Unveiled by Qualcomm laptop chip with AI features for the coming year. Qualcomm on Tuesday gave details about Microsoft Windows-based laptop chip that it claims will be faster at some tasks than Apple’s chips for Mac computers.
What Qualcomm is launching is the Snapdragon X Elite, a silicon platform for laptops running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. It’s a system-on-a-chip containing an Oryon central processing unit, Adreno graphics processor, Hexagon neural (AI) processor, RAM, and circuitry for features such as 5G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth communications, basically, a high percentage of the elements that make a PC a PC. Though not Qualcomm’s first platform designed with PCs in mind, it’s by far the most powerful.
Qualcomm laptop Snapdragon X Elite chip
Qualcomm executives said the company’s new Snapdragon Elite X chip will be available in laptops starting next year and has been redesigned to better handle artificial intelligence tasks like summarizing emails, writing text and generating images. Those AI features will also factor into Qualcomm AI chips for smartphones, with Alphabet’s Google and Meta both saying Tuesday they plan to take advantage of them.
Microsoft and Qualcomm collaboration
The announcement of Microsoft and Qualcomm collaboration comes a day after Microsoft has encouraged Qualcomm, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to come up with new chips to handle a bevy of new AI features in Windows, the world’s most popular PC operating system.
During a video appearance at Qualcomm’s event, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said the chips would help usher in a new era of “AI PCs” for businesses and consumers.
“The work we’re doing together, it’s going to bring together these experiences that cannot be done without a new system architecture,” Nadella said on Microsoft and Qualcomm collaboration.
Qualcomm AI chip
Qualcomm laptop chip will be the first to market challenge Apple, whose laptop and desktop computers have more than doubled their market share since the iPhone maker introduced custom-designed chips in 2020.
Qualcomm claimed on Tuesday the Snapdragon X Elite is faster than Apple’s M2 Max chip at some tasks and more energy efficient than both Apple and Intel PC chips. But Qualcomm Senior Vice President Alex Katouzian said the biggest new feature is the Qualcomm AI chip can handle artificial intelligence models with 13 billion parameters, a proxy measure of sophistication for AI systems that generate text or images.
AI PCs for businesses and consumers
Francis Sideco, an analyst with TIRIAS Research, said “You’ve got a lot of smaller businesses and individual designers and creators using these devices. They need that kind of capability,” Sideco said.
He said that with companies such as Adobe rolling out the ability to use AI to generate images for everything from real estate brochures to beer can labels, demand for AI PCs for businesses and consumers laptops will rise.
