Regarding this announcementSnapdragon X2 Elite series PC-level processorIn a subsequent interview, Mandar Deshpande, senior director of product management at Qualcomm, pointed out that the higher-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme adopts a modular design that installs memory particles together. The main purpose is to make this processor have higher performance and thus highlight the Extreme specification product positioning.
The reason why the reference design uses 48GB memory and a module packaging design
Mandar Deshpande explained that the 48GB pre-installed memory capacity was the result of numerous considerations, including improving memory transfer efficiency and ensuring sufficient memory capacity for the processor to execute large natural language models. However, the memory configuration remains flexible, depending on the actual product design needs of OEMs and ODMs.
As for why the Extreme design doesn't incorporate memory co-packaging, Qualcomm's current explanation indicates this was based on a balance between practical benefits and costs, while also allowing for flexibility in design by OEMs and ODMs. Otherwise, the company could have integrated the memory and processor die into a single package, as Apple does with its Sillicon processors or Intel does with its Lunar Lake laptop processors. This would have resulted in higher memory data access efficiency and improved power savings, but the flexibility in product design costs would have been relatively limited.
Regarding the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme's ability to address memory capacities above 128GB, Mandar Deshpande stated that there was no specific communication regarding the design's upper capacity limit, primarily to allow OEMs and ODMs greater flexibility when designing their applications. (Also, considering cost, it's unlikely that the capacity will exceed 128GB significantly.)
Stacking execution performance with larger cores
Regarding the newly launched Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, Mandar Deshpande stated that it leverages Qualcomm's third-generation Oryon CPU, designed using its own proprietary architecture, to drive higher performance. It also features 12 Prime cores and 6 performance cores, creating an 18-core configuration. With one or two cores enabled simultaneously, the maximum operating frequency can reach 5.0GHz, enabling it to meet a wide range of computing needs.
In addition, although the Snapdragon X2 Elite series has some subtle design differences from the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 designed for mobile devices, both are designed with the Oryon architecture and therefore boast of being able to share the same computing experience across different application devices.
As for the Hexagon NPU design, which shares the same generational architecture as the Snapdragon X2 Elite series and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, external communications emphasized only that both could execute the same AI model framework. However, only the Snapdragon X2 Elite series emphasized its AI computing power of up to 80 TOPS, while the actual computing power performance of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 was not disclosed. Mandar Deshpande explained that this was mainly due to the previous collaboration with Microsoft on the "Copilot+ PC" product design, which required 40 TOPS to meet Microsoft's promotional specifications. Therefore, specific communication was made on the specific NPU computing power performance. This time, the Snapdragon X2 Elite series also used the 80 TOPS data to illustrate the product upgrade improvement.
