Google Chrome: Native version of the browser for Snapdragon X Elite presented

Qualcomm’s ARM chip for notebooks and PCs is approaching with giant strides. The Snapdragon X Elite is currently dominating the news, even though the final unveiling will not take place until June 2024. We now even know that the new chip will be suitable for gaming. However, a new system stands and falls primarily with the existing software. Qualcomm and Google have therefore announced that the popular Google Chrome browser will be offered as a native version for Windows PCs and laptops with a Snapdragon chipset.

Google Chrome: Most popular browser comes to Snapdragon X Elite

Google Chrome is by far the most popular browser worldwide. According to Statista, Chrome had a market share of around 65 percent in November 2023 (followed by Microsoft Edge in second place with around 13 percent). When launching a completely new platform for PCs and notebooks, important software must of course also be offered.

Qualcomm and Google have therefore introduced a version of Google Chrome that runs natively on Snapdragon X Elite notebooks and PCs with a Windows operating system. Although there is already an executable ARM version of the popular web browser, for example for macOS and ChromeOS, it previously only ran emulated on Windows for ARM. Its use was correspondingly slow and inefficient. This will change with the native “Chrome for Windows on Snapdragon” version of the browser, which should be available immediately.

Chrome for Windows on Snapdragon in the benchmark

In benchmark tests such as Speedometer 2.1 and JetStream 2.1, Qualcomm compares the native version of the browser with the emulated version between an unspecified Snapdragon X Elite notebook and a notebook equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H.

In both tests, the native Chrome version scored significantly higher than the notebook with the x86 chipset.

As the Google browser is not known for being particularly resource-efficient anyway, higher performance is undoubtedly desirable. And the new native version undoubtedly achieves this.

Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, is certain that the new version of Google Chrome will help “cement Snapdragon X Elite’s role as the leading platform for Windows PCs”, as stated in the press release. The goals of the US chip manufacturer are therefore extremely ambitious.