Qualcomm announces Snapdragon X Plus SoC, claims to deliver ‘industry-leading on-device AI capabilities’

Qualcomm has expanded its Snapdragon X Series platform portfolio with Snapdragon X Plus. The company claims that the new Snapdragon X Plus platform will deliver “exceptional performance, long battery life, and industry-leading on-device AI capabilities.”

Also read: Snapdragon X Series explained: Qualcomm’s next-gen PC chips 

Snapdragon X Plus: Specs & Features

Snapdragon X Plus features the state-of-the-art Qualcomm Oryon CPU, a custom-integrated processor that is said to deliver up to 37% faster CPU performance compared to competitors, while consuming up to 54% less power.

“This remarkable advancement in CPU performance sets a new standard in mobile computing, enabling users to accomplish more with greater efficiency,” the company said in a press release.

Also read: Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon X Elite featuring Oryon CPU cores that could give Intel, AMD and Apple CPUs a run for their money 

Snapdragon X Plus is built to handle the demands of on-device AI-driven applications. It’s equipped with the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, which can handle up to 45 TOPS,  making it the world’s fastest NPU for laptops.

For the launch of the Snapdragon X Plus, the company has introduced new AI-optimised applications and features running on the 45 TOPS NPU, including:

• Code generation in Visual Studio Code from Codegen: This will assist programmers by generating fresh code instantly with on-device generative AI.
• Music generation in Audacity using Riffusion on-device AI: To generate new music from prompts or pre-existing music.
• Live captions in OBS Studio: To provide automatic translation of 100 spoken languages into live captions in 100 languages using Whisper on-device, in real-time during livestreams.

Snapdragon X Plus: Availability

PCs powered by Snapdragon X Plus are expected to launch alongside devices powered by Snapdragon X Elite starting mid-2024.

“Snapdragon X Series platforms deliver leading experiences and are positioned to revolutionise the PC industry. Snapdragon X Plus will power AI-Supercharged PCs that enable even more users to excel as radical new AI experiences emerge in this period of rapid development and deployment,” said Kedar Kondap, senior vice president and general manager of compute and gaming, Qualcomm Technologies.