TOPS of the Heap: Qu…
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MAUI—At Snapdragon Summit 2025, Qualcomm’s annual technology and silicon showcase, the chip maker unveiled a new family of Arm-based processors for laptops, in three initial flavors. Qualcomm is garnishing these chips liberally with claims of laptop-CPU firsts, bests, and tops—literally TOPS, in the last case.
The new chips, the Snapdragon X2 Elite line, are built on a third generation of the “Oryon” CPU architecture first seen in the company’s Snapdragon X Elite chips that debuted at the company’s parallel Summit event in 2023. The Snapdragon X2 Elite family follows on from those chips with a new designation for the top-end chip in its stack, the X2 Elite Extreme. (In the first generation of Snapdragon X chips for laptops, the max-configured flagship X Elite chip was differentiated from other X Elites only by a series of sub-numbers.)
The X2 Elite Extreme will be an 18-core flagship chip with an 80 TOPS neural processing unit (NPU). The company is also making some strong efficiency and performance-per-watt claims around a new, complementary version of the Adreno GPU that’s been part of the Snapdragon X from its inception. The 80 TOPS NPU and the new graphics will feature in all three of the new chips announced at the Summit.
The company exhibited the X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme in a host of reference-design PCs, including large-screen laptops, ultraportables, tablets, and even a couple of innovative mini-desktop designs. More to come on early performance numbers for these processors (that’s for a later date), but the company shared a host of intriguing specs on the new X2 and unveiled the initial line of chip SKUs.
Snapdragon X2 Chip Basics: Meet the New Elites
The three Snapdragon X2 chips detailed at Snapdragon Summit will be split into Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (one chip) and “plain” Snapdragon X2 Elite chips (two chips). Qualcomm describes the Elite Extreme as suited for “complex, expert-level workloads” and the straight-up Elites for “powerful and efficient multitasking across resource-intensive workloads.” If those descriptions sound largely overlapping, you’re right; both are slated for upper-shelf portables, and Qualcomm in its initial press release notes that they are its latest “premium-tier platforms,” which implies that lower-end X2 chips may come later. (None below the Elite level was announced at the Summit, though.)
(Credit: John Burek)
The new X2 Elite Extreme (which is designated X2E-96-100 in its sole version) will be an 18-core chip that’s built on 12 higher-speed, or “Prime,” cores and six “Performance” cores (the latter confusingly so; in essence, these are what, to this point, chip makers have been loosely calling “efficiency” cores). The high-speed cores are rated to run at 4.4GHz peak, with the ability for two of the 12 at a given time to accelerate to 5GHz in bursts. (Qualcomm points out that the X2 Elite Extreme will be the first Arm-based CPU to hit 5GHz.) The efficiency-minded CPU cores, meanwhile, are rated to 3.6GHz.
As for the two lesser X2 Elite (non-Extreme) chips, one will be dubbed X2E-88-100, and the other X2E-80-100. These are actually significantly different, as will be obvious from the spec chart below. The X2E-88-100 chip is an 18-core SoC clocked a bit slower than the X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100, while the X2E-80-100 chip is a 12-core model with six Prime and six Performance cores, but with the same peak clocks on each core type as on the X2E-88-100 CPU.
Qualcomm notes that all of the X2 Elite chips are manufactured on 3nm process technology and that the CPU architecture is deemed the third generation of the Oryon architecture.
About That Adreno GPU and Hexagon NPU…
As for the graphics accelerator on the X2 SoC, the latest version of Adreno comes with a bunch of impressive-sounding claims. Qualcomm is claiming leadership in performance per watt (PPW) on the Adreno integrated graphics, and a “significant” increase on frame rates versus the first gen in Snapdragon X. It’s quantifying that as a 2.3-times increase in PPW.
(Credit: John Burek)
In addition, Qualcomm claims support for Vulkan 14, OpenCL 3.0, and DirectX 12.2 Ultimate. It also says the initial X2 Elite and Elite Extreme CPUs’ on-chip graphics should be able to power three 4K displays at 144Hz or the same number of 5K panels at 60Hz.
