Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, the company's latest foray into the PC chip market, has been making waves with its efficiency claims. However, recent revelations about its architecture and performance at higher power levels paint a more nuanced picture of its capabilities.
Architectural Insights
The Snapdragon X Elite's core architecture has been unveiled, revealing some interesting comparisons with Apple's M4 chip:
- Core area of 169.6 square millimeters, nearly identical to the Apple M4
- Based on TSMC's 4nm process, compared to Apple M4's 3nm process
- Features 12 Oryon architecture CPU cores (codenamed Phoenix)
- Each core has 192KB of L1 instruction cache and 96KB of L1 data cache
- 36MB of total L2 cache shared among core groups
Notably, while the CPU cluster is larger, the Adreno X1 GPU is surprisingly compact at just 24.3mm2, about 25% smaller than Apple's M4 GPU.
Performance at Higher Power Levels
Software developer Jeff Geerling tested the Snapdragon X Elite in a dev kit form factor, pushing it beyond its typical 23-watt TDP to around 80-100 watts. The results were eye-opening:
- Only 10% faster in Geekbench 6 compared to a standard laptop implementation
- 28% faster in Cinebench 2024's multi-threaded test
- Performance comparable to Apple's M3 Pro, but at a bit more power
These findings suggest that while the Snapdragon X Elite excels in efficiency at its designed power envelope, it doesn't scale well to desktop-level performance when given more power headroom.
Implications for Future Products
The Snapdragon X Elite's performance characteristics indicate that:
- It's optimized for laptop use cases, prioritizing efficiency over raw performance scaling
- Qualcomm may need a different architecture for high-performance desktop chips
- The upcoming Snapdragon X2 or Project Glymur might address the desktop market more directly
While the Snapdragon X Elite showcases impressive efficiency for mobile computing, it's clear that Qualcomm still has work to do if it wants to compete in the high-performance desktop space currently dominated by AMD and Intel.