In the world of PCs, for various reasons, what Apple has managed to do on its Mac systems has not yet happened. The initiative Apple Silicon was a significant move by Apple to transform the architecture of the processors that equip Macs. The transition from Intel processors to Intel-derived SoCs ARMdesigned in-house by Apple engineers, has led to a number of benefits, including improvements in performance, energy efficiency and optimized hardware-software integration. Snapdragon X represents Qualcomm’s new effort to bring a powerful, effective and efficient alternative to x86 processors from Intel and AMD to the PC.
So far there have been only timid attempts to bring the ARM offering into the PC segment. The operating system Windows on ARM it already exists but its use is currently very limited.
In November 2022 Qualcomm he declared that, in his opinion, the year of ARM PCs would be 2024: and so it will be, at least according to the announcement of these hours.
What is Snapdragon
In a company blog post, Qualcomm senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Don McGuirehas revealed the name of the Qualcomm SoCs intended for next-generation PCs. Snapdragon X it is the range of innovative SoCs that house the Qualcomm Oryon CPU that has been talked about so much. Orion represents “a leap in quality in terms of performance and energy efficiency” That “combined with the NPU, it will enable Snapdragon X to deliver accelerated on-device user experiences for the new era of generative AI“.
Qualcomm therefore moves away from the current Snapdragon 8cx series to offer partner PC manufacturing companies and end users a completely renewed offer tailored to the needs of those looking for a modern, high-performance computer.
Oryon technology comes from cores designed by Bride, a startup that Qualcomm bought in 2021 for $1.4 billion. And if the Snapdragon Qualcomm’s share (and consequently that of ARM) in the PC world could grow, in perspective, well above that recorded by Macs.
The only “flaw” is that several partners seem to have turned up their noses when Qualcomm specified that the new Snapdragon X would use integrated circuits for energy management (PMIC) owners.
The main points of the new offer
We know that Qualcomm is also evaluating RISC-V as an architecture to complement ARM, and then possibly replace it in the future. We have mentioned the reasons several times in the past. We’ll just remind you that the instruction set doesn’t matter in the race between x86-64 and ARM64 chips: RISC-V, however, has the advantage of being a relatively new architecture, free of all those burdens that x86 and ARM still retain today. It’s simple, it’s complete, it’s versatile and it’s pure royalty-free.
The launch of Snapdragon concrete.
Overall, Qualcomm highlights that theX identifier of new SoCs, distinguishes PC platforms from other Snapdragon product categories; The design premium celebrates the leap forward and revamped experiences for end users; a clear and simplified classification structure for Snapdragon X chips will help choose the best SoC.
