Qualcomm is reportedly teaming up with Nvidia to rival the Apple M2 Pro
Qualcomm is working on a new chip for laptop PCs whose aim is to compete with Apple’s M2. Rumors provide the first details about the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4.
We’re still not sure about Windows laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. The Lenovo Thinkpad X13s will thrive thanks to the work of the manufacturer, but chip integration and Windows software are still lacking.
Qualcomm is not giving up and is working on a new generation of very promising chips. It mainly bought startup Nuvia, built by Apple veterans at the origins of the extraordinary architecture of the Apple M1 and M2 chips we know today.
The fruit of this takeover now has an official name: Oryon, which Qualcomm will be talking about soon. While waiting for the brand to speak, the rumors did it for him.
More powerful processor
It was the Twitter account @Za_Raczke who conveyed the new rumours. If we take his words here, because these earlier statements could later be corroborated by other journalistic sources such as Roland Quandt.
Leak: update on Apple M rival Qualcomm – 8cx Gen 4, codename Hamoa ? pic.twitter.com/1tptCk8ghf
— Cuba Wojciechowski⚡ (@Za_Raczke) January 20, 2023
According to the netizen, Qualcomm will offer the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 chip previously known as the codename Hamoa, which offers 8 high-performance cores and 4 power-efficient cores. Qualcomm will work at an operating speed of 3.4 GHz for the former and 2.5 GHz for the latter.
Internet user claims earlier, back in November, indicated that the 12 cores would use the Nuvia Phoenix architecture, which is what Qualcomm calls Oryon.
Nvidia GeForce to save Qualcomm?
The chip is said to be capable of driving up to 64GB of the latest generation LPDDR5X RAM across 8 different channels to maximize performance.
The graphics chip is the Adreno 740, the same as in the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2. What’s most interesting is that Qualcomm will provide 8 lanes of PCI Express 4.0 to manage the dedicated graphics chip.
In other words, we will see a laptop display that integrates a Snapdragon 8CX Gen 4 chip for the CPU, and an Nvidia GeForce or AMD Radeon chip for the graphics circuit. We then understand why Qualcomm doesn’t offer a better graphics chip in this new SoC. This paved the way for Qualcomm laptops that were truly designed for gaming and content creation.
This will allow machines equipped with Snapdragon 8CX Gen 4 to manage up to 3 ultra high definition displays (one 5K display and two 4K displays), as well as AV1 decoding and encoding in 4K. Missing elements of the latest Apple chips.
The company will also provide additional PCI Express 4.0 lanes for NVMe SSD storage, and PCI Express 3.0 lanes for modems and Wi-Fi. Support for the latter will shift to Wi-Fi 7, as on the Snapdragon 8 Gen.2.
And AI
After the processor and graphics chip comes a chip dedicated to AI, meaning that in Qualcomm the Tensor Hexagon processor is upgraded to offer 45 TOPS (INT 8). Microsoft is increasingly relying on AI to improve services integrated into Windows 11, which will benefit Qualcomm’s performance.
When is the official presentation?
Internet user @Za_Raczke gave no indication of the new chip’s presentation date. Given the many details presented here, we think that an official announcement should not be delayed any longer.
An event seems like the perfect place for this presentation: MWC in Barcelona at the end of February. At MWC 2022 Lenovo launched the ThinkPad X13s which is equipped with the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip.
Another event Qualcomm could target: Computex in Taipei. This is a show dedicated to IT and takes place in June.
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