The showdown between Arm and x86 just got more interesting. Qualcomm has unveiled its highly anticipated new Snapdragon X Elite SoC. Designed specifically for laptop PCs, this SoC, the first significant product from Qualcomm's Apple-inspired Nuvia subsidiary, debuts an all-new CPU core architecture known as Oryon and claims some pretty eye-popping performance.

Indeed, the chip is so fast, according to Qualcomm's claims (via Anandtech), that it begs the question of whether this is finally the chip that will truly begin the transition from PC x86 CPUs to Arm chips. Comparisons with Apple's M1 and M2 series chips are also interesting. Then there is the fact that Nvidia and AMD are gearing up to release Arm chips. We will touch on these ideas later.

Qualcomm estimates that the new Snapdragon X Elite's 12-core CPU is overall slightly faster than the Intel Core i7 13800H, a 14-core chip, in Geekbench 6 multi-threading. Qualcomm also states that the X Elite can match the performance of the 13800H and consume significantly less power by 65%.

On the GPU side, Qualcomm has stated that the chip's new Adreno GPU outperforms AMD's 780M GPU, the integrated graphics found in the Phoenix APUs found in the new generation of gaming handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally, by 80% in 3D Mark Wildlife, claims to offer 80% higher performance.

Qualcomm also claims that the Snapdragon X Elite SoC can match the performance of an AMD 780M GPU with 80% less power consumption. If true, this is truly spectacular.

Qualcomm has not disclosed a huge amount of information about the design and architecture of the new chip. However, there are some interesting details, which add to the picture and create their own questions.

The new chip contains 12 mysterious Oryon cores. They were developed by Nuvia, a start-up company of engineers who worked on Apple's Arm-based A-series and M-series chips.

Qualcomm is acquiring Nuvia in 2021, and the Snapdragon X Elite and its Oryon core are the first distinct products from that acquisition. Anyway, technically speaking, the first notable detail about the Oryon cores is that they are all the same core. In other words, they are not a mix of performance and efficiency cores like most smartphone SoCs, including Intel's latest CPUs, Apple's M1 and M2 chips, and Qualcomm's own Snapdragon products.

The entire chip is built on 4nm TSMC silicon, with peak clock speeds of 4.3GHz on two cores and 3.8GHz on all 12 cores. This is very fast compared to Apple's cores on the M1 and M2 chips, the most similar architectures based on the Arm ISA, but slower than the fastest x86 CPUs from AMD and Intel.

Notably, Qualcomm has not done a single-threaded performance comparison with existing PC processors. However, it claims that the Snapdragon X Elite is comparable to the single-threaded performance of Apple's M2 Arm-based chip, with 30% lower performance.

On the GPU front, there are even fewer details. One spec item is interesting, however: according to Arm, the new Adreno GPU will deliver 4.6TFLOPS of computing power. This is just over half of the 8.9TFLOPS that AMD claims for the 780M GPU in its Phoenix laptop and handheld chips. Yet, for some reason, Qualcomm also claims an 80% performance advantage in 3D Mark. It is curious.

As for memory support, the Snapdragon X Elite SoC supports 128-bit bus and DDR5 with a total bandwidth of 136 GB/s. This is one indicator that it is miles behind Apple's SoC. The basic Apple M2 has comparable bandwidth. However, the M2 Pro offers 200 GB/s, while the M2 Max with its 12-core CPU reaches 400 GB/s. [Furthermore, the 128-bit bus and 136 GB/sec bandwidth mean that there are certain limits to apparent graphics performance.

Then there is the Hexagon NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for accelerating AI workloads. Qualcomm claims that the Hexagon is capable of 45 TOPS (trillion operations per second). This is nearly three times the 16 TOPS of NPUs Apple claims for its M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max chips; AMD's Phoenix APU also has an NPU, but AMD claims only 10 TOPS of performance.

If Qualcomms claims are true, this new chip is very competitive with the best of Intel, AMD, and Apple. But will it be enough to impact the PC market?

Designed for laptops, this is not Qualcomm's first chip to enter the PC market. For example, all of Microsoft's Surface devices with Arm-based chips use Qualcomm's Snapdragon CPUs.

So far, however, these Qualcomm chips have had CPU cores derived from off-the-shelf Arm designs, with fairly modest performance; the Snapdragon X Elite features what is considered a completely new custom CPU design.

Perhaps the most intriguing question is whether it will be fast enough to run legacy x86 code and apps. Apple's M1 chip did a very good job, making the transition from Intel CPUs in Macs to Arm-based Apple silicon much smoother.

If the Snapdragon X Elite can successfully run older Windows x86 apps in emulation mode, it will be a game changer; it is hard to imagine Arm-based PC laptops really taking off unless they can seamlessly Unless they can run most Windows apps seamlessly, it is unlikely.

Speaking of game changers, the biggest challenge for this new chip will indeed be gaming. Or, frankly, any chip that tries to drag PCs down from the x86 architecture to Arm as well; a proper gaming PC with an Arm CPU is probably still years away.

Still, momentum seems to be building, with both Nvidia and AMD reportedly working on Arm-based chips for PCs.

On a final related note, it is interesting to note that Qualcomm does not explicitly mention "Arm" in its promotional materials for its new SoC. Qualcomm seems to want people to avoid comparing x86 to Arm and only appreciate the advantages of this chip without indicating that it is Arm-based.

In any case, the proof will be in the actual performance. Qualcomm says that devices powered by the Snapdragon X Elite will be available in mid-2024. Watch for.