Qualcomm’s New Snapdragon X Elite PC Chip to Provide “Multiple Days” of Battery Life

At its Snapdragon Summit today, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X Elite, the first chip in the “X series” family that the company announced earlier this month. The Snapdragon X Elite will start shipping in new ARM-based Windows PCs starting in mid-2024, and Qualcomm promises a significant step forward compared to its previous PC chip efforts.

The Snapdragon X Elite is the most powerful PC chip that Qualcomm has ever created, and the company says that it should match competitor peak performance all while using just one-third of the power. The new high-end chip will also deliver “multiple days” of battery life on a single charge, which would be quite unprecedented in the Windows-based mobile PC world.

“Snapdragon X Elite represents a dramatic leap in innovation for computing as we deliver our new, custom Qualcomm Oryon CPU for super-charged performance that will delight consumers with incredible power efficiency and take their creativity and productivity to the next level,” said Kedar Kondap, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Compute & Gaming, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Powerful on-device AI experiences will enable seamless multitasking and new intuitive user experiences, empowering consumers and businesses alike to create and accomplish more.”

The Snapdragon X Elite is a 4nm chip with a 12-core Oryon CPU running at up to 3.8 GHz, with a dual-core boost frequency of up to 4.3 GHz. The Adreno GPU on this chip will deliver up to 4.6 teraflops of performance and support three 4K external displays or two 5K displays. There’s also a powerful “Hexagon” neural processing unit (NPU) for AI workloads.

In terms of wireless connectivity, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chip will support Wi-Fi 7, 5G, and Bluetooth 5.4. The inclusion of a 5G modem is one of the benefits of using a Qualcomm-based PC, even though cellular connectivity isn’t exactly a killer feature yet.

The Windows on ARM ecosystem has been waiting for years for a high-end chip that can offer a no-compromises experience, and on paper, the Snapdragon X Elite looks pretty solid. If ARM chips always had a better performance per watt ratio compared to x86 chips, the “multiple days of battery life” promise also sounds great.

However, it’s too early to tell if the Snapdragon X Elite will be able to help Windows on ARM PCs to become more mainstream. Microsoft still needs more developers to release native versions of their apps and drivers for Windows on ARM. Apple built a great app compatibility layer on Apple Silicon Macs to make the transition from Intel-based Macs really seamless, but Windows on ARM is still not there yet.

While the first PCs powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chip won’t launch until mid-2024, Qualcomm may soon face competition from Nvidia and AMD. Reuters reported yesterday that the two companies are working on their own ARM chips for PC, and that Qualcomm’s exclusivity deal with Microsoft to build these chips will finally end in 2024.