Breaking Down The Snapdragon X Series Strategy

Mark sits down with Kedar Kondap, SVP & GM of Compute & Gaming at Qualcomm, to talk about what we can expect from the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors launching soon. Everything from AI and NPU performance to battery life expectations to gaming performance is talked about in this interview.

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Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
00:28 - Snapdragon X Terminology
01:32 - Architecture
02:41 - Battery Life Expectations
04:27 - Partner Designs
05:41 - Processor Scalability
07:53 - Snapdragon X Selling Points
09:52 - NPU Use Cases
16:04 - NPU Optimizations
17:44 - Snapdragon X Plus Details
19:27 - Snapdragon X Gaming
20:27 - ARM Compatibility
22:53 - Final Thoughts

Video summary: In this video Mark Hachman and Kendar Kondap talk about the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series of processors in a variety of topics, including architecture, battery life, AI and NPU workloads, and more.

#qualcomm #snapdragon #laptop

[LuciusAugustusRex]

Put these in a handheld form factor. Lets see how good that efficiency really is.

[rano]

Being able to take a windows laptop away from civilization to work of cad and music on battery without needing to be plugged in would be a dream come true experience for me.

[aflury]

He says "up to 2x battery life" when the marketing slide says "over 2x". MARKETING WOULDN'T LIE, WOULD THEY?!

[mattevanst]

More choice on the market is good, hope Qualcomm keeps this up, just like Intel in the GPU space. In a few years both can get very good.

[charbax]

Davinci Resolve acceleration support is excellent news, can you please confirm you will support Davinci Resolve in Linux on X Elite/Plus too? Full Chrome (not chromium stuff) on both Windows and Linux too? How much Windows licensing can be saved by buying a Linux version of one of these?

[Tugennov]

Exciting, but what about Mac comparisons? After 35 years of using DOS & Windows, I switched to Mac for my daily driver laptop when the M1 Apple Silicon came out, and I'm glad did. I hope the new Snapdragon X series of products give me a strong reason to switch back to Windows PCs. Bring on the competition!

[bits]

Which will be Snapdragon X "ref" laptop, like MSI had some for "Intel Evo reference platform"?

[DIDI]

Does it have "ARMv8.3-A Memory Consistency Model" implemented?

[nabiljemel]

I would like to know something about NPUs. In case I have a decent nvidia Graphic card, Is there any reason I need to upgrade my CPU ? Isnt't investing in a more Powerful GPU is better than getting a processor with built in NPU?

[warlockboyburns]

I wonder how it compares to AMD Ryzen 7 6800U performance per watt

[tanmaypanadi]

pleasssse re-check the name of the guest in the description. i think the correct spelling is kedar kondap. ( as PC world used in the intro)

[benkleban]

Snapdragon may have a minor power efficiency advantage, but lets be real, Strix Halo is going to blow away anything they can throw at it. More powerful cores, more powerful integrated graphics, more powerful NPU. I foresee a Snapdragon X Elite black friday sale, $499 laptop that slightly beats a $700 intel.

[B.Chrry]

I need, we need Windows (Microsoft) to have mass support for Arm processors… That way we can get native BootCamp on Apple-Series and Hackintosh support for Arm processors!

[tanjimdiganta]

Why only M3? why not m3 pro and m3 max competitions?

[Mbro-dqdo]

Yes Im mainly all Apple but use PCs for linux sometimes. Its 2024 and to hear this dude say "Can I use this and I just want everything to work" Exactly why Im an Apple guy. My 2012 unibody Macbook Pro With upgraded SSD and more RAM. Everything just works. Never has any issues. Never freezes or crashes. When Im in a Linux VM or just using Mac OS. My fully loaded Dell from 2019 Crashes all the time. Blue screens me alot. Like multiple times weekly. I am fired up for Qualcomms ARM chips though. So far looks good

[LucasHolt]

if you get a chance for follow up with qualcomm later, find out about developer workloads. Does the chip have virtualization instructions like intel/amd chips? (e.g. can we run VMs or docker containers) Is it performing well for compiling apps for the platform as well as other languages like java/python/node.js? Did qualcomm add any accelerators for workloads like apple did with the m1 (for javascript)

[anix]

finally laptops can be used as laptops :D hope it won't heat up and less plugging in

[williamcopeland]

It's still going to be hard for these ARM based computers to be used by businesses as along as INTEL and AMD are still here. Unfortunately, to this day with ARM based computers there are still programs that do not work.

[vasudevmenon]

Is Mark using SP 10 snapdragon Elite plus engineering device or is it SP9 Arm?

[JohnDoe-ipoq]

I don't see this competing with AMD APUs, like in the steam deck. Battery life is fine, but if you can't run x86, which is rather limited support, then this is Windows RT tablets repeating. They need to force Microsoft to fix x86 support, or bare minimum support Linux, so you can actually run desktop applications. Nobody cares about Windows RT or Android laptops. Good x86 compatibility is a literal requirement to not be a complete failure.