At Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit 2025 in Maui, the chipmaker unveiled its next big play for the Windows PC market.
The Snapdragon X2 Elite and more powerful Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme are a pair of chips built for efficiency and high performance to rival Intel and AMD's leading laptop silicon.
Qualcomm announced its first Snapdragon X Elite system-on-a-chip two years ago, which featured the debut of the in-house Oryon CPU that enabled high enough performance in PC laptops to compete in power efficiency with industry-leading silicon like Apple's M-series. The new Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme, both on 3-nanometer processes, follow up as the next generation of Qualcomm's PC-powering chips that raise the performance ceiling and promise multiday battery life for laptops they end up in.
It's probable that most of the processor's year-over-year performance gains can be attributed to the move to 3nm and the incremental increases in processing speeds.
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The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is the higher-end model. Qualcomm says its 18-core third-generation Oryon CPU has up to 75% faster performance than rival chips at iso-power (shorthand for performance while drawing the same amount of power).
Its graphics processing power may deliver up to 2.3x the performance per watt and power efficiency over the Snapdragon X Elite, which means longer gaming sessions on laptops before needing to recharge. The chip's neural processing unit is capable of up to 80 trillion operations per second (TOPS, a metric used to denote generative AI performance).
At Snapdragon Summit 2025, Qualcomm showed several reference devices in conventional and novel form factors, including a frisbee-shaped PC and a drink coaster-sized one that can slot into a display. David Lumb/CNET
At the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm displayed concept devices showing potential form factors for laptops and slim desktop PCs using its new chips. In addition to the more conventional laptop designs, these included two more novel approaches: a thin puck-shaped PC the size of a small dinner plate and a modular square PC slightly larger than a drink coaster that can slot into a larger display.
Although manufacturers may not use these designs, the first PCs using Qualcomm's new chips are expected to be released in the first half of 2026.
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