Qualcomm is taking things one step at a time. During its first keynote, the chipmaker only teased the new mobile chipsets – the Snapdragon 865 and 765. It doled out details for the two chipsets during the second-day keynote, and well, the third-day keynote address sees Qualcomm talk about Windows on Snapdragon. The chipmaker today announced two new compute platforms — Snapdragon 7c and Snapdragon 8c that now join the existing Snapdragon 8cx compute platform for Always-on, Always-connected PCs.
With the Snapdragon 7c and 8c compute platforms, the chipmaker is targetting the entry-level and mid-range market. OEMs can leverage these mobile chipsets to build lighter and long-lasting laptops, so let’s take a quick look at the specifications:
Snapdragon 7c
First up, we have the new Snapdragon 7c compute platform. It’s an octa-core chipset that includes the new Kryo 468 CPU cores and Adreno 618 GPU, which can be found inside the Snapdragon 730 as well. Qualcomm boasts that Snapdragon 7c will boost performance by 25% and offer up to twice the battery life when compared to rival platforms.
Qualcomm has further revealed that it supports up to 10GB LPDDR4 RAM, clocked at 2133MHz. The AI Engine onboard offers 5 TOPS of performance, which is similar to what you can expect from the new Snapdragon 765 chipset. There’s the Snapdragon X15 LTE modem in tow as well, offering 800Mbps download and 150Mbps upload speeds.
Snapdragon 7c compute platform that will enable OEMs to soon bring always-on, always-connected PCs at even affordable prices to the market.
Snapdragon 8c
As the name reveals, the Snapdragon 8c is a slightly less powerful version of Snapdragon 8cx from last year. Based on the 7nm architecture, same as Qualcomm’s flagship mobile chipsets, this chipset offers faster CPU cores, a 30% performance boost over Snapdragon 850. It includes the Kryo 490 CPU and Adreno 675 GPU.
It comes integrated with the Snapdragon X24 LTE modem (found on the Snapdragon 855) to now deliver up to 2Gbps download and 316Mbps upload speeds. Snapdragon 8c can also be paired with the Snapdragon X55 5G modem, says Qualcomm. This means it may soon be possible for you to carry around a 5G-enabled Windows 10 laptop.
There’s an AI Engine onboard as well to enable connected PCs to handle AI and machine learning tasks. It delivers 6 TOPS of AI performance, which is lesser than Qualcomm’s mobile chipsets, but it’s still pretty good.
In addition, the American chipmaker has upgraded its existing Snapdragon 8cx compute platform to provide “optimized system performance and connected security software” to enterprise users. There’s no word on whether it brings any hardware changes but is now called the Snapdragon 8cx Enterprise compute platform.
Qualcomm has shared that Snapdragon 7c and Snapdragon 8c-powered connected PCs should make their way to the market in the second half of 2020. The chipmaker is now looking to butt heads with Intel’s mobile chipset by bundling features, such as powerful CPUs, AI capabilities, wireless connectivity, and the promise of ‘all-day battery life’ in a single package. So, would you be interested in picking up Windows laptops powered by Snapdragon processors? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
