While Qualcomm has achieved significant success in the Arm SoC market for Android smartphones, they have struggled to replicate this success in other markets. Despite producing multiple generations of chips for Windows-on-Arm laptops, Qualcomm has been unable to dethrone the dominant Intel. While this lack of success cannot be solely attributed to Qualcomm, as the operating system and software also play a role, the silicon itself has contributed to the challenge. To make a significant impact on the market, Qualcomm needs to make a major leap in performance. And after nearly three years of hard work, they are finally ready to do just that. This morning, Qualcomm is giving us a preview of their upcoming Snapdragon X Elite SoC, their next-generation Arm SoC designed for Windows devices. In the heart of this SoC is a brand-new Arm CPU core design from their subsidiary Nuvia called “Oryon”. The Snapdragon X Elite is not only the centerpiece of Qualcomm’s most important Windows-on-Arm SoC to date, but it will also eventually power smartphones and more. But let’s focus on the Snapdragon X Elite SoC and the Oryon cores for now.
Qualcomm’s announcement this morning is a high-level overview of the Snapdragon X Elite, which is designed as a high-performance SoC for Windows-on-Arm laptops. While official TDPs are not listed, Qualcomm has stated that the Elite SoC is designed to scale across a broad range of thermal designs. Active cooling will be necessary to maximize performance, but there will also be passive/fanless designs available. The chip is being manufactured on an unspecified 4nm process, and it features a monolithic die with discrete wireless radios.
The star of the show is Qualcomm’s new custom-designed Arm CPU core, Oryon. Designed by the Nuvia team, which Qualcomm acquired in 2021, Oryon is the first high-performance, fully-custom Arm CPU core developed by Qualcomm in several years. Oryon represents a major change in direction for Qualcomm, moving away from Cortex-A/X designs and functionally larger versions of mobile SoCs. The Oryon CPU cores are designed to excel in heavy workloads while minimizing power consumption in light workloads. The Snapdragon X Elite SoC is equipped with 12 Oryon CPU cores, organized in three clusters of four cores each. The chip supports clock speeds up to 3.8GHz across all 12 cores and up to 4.3GHz on two cores in lighter workloads. This represents a significant improvement over Qualcomm’s previous 8cx chips in terms of both core count and clock speeds, positioning the Snapdragon X Elite as a more potent performer.
On the memory side, the Snapdragon X Elite features a 128-bit LPDDR5x memory bus. This brings Qualcomm back to parity with the latest PC chips in terms of memory technology support, as the previous 8CX chips only supported LPDDR4x. The Snapdragon X Elite’s memory controller supports data rates as high as LPDDR5x-8533, making it one of the fastest memory controllers in the market.
Overall, the Snapdragon X Elite SoC is a significant step forward for Qualcomm and their efforts in the Windows-on-Arm laptop market. With its high-performance Oryon CPU cores, improved clock speeds, and faster memory technology support, Qualcomm is positioning the Snapdragon X Elite to compete with the industry’s leading players. We can expect to see the first laptops based on this SoC hitting retail shelves in mid-2024, offering a major leap in performance for Windows-on-Arm devices.
