Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon spoke at Computex Taipei and detailed the company’s achievements in artificial intelligence with Snapdragon X Elite and CoPilot+. Another important announcement was that Qualcomm chips will appear on desktop computers.
Amon described Snapdragon X Elite as «one of the most significant changes in Windows». Previously, Snapdragon chips were usually used in mobile and low-power devices. But during the presentation, Amon announced that Snapdragon X and CoPilot+ «will be available on all PC form factors». To recap, Snapdragon X Elite supports discrete graphics cardswhich theoretically allows it to be used even in gaming PCs.
Qualcomm is working with partners such as Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Samsung to produce a wide range of Snapdragon-based PCs. Many of these devices will be available starting June 18. Currently, there are more than 20 Copilot+ PCs available with Snapdragon processors and NPUs that offer performance up to 45 TOPS.
This performance currently makes the Snapdragon X Elite the fastest notebook NPU and the best performance per watt. Amon claims that the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus have the same AI performance. Amon claims that the Snapdragon X Elite has 2.6 times the performance per watt compared to the Apple M3 from and 5.4 times the performance per watt compared to the Intel Core Ultra 7. At the same time, Snapdragon X Elite laptops remain cooler than models based on the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor.
According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon X Elite chip combines high performance and energy efficiency. In the single-threaded Geekbench test, the Snapdragon X Elite chip was 51% faster while consuming 65% less power than the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H. Also, the Speedometer 2.1 test shows that Qualcomm processors are 20% faster (Chrome) and 57% faster (Edge) compared to Intel Core Ultra 7 155H. Compared to AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, the improvement is 39% (Chrome), 35% (Edge) when using Snapdragon X Elite.
In terms of battery life, the Snapdragon X Elite has 60% longer battery life for video playback and 70% longer battery life for video calls when compared to the Intel Core Ultra 7. Amon claims that this provides twice the battery life.
Qualcomm and Microsoft are actively collaborating on a new category of computers called Copilot+ PCs. They will be the first to receive Snapdragon X processors. The Windows Copilot Runtime toolkit will allow developers to access the power of artificial intelligence and improve programs such as DaVinci Resolve (video editing software) or Adobe Creative Cloud. With the Snapdragon X Elite NPU, DaVinci Resolve’s magic mask (for removing elements from video) was 4.7 times faster than on a 14-core Intel processor (exact model not specified).
The apps run on Snapdragon X rather than on traditional X86/X86_64-based processors thanks to the Prism emulator, which provides high performance on Snapdragon devices. So far, more than 1,200 games have been tested on Snapdragon X Elite, including some AAA titles from Activision, Blizzard, Epic, remedy, EA, Ubisoft, and Xbox. There are no performance tests yet, but Amon talks about using the NPU in future games where NPCs will be able to generate interactions with AI.
Source: tomshardware