At Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii in October, the company revealed its next-gen Snapdragon X Elite chip with benchmark claims that make it potentially competitive with Apple’s and Intel’s powerful chips. But Qualcomm’s ace in the hole is adding generative AI on-device that can process everything locally, and could let users get questions answered, word stories written and images generated without having to go through the cloud.
PC owners who’ve seen Qualcomm’s previous efforts at challenging Intel may be skeptical about the company’s chances for success. Qualcomm started putting processors in PCs a decade ago when it partnered with Microsoft and other computer makers to make devices running a limited version of Windows called Windows RT, which didn’t last long. Qualcomm tried partnering to release 2-in-1 laptops with Snapdragon chips geared originally for smartphones, and then in 2018, it unveiled its first CPU for PCs, the 8cx chip, hoping people would snap up PCs with 5G networking 2019. Still, the company’s chips haven’t meaningfully dented Intel’s power.
Qualcomm believes that PC makers will be more enthusiastic this time around, in part by bringing generative AI to their computers. But what may impress consumers more are the claims Qualcomm made on stage at the summit that the Snapdragon X Elite outperforms leading Apple M2 and Intel chips in performance and power efficiency. And that may be what really compels consumers to seek out an X Elite-powered laptop in mid-2024 when they’re expected to start arriving.
“I think the Windows [PC makers] are looking for similar capabilities,” said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president leading Qualcomm’s mobile, compute and XR work. “The only answer to what Apple has is really Qualcomm.”
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