Signs point to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors showing up in actual, real-world, human-purchasable computers in the next couple of months a

Is the Arm version of Windows ready for its close-up?

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2024-04-25 11:00:06

Signs point to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors showing up in actual, real-world, human-purchasable computers in the next couple of months after years of speculation and another year or so of hype.

For those who haven’t been following along, this will allegedly be Qualcomm’s first Arm processor for Windows PCs that does for PCs what Apple’s M-series chips did for Macs, promising both better battery life and better performance than equivalent Intel chips. This would be a departure from past Snapdragon chips for PCs, which have performed worse than (or, at best, similarly to) existing Intel options, barely improved battery life, and come with a bunch of software incompatibility problems to boot.

Early benchmarks that have trickled out look promising for the Snapdragon X. And there are other reasons to be optimistic—the Snapdragon X Elite’s design team is headed up by some of the same people who made Apple Silicon so successful in the first place.

Rumors indicate that Microsoft's flagship Surface tablet this year will switch to using Qualcomm's Arm chips exclusively rather than selling Arm and Intel versions alongside each other (an Intel Surface Pro 10 exists, but it's only sold to businesses). Microsoft has tried to make Arm Windows happen a bunch of times. But this time feels different.