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Qualcomm came to Computex to herald a new era of PCs, pioneered by the company’s forthcoming Snapdragon X Elite chips.
At the annual trade show in Taipei, Qualcomm’s keynote felt both symbolic and a sea change, since the PC industry in Taiwan has long built computers around the x86 architecture from Intel and AMD. Now Qualcomm—best known for its smartphone chips—is preparing a huge push into PCs, which could make Arm-based Windows laptops mainstream. To do so, the US company will need to recruit support from PC suppliers in Asia and encourage them to churn out Snapdragon X Elite laptop models.
Computex 2024 is the first time Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon has given a keynote at the show, and he reiterated much of what the company revealed last month during an event touting upcoming Copilot+ PCs. Still, Qualcomm hyped the Snapdragon X Elite as game-changing, with Amon claiming that PCs will be "reborn” once the first X Elite laptops arrive on June 18.
Importantly, Amon said Snapdragon X Elite chips would come “to all PC form factors,” meaning they’ll eventually expand to desktops, mini PCs, tablets, and possibly even handheld gaming PCs. “Qualcomm is now in this neighborhood to stay,” he added. “We’re not going anywhere.”
During the keynote, Qualcomm also highlighted the performance gains consumers can expect from Snapdragon X Elite chips. This includes laptops running for as long as 26 hours on a single charge while boasting better CPU and AI-related performance over the competition. In addition, Qualcomm says it’s tested and optimized 1,200 PC games for the chips.