Qualcomm has made a bold claim that its new Oryon CPU cores are better than rival companies’ offerings [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS
Qualcomm on Tuesday made a series of announcements that highlights the chipmaker’s pivot to generative AI. All the products it unveiled were aimed at supporting gen AI applications so mobile units can perform AI-based tasks on device. This is testament to the fact that use cases for gen AI are only set to rise exponentially.
“About a year ago, people had about 1 or 2 use cases [for gen AI]. Now, we see hundreds of use cases, and I expect, as we get to 2024, to see at least thousands of use cases,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said at the Snapdragon Summit 2023.
According to Amon, the chipmaker “is evolving from a communications company to a connected processing company.” That transition was visible in the clutch of products unveiled at the summit.
To start with, the company launched two advanced chipsets, one for PCs, and the other for Android smartphones. Both are built to perform high-end computing, including running large language models on device.
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The newly launched system-on-chip (SoC) for PCs, the Oryon, is the company’s most advanced, high-performance chipset to date. This chip will provide the compute power for the Snapdragon X Elite platform. The Arm-based processor was built by the Nuvia team that Qualcomm acquired for $1.4 billion in 2021.
Nuvia was founded by three former top Apple semiconductor executives who were part of the iPhone division. Their startup made custom CPU cores for servers before the company was bought by Qualcomm.
Qualcomm has made a bold claim that its new Oryon CPU cores are better than Apple’s M2 Max. According to the company, the Snapdragon X platform, powered by Oryon, scored 3227, compared to M2 Max’s 2841, on the Geekbench index. The platform is also slightly faster than Intel’s i9, per the same index.
“Their claims of being more powerful and having lower consumption than Apple’s and Intel’s best chips are a big deal. They will be competitive here,” said Phil Solis, Research Director for Connectivity and Smartphone Semiconductors at research firm IDC.
“Pricing and customer willingness to pay for a laptop without an Intel or AMD processor will come into play” as the company keeps developing its brand, he added.
Qualcomm’s announcement comes at a time when rival chipmakers are preparing to unveil their own cutting-edge processors. Intel, for example, will be launching its Meteor Lake, the company’s most advanced chipset yet, by the end of this year. And Apple is also expected to launch its next generation chipset in another few weeks, per reports by experts tracking the company.
“Nvidia is coming out with their own Arm-based PC processors, and they will also have to take share from Intel and AMD on Windows,” Solis noted. “Wider competition is with Apple and also Chromebooks.”
While the PC processor competition heats up with SnapdragonX in the race, Qualcomm has also doubled down on its flagship smartphone chipset offering, seamless connectivity feature, and audio capability. The company’s latest launch, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, promises over 30% performance improvement.
The chip’s expand capability can let users switch from Bluetooth to WiFi7 for extended range. This is “really convenient for when you are walking away from a device temporarily but still need to listen or talk,” Solis noted.