Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite Series Chips to Power New Copilot+ PCs Coming in 2026

Qualcomm revealed today its next-gen chips for ARM-based PCs, the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. The company said that its new chips are designed for “ultra-premium PCs” and feature the fastest neural processing unit (NPU) for AI workloads ever seen in a PC chip.

“With superior performance, multi-day battery life and groundbreaking AI, these new processors are the fastest, most powerful and efficient processors for Windows PCs,” the company said today. “Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is built for ultra-premium PCs, tackling agentic AI experiences, computationally intense data analytics, professional media editing and scientific research. Ultimate power users, experienced creators and professional producers can carry out their complex, expert-level workloads on thin and light PCs while plugged in or on the go.”

The first generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon X series chips powered the first ARM-based devices marketed as “Copilot+ PCs”, including Microsoft’s Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7. If there are now x86-based Copilot+ PCs powered by Intel and AMD chips with built-in NPUs, but Qualcomm’s current-gen X series chips still offer a faster NPU delivering 45 TOPS of AI performance.

Both the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme use a more efficient 3nm manufacturing process. Qualcomm promises up to 31% faster performance at ISO power, all while requiring up to 43% less power than its previous chip generation.

The two chips feature a 3rd-gen Oryon CPU with up to 18 cores and a 5GHz maximum frequency on their Prime CPU cores. Qualcomm promises “up to 75% faster CPU performance than competition at ISO power” on the X2 Elite Extreme SKU.

Qualcomm also said today that the chips’ new Adreno GPU delivers a 2.3x increase in performance per watt and power efficiency over the previous generation. Lastly, the NPU on the two chips now offers 80 TOPS of AI processing, making it the fastest PC NPU on the market, according to the company.

On the connectivity front, the Snapdragon X2 Elite series supports up to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 LE audio. There’s also optional 5G support, with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X75 modem delivering up to 10 Gbps download speeds in 5G.

The main difference between the Snapdragon X2 Elite and the X2 Elite Extreme is that the latter shares a common pool of memory between the CPU and GPU, similar to the unified memory architecture on Apple’s M-Series chips. This helps to improve processing speed, with Qualcomm promising “record-breaking responsiveness across multitasking, browsing, and content creation.”

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite series chips will power a new generation of Copilot+ PCs, with the first devices expected to be released in the first half of 2026. However, the market for ARM-based PCs may soon become more competitive thanks to new chips from MediaTek and Nvidia possibly coming before the end of the year.