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The NPU, meanwhile, is rated for 80 TOPS (INT8) on the chip, which far outstrips the 50-to-55-TOPS-rated NPUs to date from AMD and Intel for mobile computers. The NPU, like earlier Qualcomm iterations, is still dubbed “Hexagon,” and Qualcomm claims compatibility, when paired with the generous on-SoC memory, with the latest large language models (LLMs) and locally run AI agent tech.
The large TOPS count can also help with multilayered AI tasks or multitasking. We’ll be interested in learning more about the logic behind the drastic TOPS expansion, i.e., how much of it is down to a TOPS arms race, so to speak, and how much developers are, in practical terms, clamoring for more NPU horsepower.
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Snapdragon X2 Elite Memory, Storage, and Manageability Aspects
By the nature of the Snapdragon X chip design, the main system memory is integrated into the SoC. With X2 Elite Extreme, that RAM will be fixed at 48GB of LPDDR5x, which Qualcomm rates for up to 9,523 megatransfers per second. In the X2 Elite chips, the memory amount will be device-dependent.
On the storage front, the number of directly addressable CPU PCIe lanes (PCIe 4.0 and 5.0) varies between the 96/88-class of CPUs versus the 80. Note that NVMe is supported across all chips. On the connectivity front, the system maker can implement up to three USB4 ports (rated for 40Gbps) to run in concert with these new CPUs, like on the original X Elite.
In a sop to IT departments as well as consumers used to such features on their smartphones, the Snapdragon X2 Elite platform will feature a new security umbrella called Snapdragon Guardian Technology, which the company says makes it easier to keep track of and protect your Snapdragon X2 Elite-based PC. Partly hardware, partly software, and partly cloud-based, Guardian works in concert with Wi-Fi and/or 5G, enabling businesses—or even regular users—to remotely locate, lock, or even wipe a supporting computer if it’s lost or stolen, no matter where it is.
Snapdragon X2 Elite Availability: Still a Ways Away, in 2026
Qualcomm notes that the first products with Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme onboard will appear sometime in the first half of 2026. We’ll learn more about these new chips as we get briefed on initial benchmarking projections for them and can work up a host of relevant in-market comparisons.
(Credit: John Burek)
Given the potentially deep-into-2026 availability windows for these SoCs, however, we could see other mobile CPUs come to market to challenge Qualcomm’s on-paper X2 offerings. Will someone else pitch an 80-TOPS-or-greater NPU before these Snapdragons actually hit the street? Only time will tell.
(Note: PCMag is attending Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit by invitation, but in keeping with our ethics policy, we have assumed the costs for travel and lodging for the conference.)
About Our Expert
John Burek
Executive Editor and PC Labs Director
Experience
I have been a technology journalist for almost 30 years and have covered just about every kind of computer gear—from the 386SX to 64-core processors—in my long tenure as an editor, a writer, and an advice columnist. For almost a quarter-century, I worked on the seminal, gigantic Computer Shopper magazine (and later, its digital counterpart), aka the phone book for PC buyers, and the nemesis of every postal delivery person. I was Computer Shopper’s editor in chief for its final nine years, after which much of its digital content was folded into PCMag.com. I also served, briefly, as the editor in chief of the well-known hard-core tech site Tom’s Hardware.
During that time, I’ve built and torn down enough desktop PCs to equip a city block’s worth of internet cafes. Under race conditions, I’ve built PCs from bare-board to bootup in under 5 minutes. I never met a screwdriver I didn’t like.
I was also a copy chief and a fact checker early in my career. (Editing and polishing technical content to make it palatable for consumer audiences is my forte.) I also worked as an editor of scholarly science books, and as an editor of “Dummies”-style computer guidebooks for Brady Books (now, BradyGames). I’m a lifetime New Yorker, a graduate of New York University’s journalism program, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
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