Tag Archives: qualcomm

Last week, Qualcomm officially announced its new 12-core processor for PCs, the Snapdragon X Elite, planned to become available in 2024. Now just one week later, Qualcomm has released the first benchmarks, comparing the chip to competing Intel and AMD laptop processors. 

Since 2016, Qualcomm has worked with Microsoft, supplying laptop processors capable of running Windows. Today at the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X Elite, a powerful new 12-core processor for PCs.

Microsoft has been working on Windows for Arm for years at this point but for the most part, the PC industry still relies on x86 processors. Apple began to change this with the launch of Apple Silicon, its own specialised processors for Macs using Arm technology. Now, it looks like Nvidia and AMD might be preparing Arm processors of their own for Windows PCs.

Apple has been trying to break up with Qualcomm for years. The two companies entered a massive legal battle after Apple tried to switch to Intel for its future supply of modems for iPhones. Apple eventually acquired Intel's modem business and has been hard at work developing its own in-house …

This week, Qualcomm unveiled its latest innovation in audio for the Qualcomm S3 Gen 2 sound platform. The new solution is optimised for gaming, combining Snapdragon Sound and LE audio to deliver ultra-low latency and lag-free wireless audio with voice back-channel for in-game chat. The Qualcomm S3 Gen 2 Sound …

Back in 2019, Apple acquired Intel's smartphone modem business for roughly $1 billion, giving Apple everything it needs to develop its own WiFi chips for future devices. We've yet to see Apple make the jump to its own WiFi modems in the iPhone and it looks like the company will …

Ahead of Computex next week, Qualcomm is unveiling its next generation Snapdragon processors. The next wave of high-tier Android smartphones will be powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, with the former focused on pushing the boundaries of mobile performance, and the latter focused …

The review embargo for Galaxy S22 phones hasn't lifted yet, but benchmark scores are beginning to make their way online. In the US, the S22 will come equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Gen1, while other countries will get a version with Samsung's own Exynos 2200 SoC under the hood. Unfortunately, …

The Samsung Exynos 2200 is coming to smartphones soon, complete with AMD RDNA2 graphics. Unfortunately, preliminary tests show that the chip might not be as impressive as hoped, with just a 5% bump to CPU performance and a 17% bump to GPU performance compared to the Exynos 2100.  Samsung announced …

Recently, Samsung unveiled its new Exynos 2200 chip with embedded RDNA 2 graphics thanks to a partnership with AMD. The company did not give us performance comparisons at the time, but the first benchmarks are now appearing, giving us a look at how it stands up to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 …

Qualcomm is developing a new compute platform for the next generation of handheld gaming devices. The Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 has been announced this week and is already available as a developer kit, designed in partnership with Razer.  Whether you want to play an Android game or stream a PC …

As mobile chipsets get more and more powerful, and bigger – more expansive – games come to mobile phones, there has started to become a need for a gaming handheld to represent the Android community. In response, Razer is collaborating with Qualcomm to create just that. Videocardz.com managed to get …

Qualcomm has recently stated it would change the Snapdragon branding and naming scheme, starting with its new flagship SoC. That time has now come, with Qualcomm announcing the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, based on the 4nm process node and using the ARMv9 instruction set.  Like many of its predecessors, …

We've seen multiple laptops and 2-in-1 PCs with ARM-based processors running Windows, but they've all had one thing in common – Qualcomm processors. This week, we finally found out why this has been the case. As it turns out, Microsoft and Qualcomm hashed out an exclusivity deal for Windows on …

Since last year, the tech industry has been dealing with a major chip shortage, leading to increased prices and lower supply in most major product categories. Due to demand for supply lines, TSMC is reportedly going to be raising its prices by as much as 20 percent.  According to The …

A while back, Intel announced plans to get into the foundry business, creating chips for other companies to rival the foundry businesses of TSMC and Samsung, amongst others. Now, we know who the first two Intel Foundry customers will be – Qualcomm and Amazon.  Last night, following Intel's new process …

