Qualcomm has teased that an announcement is coming for its inbound Snapdragon X ARM-based chip, silicon that has been causing a great deal of excitement of late as a potential Apple M3-beater (and for other reasons besides).
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), the company offered up a short video clip showing a chip with an ‘X’ logo, so clearly, this is the Snapdragon SoC, with Qualcomm noting that there’ll be an announcement on April 24.
Stay tuned for 4/24. pic.twitter.com/8SQ6SfZPT8April 18, 2024
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Okay, so should we prepare for more stoking of hype with the Snapdragon X Elite, then? Well, we’ve already seen and heard a lot about the Elite, of course, and it’s hardly a new star on the CPU scene – so that doesn’t seem like it would require an event with an exciting, video-led teaser on a major social media platform.
So, what could this revelation coming next week be, exactly? Let’s dig into the possibilities a bit more.
Analysis: Qualcomm’s Plus one?
As mentioned, the Snapdragon X Elite is kind of old news at this point – it has been doing the marketing circuit, as it were, since October 2023, and we just got to go hands-on with the SoC to boot (and it plays Baldur’s Gate 3 a treat, as we discovered). Although maybe Qualcomm is going to unveil some new laptops from partners with the X Elite inside? (Other models not yet shown, perhaps?).
What seems much more likely than anything to do with the Elite, though, is another well-traveled rumor: the Snapdragon X Plus SoCs. Yes, the Elite isn’t going to be the only chip that Qualcomm is bringing out, and at least if the grapevine is right, there’ll also be the X Plus – with variants of both Elite and Plus CPUs therein.
As VideoCardz, which spotted the teaser video on X, points out, the expectation is that there’ll be four variants of the Snapdragon X Elite and four spins on the Snapdragon X Plus, with the former topping out at 12-cores, and the latter 10-cores.
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The Plus chips should still be pretty peppy, then, if not quite up to the muscle offered by the Elite CPUs, naturally. This will give laptop makers a wide span of silicon to choose from to drive thin-and-light laptops of the ARM-based variety, in theory – but we should stress the Plus variants remain just a rumor for now. Albeit a much-talked about rumor, so much so that we’d be surprised if nothing came of them.
With this being a sizeable announcement, given the video trailer – which clearly makes an effort to build some tension and anticipation – the revelation of Snapdragon X Plus seems like the most probable possibility for next week’s announcement.