referencing Apple is important here too. Cupertino is expected to introduce AI capabilities at its forthcoming WWDC in June and these are widely expected to double down on Apple’s positioning of itself as the big tech champion of individual privacy, with on-device AI a key part of this narrative. This will probably move the dial for all manufacturers, and, for OEMs, being able to offer powerful on-device AI performance will become a critical component of new product launches. The Snapdragon X Elite had already created a significant buzz in the market; the Snapdragon X Plus extends the buzz down into potentially lower-end machines with more mass-market appeal.
It is good to see Qualcomm build upon its initial foray into this arena by offering OEMs a broad portfolio, allowing them to differentiate on price points without compromising on features.
It remains a competitive market though, and even being able to deliver what very much looks to be the right chip at the right time is no guarantee of success. Progress is rapid and Qualcomm will have to continue to innovate at speed to stay ahead of the competition.