Jun 15, 2024 22:45:00

What's new about the Qualcomm Snapdragon X?

On June 13, 2024, just before the market launch of the first laptops equipped with Qualcomm's next-generation AI PC SoC 'Snapdragon X,' Qualcomm released the architecture of Snapdragon X. Based on this document, several media outlets have reported how Snapdragon X differs from the previous Snapdragon series.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Architecture Deep Dive: Getting To Know Oryon and Adreno X1

https://www.anandtech.com/show/21445/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-architecture-deep-dive

Qualcomm Snapdragon X: Oryon CPU and Adreno GPU Architectures Explored | HotHardware
https://hothardware.com/reviews/snapdragon-x-oryon-cpu-and-adreno-gpu-architecture

◆Snapdragon X Family
The Snapdragon X SoC is equipped with the CPU 'Oryon', the GPU 'Adreno', and the NPU 'Hexagon' which is essential for AI performance, and is divided into two models based on the number of Oryon cores: the 10-core 'Snapdragon X Plus' and the 12-core 'Snapdragon X Elite'. The Snapdragon X Elite is further divided into three models based on the core frequency.

Many manufacturers have already announced their adoption of the Snapdragon X, and IT news site AnandTech states, 'Given the OEM adoption, there is no doubt that the Snapdragon X will be Qualcomm's most successful ARM-based Windows SoC to date.'

◆Oryon
Oryon is based on Phoenix, a server CPU core developed by NUVIA, a startup

acquired by Qualcomm in 2021, and inherits its scalable, power-efficient design.

Because it is designed to achieve both energy efficiency and performance, there is no concept of 'high-efficiency cores' or 'performance cores' as found in previous Snapdragon series and competitors' SoCs.

It features three CPU clusters with four cores, each with 12MB of L2 cache and a dedicated bus interface unit (BIU). The four cores share a huge L2 cache, similar to how Intel shares an L2 cache with a highly efficient core cluster.

Thanks to this efficiency, Qualcomm claims that 'the Snapdragon X Elite will be able to beat all current competitors in GeekBench 6.2 single-threaded performance,' and it is expected that the power efficiency will actually be quite good.

However, while the accuracy is unclear, there is also

information that 'some Snapdragon X Elite machines scored lower than the iPhone 12 mini in the GeekBench benchmark,' and AnandTech says, 'Please do not take this slide with too much confidence.'

Adreno
In contrast to Oryon, Adreno is not a new architecture.

In terms of hardware, Adreno has six shader processors with 256 Arithmetic Logical Units (ALUs) each running at up to 1.5GHz, for a total of 1,536, giving it a peak throughput of up to 4.6 TFLOPS and the ability to process 72 gigapixels per second.

While the data is a bit more modest than Oryon, the Snapdragon X Elite's Adreno is said to match or even outperform Intel's Core Ultra 7 155H in some games.

IT news site HotHardware said, 'Many of the early indicators for the Snapdragon X series are very positive, raising the possibility that Qualcomm will seriously disrupt the PC market within the next few months to years. Furthermore, it will be very interesting to see how the situation changes as the next-generation architectures from Intel and AMD that compete with Snapdragon X are released and new players enter the ARM version of Windows.'