Qualcomm is working on a new chip for laptop PCs that would aim to compete with the Apple M2. Rumors provide the first details about the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4.
A Windows laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip hasn’t convinced us yet. The Lenovo Thinkpad X13s would come a long way thanks to the manufacturer’s work, but the chip and Windows software integration were still missing.
Qualcomm does not give up and is working on new generations of promising chips. Notably, it bought startup Nuvia, founded by Apple veterans at the origin of the superb architecture of the Apple M1 and M2 chips we know today.
The fruits of that acquisition now have an official name: Oryon, which Qualcomm is expected to talk about soon. As she waits for the brand to speak, rumors do for her.
A more powerful processor
It is the @Za_Raczke Twitter account that is delivering these new rumours. If we pass on his words here, it is because these earlier claims could later be corroborated by other journalistic sources such as Roland Quandt.
Leak: Update on Qualcomm’s rival Apple M – 8cx Gen 4, codenamed Hamoa 🧵 pic.twitter.com/1tptCk8ghf
— Kuba Wojciechowski⚡ (@Za_Raczke) January 20, 2023
According to the netizen, Qualcomm will offer a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 chip, previously known by the codename Hamoa, offering 8 high-performance cores and 4 low-power cores. Qualcomm would operate at 3.4GHz for the former and 2.5GHz for the latter.
A previous claim by netizens in November suggested that the 12 cores would use the Nuvia Phoenix architecture, i.e. what Qualcomm called Oryon.
Nvidia GeForce to save Qualcomm?
The chip is said to be able to drive up to 64GB of the latest generation LPDDR5X RAM through 8 different channels to maximize performance.
The graphics chip would be an Adreno 740, the same as in the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2. The most interesting thing comes after that: Qualcomm would have provided 8 lanes of PCI Express 4.0 to manage a dedicated graphics chip.
In other words, we would see the appearance of laptops that integrate both a Snapdragon 8CX Gen 4 chip for the CPU and an Nvidia GeForce or AMD Radeon chip for the graphics circuitry. Then we understand why Qualcomm wouldn’t offer an improved graphics chip on this new SoC. This paves the way for Qualcomm laptops that are truly built for gaming and content creation.
This would allow machines equipped with a Snapdragon 8CX Gen 4 to manage up to 3 very high resolution screens (one 5K screen and two 4K screens) as well as AV1 decoding and encoding in 4K. An element missing from the latest Apple chips.
The company would also have provided additional PCI Express 4.0 lines for NVMe SSD storage and PCI Express 3.0 lines for the modem and Wi-Fi, with support for the latter on Wi-Fi as with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Fi 7 would be moved.
And AI
After the processor and the graphics chip comes the chip dedicated to the AI, that is to say at Qualcomm a hexagon tensor processor improved to offer 45 TOPS (INT 8). Microsoft is increasingly using AI to improve the services built into Windows 11, which should benefit Qualcomm’s performance.
When is an official presentation?
Internet user @Za_Raczke does not give any information about the presentation date of this new chip. Given the number of details provided here, we can think that the official announcement shouldn’t be delayed any longer.
Then one event seems to be the perfect place for this presentation: the MWC in Barcelona at the end of February. At MWC 2022, Lenovo unveiled its ThinkPad X13s, which features a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip.
Another event Qualcomm could target: Computex in Taipei. This is a fair dedicated to IT and takes place in June.
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