Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon X Elite, X Plus chipsets for Windows PCs

Semiconductor major Qualcomm has announced a new line of Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chipsets exclusive to Windows OS-based computers.

The new Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus will enable computers to work smoothly and consume less power to perform heavy-duty tasks.

The new Snapdragon chipsets allow computer makers to integrate generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT deeper into several on-device applications such as search engines, multimedia editing tools (Paint), Microsoft's Copilot digital assistant, and more to improve the user experience. The upcoming new computers with Snapdragong X Elite and X Plus will be called Copilot Plus PCs.

The new Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chipsets are exclusive to Windows OS-based computers.

Here are key aspects of Snapdragon X Elite:

--It houses a 4nm architecture-based 12-core Qualcomm Oryon CPU and can clock a whopping 4.2GHz CPU speed. It is more than enough to perform any heavy-duty tasks such as 4K video editing, on-device gen AI-based multi-media content generation and more

-- Adreno Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) integrated with the X Elite silicon can perform 4.6 TeraFLOPS (floating-point operations per second)

-- Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which comes paired with the Snapdragon X Elite chipset can perform 45 trillion operations per second. The new X Elite can deliver the highest NPU performance per watt for laptops, up to 2.6X better compared to the Apple M3 silicon and up to 5.4X than Intel's Core Ultra 7 155h series.

-- PCs with Snapdragon X Elite can generate photorealistic synthetic images in less than a second on gen AI-powered photo generator apps

--PCs with Snapdragon X Elite consume 60 per cent less power compared to any rival branded computers in its class

-- Snapdragon X Elite allows PC makers to offer up to 64GB RAM on the device

-- PCs with Snapdragon X Elite can deliver up to 22 hours of battery life

Key aspects of Snapdragon X Plus:

--It houses a 4nm architecture-based 10-core Qualcomm Oryon CPU and can clock a whopping 3.4GHz CPU speed. It is also enough to perform video editing and support on-device gen AI-based multi-media content generation and more. And, it can deliver 28 per cent faster performance compared to other branded computers in its class

-- Adreno Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) integrated with the X Plus processor silicon can perform 3.8 TeraFLOPS (floating-point operations per second)

-- Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which comes paired with Snapdragon X Elite chipset can perform 45 trillion operations per second

-- PCs with Snapdragon X Plus consume 39 per cent less power compared to any rival branded computers in its class.

-- Like the Elite version, the Snapdragon X Plus also allows PC makers to offer up to 64GB RAM on the device

-- PCs with Snapdragon X Plus can also deliver up to 22 hours of battery life

Computers with Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chipsets are set for launch next month.

Besides Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface Laptop PCs, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, HP and Samsung have announced at least 30 new Windows computers with Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors and soon hit stores globally in the coming weeks.

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