Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan: Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, delivered a COMPUTEX Keynote speech at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center on Monday afternoon that detailed how the company’s flagship Snapdragon X Elite processor is reestablishing Windows as the leading personal computer ecosystem and bringing generative AI to consumers’ fingertips by powering a range of new Microsoft Copilot+ laptops.
Snapdragon X Elite has been purpose-built for the new generation of AI laptops and is optimized to handle their highly intensive workloads. This means that Copilot+ laptops can reap all the benefits of running AI locally, including lower latency, increased responsiveness, greater personalization and reliability, and enhanced privacy.
At 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS), Snapdragon X Elite is now the world’s fastest NPU available for laptops. That lightning-fast speed also makes it the most power efficient, too, delivering 2.3 times as much performance per watt as the MacBook Pro’s M3 chip, and 4.3 times as much as the Intel Core Ultra 7.
The synergy between Snapdragon X Elite and Microsoft’s Copilot+ certification “really establishes overall industry leadership in personal computing,” Amon said and restores Windows as the home platform where innovation and new AI capabilities are happening. As many as 22 Copilot+ laptops are already available from manufacturers including Acer, ASUS, Samsung, HP, Dell, Lenovo and Microsoft.
Generative AI is at the centre of these devices and will be the key factor changing how we interact with personal computers, eventually becoming indispensable for both personal and business applications. With this powerful technology built directly into the machine, “unlike in the past, your Windows PC will get better over time,” Amon said.
Amon invited Pavan Davuluri, Corporate Vice President of Windows and Devices at Microsoft, to the stage to discuss how their collaboration with Qualcomm is revolutionizing personal computing. “We rebuilt Windows 11 from the inside out to take full advantage of the power and efficiency of Snapdragon X processors,” Davuluri said, allowing for innovative new features such as its Recall semantic search function and AI-assisted image generation. “These are the fastest, highest performing, most intelligent PCs we’ve ever built.”
Amon also unveiled the Qualcomm AI Hub, a library of more than 100 pre-optimized AI models that enables developers to quickly create new applications drawing on the power of AI, as well as the Snapdragon Developer Kit for Windows, which will launch on June 18th and is available for pre-order now.
As for gaming, more than 1,200 titles have been tested and optimized using Snapdragon X Elite, Amon said, and Qualcomm is working with leading studios including Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, Epic Games, Remedy Entertainment, Ubisoft, EA Games, and Roblox to maximize the user experience of their games.
