Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme

Qualcomm on Thursday unveiled two new processors for Windows laptops, the Snapdragon X2 Elite and the higher-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, at its Snapdragon Summit in Maui, presenting chips the company says will raise performance and battery-efficiency expectations for thin-and-light PCs. Qualcomm said the new system-on-chips, built on 3 nanometer processes and centered on its third-generation Oryon CPU, are aimed at ultraportable and premium Windows machines and are expected to appear in devices in the first half of 2026.

The company described the X2 Elite Extreme as its most powerful laptop processor to date, featuring up to 18 Oryon cores and an on-package Hexagon neural processing unit capable of 80 trillion operations per second, a figure Qualcomm touted as enabling simultaneous on-device AI workloads. Qualcomm also said the Extreme model can deliver up to 75 percent faster performance at equivalent power compared with competing chips at the same power envelope, and that its Adreno GPU architecture improves graphics performance per watt by as much as 2.3 times over the prior generation.

The standard X2 Elite will be offered in 18-core and 12-core configurations and,...