Feed: AnandTech
Feed Link: https://www.anandtech.com
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Title: The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Architecture Deep Dive: Getting To Know
Oryon and Adreno X1

Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2024 09:00:00 EDT
Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21445/qualcomm...

The curtains are drawn and it's almost showtime for Qualcomm and its
Snapdragon X SoC team. After first detailing the SoC nearly 8 months ago at
the company's most recent Snapdragon Summit, and making numerous performance
disclosures in the intervening months, the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon
X Plus launch is nearly upon us. The chips have already shipped to Qualcomm's
laptop partners, and the first laptops are set to ship next week.

In the last 8 months Qualcomm has made a lot of interesting claims for their
high-performance Windows-on-Arm SoC - many of which will be put to the test
in the coming weeks. But beyond all the performance claims and bluster amidst
what is shaping up to be a highly competitive environment for PC CPUs,
there's an even more fundamental question about the Snapdragon X that we've
been dying to get to: how does it work?

Ahead of next week's launch, then, we're finally getting the answer to that,
as today Qualcomm is releasing their long-awaited architectural disclosure on
the Snapdragon X SoC. This includes not only their new, custom Arm v8 "Oryon"
CPU core, but also technical disclosures on their Adreno GPU, and the Hexagon
NPU that backs their heavily-promoted AI capabilities. The company has made
it clear in the past that the Snapdragon X is a serious, top-priority effort
for the company - that they're not just slapping together a Windows SoC from
their existing IP blocks and calling it a day - so there's a great deal of
novel technology within the SoC.

And while we're excited to look at it all, we'll also be the first to admit
that we're the most excited to finally get to take a deep dive on Oryon,
Qualcomm's custom-built Arm CPU cores. The first new high-performance CPU
design created from scratch in the last several years, the significance of
Oryon cannot be overstated. Besides providing the basis of a new generation
of Windows-on-Arm SoCs that Qualcomm hopes will vault them into contention in
the Windows PC marketplace, Oryon will also be the basis of Qualcomm's
traditional Snapdragon mobile handset and tablet SoCs going forward.

So a great deal of the company's hardware over the next few years is riding
on this CPU architecture - and if all goes according to plan, there will be
many more generations of Oryon to follow. One way or another, it's going to
set Qualcomm apart from its competitors in both the PC and mobile spaces, as
it means Qualcomm is moving on from Arm's reference designs, which by their
very nature are accessible Qualcomm's competition as well.

So without further ado, let's dive in to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X SoC
architecture.

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