Qualcomm, the company perhaps best known for its range of Snapdragon mobile chips, seems set to announce something huge in just a matter of months. After kitting out some of the best VR headsets for gaming, and even putting out a developer-only mini PC earlier this year, it may be ready to take on the big dogs of the desktop CPU market.
According to PC World, citing a response from Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon at the announcement show for the 8-core Snapdragon X Plus, he talked about what is next for the chip maker.
He reportedly told the room: "You're going to see us with a lot of designs on desktops, mini desktops, and eventually, you won’t be surprised of us still thinking about high-performance desktop. We are on this journey. As I said, we’re here to stay.”
Though he didn't give any more specifics about how these high-performance desktop chips will function, he said to "stay tuned for November", which is when the next investor conference goes live.
It's worth noting that, by November, Qualcomm's desktop CPU chip will be competing with the AMD Ryzen 9000 chips and Intel's Arrow Lake. It's a tough market filled with good competitors and, given we don't fully know what those next chips have in store for us, it's an even more difficult time for Qualcomm to enter that market.
This is not the first time this year Amon has hinted at desktop chips. At a Q&A at the start of Computex, he said: "You should expect to see Qualcomm in every PC form factor: From desktop to mini PCs, to tablets". Interestingly, given the distinction between desktop and mini PC, this means he was likely referring to much more than the dev build mentioned above.
The 8-core Snapdragon X Plus, which has just been announced, is reportedly "Built for AI" and will kit out Copilot+ PCs around the $700 to $900 range. The Snapdragon X Elite, which currently powers Asus, Lenovo, Microsoft, and HP laptops is the most powerful Snapdragon out there, and the best candidate for a potential gaming PC.
That being said, we don't yet know the purpose of the high-end desktop CPUs and Qualcomm could be leaning even more into the productivity AI-driven machines that the X Elite seem designed for.
As Amon says, we'll have to wait until November to find out more.
