Qualcomm Says It Will "Bring AI Everywhere" with Its Latest Snapdragon Chips

Qualcomm has unveiled its latest system-on-chips, the mobile-centric Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and the laptop/desktop-targeting Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme — with the latter offering a claimed 80 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of minimum-precision compute for on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) workloads.

"Snapdragon […] is going to change the world with this vision: that we're going to bring AI everywhere," Qualcomm's president and chief executive officer Christiano Amon told attendees at the tenth Snapdragon Summit this week, joining rivals including AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA in trying to position his company at the heart of the AI boom. "We are the company that is going to bring AI everywhere, working with our many partners. What's exciting to see is everything we've been talking about is starting to realize, starting to happen."

Qualcomm already gained a foothold on its rivals with a deal to put its then-latest Snapdragon chips in laptops sold under the Microsoft Copilot+ umbrella — the first to include an on-chip neural coprocessor rated over 45 tera-operations per second (TOPS) and thus powerful enough to drive Microsoft's premium Copilot on-device models. While both AMD and Intel have since launched chips of their own with similarly-performing NPUs also compatible with Copilot+, Amon is clearly looking to leap forward again with the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme.

These new chips, primarily targeting performance laptops but likely to also appear in small-form-factor desktop systems, include an NPU delivering a claimed 80 (TOPS) at INT8 precision. This comes alongside up to 18 Qualcomm Oryon CPU cores running at speeds of up 5GHz for single- and dual-core workloads — 12 5GHz single- or dual-core boost 4.4GHz multi-core-boost Oryon Prime cores and six 3.6GHz Oryon cores on the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100, 12 4.7GHz single- or dual-core boost 4GHz multi-core boost Oryon Prime and six 3.4GHz Oryon cores on the Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-88-100, and six 4.7GHz single-core 4.4GHz dual-core boost 4GHz multi-core boost Oryon Prime and six 3.4GHz Oryon cores for the lower-end Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-80-100.

All models include a Qualcomm Adreno graphics processor, an X2-90 running at up to 1.85GHz for the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, the same processor running at up to 1.7GHz for the mid-range Snapdragon X2 Elite, and a slower X2-85 running at 1.7GHz for the entry-level Snapdragon X2 Elite, and the promised 80 TOPS Hexagon neural coprocessor. All models include support for up to 128GB of LPDDR5x, with the two non-Elite parts offering 152GB/s bandwidth and the Elite hiking that to 228GB/s.

On the mobile front, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 features the same third-generation Oryon cores running at up to 4.6GHz single-core boost and its own Hexagon NPU for on-device ML and AI — though this time around the company isn't putting a TOPS figure to its performance, simply stating that it's "37% faster" than its equivalent on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. That, Qualcomm claims, is enough to run "the latest large language models (LLMs) that power on-device AI agents" without draining the device's battery.

"With Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, you are at the center of your mobile experience," claims Qualcomm's Chris Patrick of the new part. "It enables personalized AI agents to see what you see, hear what you hear and think with you in real time. "Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 pushes the boundaries of personal AI, allowing you to experience the future of mobile technology today."

While the company is announcing the parts today, though, it will take a little while longer for hardware to appear on store shelves.