I’m at the 10th annual Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii (special thanks to Qualcomm for flying me halfway around the world to be here), and it’s that time of year again: new laptop chips have officially arrived.
With the first generation of Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips already in the hands of consumers following a 2024 launch at Computex, it was only natural that chipmaker Qualcomm would want to go for another round; while the original X Elite chips were good, competition to be the company powering the best laptops was fierce. But sure enough, we now have confirmation that second-gen Snapdragon laptops are indeed inbound.
It’s a little different from last time, though: while the first-generation Snapdragon X lineup was headlined by the Elite chip, the star of the show here is the new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, which looks to be a huge step up from the first-gen processors. There’s also a regular X2 Elite, and while Qualcomm’s team wouldn’t fall for my wily tricks (read: polite requests for comment), it’s 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 reveal announcement, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon teased the reveal, remarking that “making a great chip means nothing if we can’t do it the next year” – likely implying that Qualcomm will be aiming for an annual cadence with new Snapdragon processor generations, similar to the usual release schedules of key competitors Intel and AMD.
The new chips are described by Qualcomm as “the fastest and most efficient processors for Windows PCs” (note that in this context, ‘PCs’ includes laptops as well as compact desktop devices), and the performance I’ve seen so far certainly lives up to that claim.
I can’t talk about specific benchmark numbers just yet (those are embargoed until the 29th, so watch this space!), but what I can share is that the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is built for high-end premium ultrabooks, with up to 18 cores and 53MB of cache memory, offering up to 75% faster CPU performance than current competing laptop CPUs at ISO power. It’s the first ARM-compatible CPU to reach a 5.0GHz clock speed, an impressive milestone.
There’s also a new on-chip Adreno GPU that provides a whopping 2.3X increase in performance per watt over the previous-gen integrated GPU, meaning that gaming should very much be an option on these devices – though Qualcomm maintains that their target audience is professionals, not gamers.
AI for the Snapdragon guy
AI is unsurprisingly also a key focus here. Amon stated in his opening keynote that “we’re the company that is going to bring AI everywhere”, citing improved local AI capabilities in not just laptops but also phones, wearables, and even cars.
To that end, both the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme will feature a brand-new neural processing 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 more recent M4 chip only manages a comparatively feeble 38.
Battery life improvements were also something Qualcomm was keen to tout. The standard X2 Elite chip reportedly requires up to 43% less power than the previous generation X Elite – an already very power-efficient chip, meaning that we could feasibly see laptop battery life extending well into multi-day use between charges.
Perhaps most interestingly, the X2 generation will debut a new feature called Snapdragon Guardian Technology. This new system utilizes both Wi-Fi and 5G connectivity to let users manage, locate, lock, or wipe their device remotely – a potentially invaluable feature for business users handling sensitive documents on their laptops.
In any case, the future looks bright for Qualcomm – I’m going to be here at the Summit all week, and I’ve already seen some exciting stuff, so expect more coverage from me over the coming days. I think Intel should be worried…
