Snapdragon X Elite notebooks: Release hinted for June

The Snapdragon chips from manufacturer Qualcomm have become an integral part of smartphones, tablets and wearables. However, there have been plans for some time to bring them to notebooks in the form of the ARM chip Snapdragon X Elite. The time could come as early as Computex 2024 in June, as Qualcomm CEO Cristiano R. Amon has now hinted via Twitter/X at MWC 2024.

Snapdragon X Elite notebooks: Big unveiling in June

During the Snapdragon Summit last fall, US manufacturer Qualcomm teased the Snapdragon X Elite, a new ARM chip for laptops that is set to launch an attack on Apple’s M2 and M3 as early as 2024.

After roughly talking about a release in 2024 at the time, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano R. Amon dropped the bombshell at the end of MWC 2024 in Barcelona: At Computex 2024 on June 03, Amon will present the Snapdragon X ARM chips in a keynote speech – the first notebooks with Snapdragon X Elite are expected soon.

The Computex Taipei press release specifically states: “Mr. Amon will focus on how 2024 marks a turning point for the PC industry and how advanced AI-powered PCs with Snapdragon X Series are changing the future of productivity and creativity.”

That would fit: According to CHIP.de, several notebook manufacturers have revealed in confidential discussions that the first X Elite notebooks will be unveiled during Computex 2024.

Snapdragon X Elite design: Only one SKU planned

During the Mobile World Congress 2024, Qualcomm spoke about the planned stock keeping units (SKUs for short) of the X Elite, according to a report by the website Notebookcheck. According to the report, there will apparently only be one variant of the company’s own ARM chip. The aim is to avoid the chaos of Intel, for example, which uses U and H series and different core versions.

The Snapdragon X Elite is based on a CPU called Oryon, which combines a total of 12 computing cores in a 4 nm design and clocks at up to 3.8 GHz. Clock frequencies of up to 4.3 GHz should be possible in boost mode.

In benchmark tests under Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 last fall, Qualcomm promised significantly higher energy efficiency with noticeably higher performance compared to the Intel i7-1355U and i7-1360P as well as the 14-core Intel Core i7-13800H processor.

New benchmark emerged

The Geekbench 6 database has been listing a new processor called Qualcomm ZH-WXX for a few days now, which is apparently the Snapdragon X Elite.

Test results show strong scores of up to 12,562 points in the multi-core benchmark and 2,574 points in the single-core benchmark, although these are slightly lower than Qualcomm’s figures from last year.

Nevertheless, the ARM Snapdragon would be on a par with Apple’s M2. So things should be pretty exciting in June. Especially as the Snapdragon X Elite scales strongly with the given power limits.