Qualcomm has partnered up with Asus to design Qualcomm's first smartphone. Initially, it will only be available for Snapdragon Insiders, but a wider release is scheduled for August. Named “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders”, Qualcomm's first smartphone features 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, 512GB ROM, and an 8-core Snapdragon 888 5G SoC …

Qualcomm's new president, Cristiano Amon, has revealed the chip maker’s plans to release a laptop CPU in 2022 in order to compete with Apple’s new chips, such as the M1 processor. This new laptop chip will take advantage of Nuvia's core architecture, which Qualcomm acquired a while back.  In an …

Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 888 chip only launched six months ago and has already been powering some of this year's best smartphones. Now, the Snapdragon 888 Plus has arrived, squeezing even more performance out of the CPU and upgrading the chip's AI Engine.  At MWC 2021, Qualcomm will launch the Snapdragon …

When Nvidia announced its deal to acquire Arm, several competing companies that rely on Arm spoke out against the move, including the likes of Qualcomm, sparking investigations into whether the deal should be allowed to go through. Nvidia is still confident that the deal will complete in 2022, but if …

Back in 2016, Microsoft began working with Qualcomm to get Windows 10 working on ARM chipsets. This resulted in a number of Qualcomm Snapdragon powered laptops, but there is still more work to be done to drum up developer support. To tackle this, Microsoft and Qualcomm are teaming up again …

Apple's first attempt to get out of its partnership with Qualcomm did not go to plan, with the company eventually agreeing to continue to use Qualcomm's chips for iOS devices. However, Apple did buy Intel's modem business to kickstart development of its own chips in-house, and now, it looks like …

There is good news and bad news from TSMC this week. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has seen a rise in revenue and profits in Q1, but unfortunately, we are no closer to the current chip shortage being over. TSMC revealed this week that it saw a 19.4 percent rise …

Back in 2017, Apple attempted to break away from Qualcomm, filing a $1 billion lawsuit and accusing the company of anti-competitive practices with its licensing agreements. Following Apple's lead, the FTC also filed a case against Qualcomm, alleging anti-competitive behaviour. Apple dropped its side of the legal battle in 2019 …

Last year, Nvidia announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire ARM from SoftBank in a $40 billion deal. Of course, these big acquisitions have to go through regulatory checks and gain approval before things can move forward. This process gives rival companies an opportunity to voice concerns about …

While Qualcomm has already announced the next-gen Snapdragon 888, there is another chip coming that we may see more commonly used in Android smartphones this year. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 launches this month, bringing some improvements over last year's Snapdragon 865, which was widely used in flagship Android devices.  The …

Today, Qualcomm announced its next flagship Snapdragon SoC – the Snapdragon 888. This new SoC will take over from the Snapdragon 865 in 2021's major Android flagship smartphone launches.  As pointed out by 9to5Google, the Snapdragon 888 will first appear in the Xiaomi Mi 11 series. It is also expected …

While Oppo has been working on experimental 125W smartphone charging technology, Qualcomm has been working to perfect its new 100W charging platform. Now, Quick Charge 5 is ready for the masses, delivering 70 percent more efficiency compared to the previous Quick Charge 4.  Quick Charge 5 is designed to charge …

Qualcomm has announced a follow up to its Snapdragon 865, the Snapdragon 865 Plus 5G, featuring a boost to both CPU and GPU performance.  The Snapdragon 865 Plus 5G from Qualcomm features a CPU that runs up to 3.1 GHz – a 10% increase from the original chip. The upgraded SoC also comes …

Qualcomm has announced the next iteration of its smartwatch platform, the Snapdragon Wear 4100. The Snapdragon Wear 4100 is said to bring 85% better performance than the previous generation, alongside increased battery life. This new SoC from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon Wear 4100, utilises 12nm low-power process technology and is “designed …