The Story of Snapdragon X Elite

Two lawsuits & a mystery: The Story of Snapdragon X Elite | In this video we will take a look at the exciting history of Qualcomm's new Arm SoC that aims to bring Apple-like performance to Windows on Arm.

0:00 Intro
0:20 The early beginnings / Apple A4 / P.A. Semi / Intrinsity
1:40 Custom Arm CPUs / Apple A6
3:18 Nuvia & Apple lawsuit
5:17 Nuvia Orion SoC & Phoenix CPU
6:20 Qualcomm & Nuvia
7:13 Arm lawsuit
8:06 Snapdragon X Elite SoC / Oryon CPU
10:19 Adreno GPU / Hexagon NPU / System Memory
11:43 Snapdragon X Elite specs / Windows on Arm
13:19 The competition / Intel Lunar Lake / AMD Strix Point / Apple M4

[hornsteinhof]

Poor nuvia, left apple to develop something more complex than a mobile CPU, then gets bought out by Qualcomm to design a mobile CPU

[MrSamPhoenix]

I heard the whole reason they left Apple was because they wanted to create a Server chip… Apple said no, and wanted them to create more mobile chips. They left thinking they could bluff the company. They tried to be another AMD, but money was tight & Nuvia got acquired by Qualcomm soon after… who wants them to create more mobile chips 😕

[juskim]

Coming from IC design background, I easily get lost in the technical details and totally miss the story as well as the people behind these amazing technologies. Thank you for a great overview on the story of how the X Elite was created! :)

[jinraigami]

As someone who loves M-Series macs, I am glad that competition exists for 3 reasons.

1. It is good for keeping Apple from sitting on their butts.
2. Worse that Apple can't no longer keep up, we have an alternative.
3. Price. It keeps Apple from being too greedy as there are alternative choice.

[mkunikow]

Snapdragon X Elite will have also official support for linux.

[gunayorbay]

If Qualcomm is to be trusted with their promises, these chips are expected to have good Linux support, which is something I'm looking forward to.

[RealTechnoPanda]

Price is also going to be an important factor. In the past qualcomm based laptops were more expensive than Intel and AMD based designs

[pennyanderson]

The chip was announced around M2, shown public around M3, and ships around M4🤣

[james-cucumber]

Fantastic video! Kinda reminded me of some of TechAltar’s more technical videos, but you did the technical bits even better than he usually does! (Not implying any copying/plagiarism etc)
Also super awesome you’ve clearly written the subtitles yourself. I see very few YouTubers your size doing this, and I quite often leave comments complaining about AI subtitles. Genuinely, thank you for including these subtitles, even with the few spelling errors in them. They’re a lot better than AI generated ones would be.

[DDRWakaLaka]

just got recommended this video earlier today and now I'm watching through the rest of your videos. absolutely fantastic stuff

[NootNoot.]

It's crazy how long Nuvia has sat on their 'Orion'/'Oryon' arch. I don't know if it's vastly different or similar, but the X Elite only has 1 design, and they've been very quiet on releasing information. Not only that, they've kept on hyping it up every time news about it dies down because of how long they kept it from releasing (like flying press to events using their reference designs). Apart from this years M4, we've gotten die shots of the M series and not even 1 from QC. At least we got a die size estimate lol.

That said, I am still very excited. They'll got a 'wow' from me if we get passively cooled Windows laptops. Intel, AMD, Apple, I can't wait till you cover them all this year!

[glennm]

I worked on an Intel team selling to Apple and knew their products well from 2006 on your summation of architectural history is exactly correct. First time viewer when I saw how correct you were on that I listen to everything. Good stuff!

[jasonchen-alienroid]

As ex-system architect and later on strategy at qualcomm, who actually worked on pc/server strategy, it's a lot more complex business decision. Qualcomm enjoys ARM architecture so much that after it acquired a company, it moved its architecture to ARM. The real reason behind having a RISCV is not just academic, but because ARM was not transparent in licensing their latest architecture. Sure, Qualcomm had architectural license which meant it breaks ARM's monopoly and strategy of commoditizing soc designs might contribute to this as well.

Also, qualcomm has the world's best DSP, so that NPU is just superior.

[patrickchea]

Great video! Here's to hoping the claims hold up to scrutiny by independent media and real world performance.

[maxwellsmart]

Apple competing against AMD, Intel, or Qualcomm makes for a good marketing story but no one buys Apple for hardware specs in isolation because they are buying the whole package or perceived experience. Qualcomm's biggest threat is Microsoft losing interest. It's been 8 years since Zen and Windows still hasn't figured out scheduling properly. Competition is great but will it lead to low cost low power e-waste?

[intheampm]

PA Semi and Intrinsity were some of the best acquisitions of all time

[salmiakki]

@High Yield @1:00 that's partially wrong: Apple still used IP for it's GPUs for a while of an UK based chip desiger company (Imagination technologies) before 2017 and again starting 2020 (and probably in the meantime aswell)

[Sam_Saraguy]

Excellent overview. Will be watching the progress on this.

[doctor]

I was so hyped about Apple M chips, so bought my first Apple devices ever (Ipad and Macbook). I heard many Windows users did the same. And I admire M-chips power efficiency and silence. Cannot wait as the industry moves Windows and Linux to the ARM

[Nuiiiiiiiiii]

I'm an Apple user and i can't wait to see this little monster running Windows ARM.

I always love to see new toys and also, when company's compete they do better products and everybody wins.

P.D: Your videos are amazing, thanks for the effort.