Qualcomm to announce new Snapdragon X-series chips in September: report
Qualcomm could announce new Snapdragon X-series chipsets next month, according to a report. The chipmaker introduced its Snapdragon X-series processors in April, and it is currently the only chipset available for consumer laptops that meets the specifications required for Copilot+ PCs. This is because the dedicated Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) in the chipset is said to be capable of 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS), with Microsoft categorizing laptops with at least 40 TOPS as Copilot+ PCs. It is not known whether the new X-series chips will surpass the NPU performance of the company’s existing processors.
New Snapdragon X-series chipsets could debut next month
During the Snapdragon India event held earlier this week, Qualcomm unveiled on display the capabilities of its X-series chipsets and introduced the 5G-enabled Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 mobile platform. During the event, Kedar Kondap, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Compute and Gaming, Qualcomm hinted that more X-series chipsets may be announced in September.
According to a report by FoneArena, Kondap could be referring to the upcoming Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 2024 event in Berlin, a trade fair for consumer electronics. The chipmaker could reportedly introduce new variants of the Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite chips. The publication claims that while new chip models are unlikely, new stock-keeping units (SKUs) of existing processors could be unveiled.
There are three existing SKUs for the Snapdragon X Elite: X1E-78-100, X1E-80-100, and X1E-84-100. Each chip has slight differences in performance and efficiency, while the cost of each chip also varies. Speculation suggests that more SKUs in the Elite and Plus tiers could be introduced at the Berlin event.
Additionally, the company is expected to announce the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 mobile platform at its annual event in October. Qualcomm has revealed that the chipset will use its own Oryon CPU and have a dedicated NPU. A previous report had claimed that the chipset could offer a significant improvement in power efficiency over the Adreno 750 GPU but might only offer a single-digit CPU performance boost.
