Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon X PC Processor: Oryon 3 Revealed, Skips Generation 2!

During its recent investor day presentation, Qualcomm unveiled plans for the third generation of its Oryon CPU cores. As reported by the German tech news site ComputerBase.de (translated), Qualcomm will bypass the PC market with its second-generation Oryon chips, which will be exclusive to its Snapdragon 8 Elite series. Instead, the upcoming versions of these chips, powered by Oryon 3, are scheduled for release around Computex 2025. This timeline aligns with a leaked roadmap from Dell that detailed Qualcomm’s future plans for its Arm-based processors.

Performance tests of the second-gen Oryon chips, conducted on a Qualcomm reference device running Android 15, showed a 30% increase in processing power and a 57% improvement in efficiency over their predecessors. Details about the chips featuring the third-gen Oryon cores remain under wraps, with more information expected to be released by Qualcomm in the future.

Looking ahead to early 2025, Qualcomm is also set to offer more cost-effective Snapdragon X-based laptops. Initially projected to be under $1,000, these laptops are now expected to start at $700. At the 2024 Investor Day, Qualcomm announced a new starting price point of $600 for these devices, making them even more accessible to a broader audience.

This strategic pricing adjustment is part of Qualcomm’s broader push into the PC market, with a target of achieving $4 billion in PC sales by 2029. Since 2021, the company has leveraged its dominance in the smartphone sector to expand into new markets, including PCs and automotive technologies.

In alignment with these goals, Qualcomm anticipates its automotive chip sales will reach $8 billion, with contracts already promising $6.4 billion of that total. The company also projects $4 billion in revenue from industrial chips and expects virtual reality technology to contribute at least another $2 billion. Additionally, sales of tablets and wireless headphones are predicted to generate $4 billion.

Altogether, these revenue streams are expected to contribute an extra $22 billion annually by 2029. While these figures may seem ambitious, especially compared to Intel’s struggles, which included a $1.6 billion loss in its data center and foundry business yet still managed to secure $29 billion in PC chip sales in 2023, they reflect Qualcomm’s optimistic outlook within the semiconductor industry. Despite some skepticism from industry experts about reaching these ambitious targets, such goals underscore Qualcomm’s commitment to advancing the forefront of personal computing technology.