If in 2023, there are still doubts that AI PCs are a gimmick made by manufacturers to promote sales, then in 2024, the combination of AI and PCs has become the general trend. Whether it is chip manufacturers such as Intel and AMD, system manufacturers such as Microsoft and Apple, or OEMs such as Lenovo, Dell, HP, and Asus, they have all launched related AI services, and regard AI PCs as the next explosion point of industry growth.
As one of the world's largest chip manufacturers, Qualcomm is also making frequent moves in the field of AI PCs. However, compared with Intel and AMD, Qualcomm's AI PC line is more determined and clear, following the release of the Snapdragon X Elite chip last year, this year's new Snapdragon X Plus for the AI PC market was launched again, and the two chips have won the favor of many OEMs with their powerful computing power NPU, becoming one of their preferred chips for AI PC. In addition, Microsoft has also designated the Snapdragon X series chips as the exclusive chip platform for Windows 11 AI PC, the biggest upgrade in Windows history, and has carried the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus in Microsoft's latest Surface Laptop and Surface Pro.
So, what exactly is the "Windows 11 AI PC" defined by Microsoft and Qualcomm? What are the definitions and criteria at this stage? To put it simply, the "Windows 11 AI PC" must meet the following three conditions: 1. The computing power of the NPU unit of the processor must exceed 40TOPS; 2. It must support Microsoft's Copilot; 3. There are Copilot shortcuts on the keyboard.
These three conditions are very simple and easy to understand, but in fact, the threshold is quite high, especially in terms of NPU requirements, most of the products currently sold on the market do not have integrated NPU units, and in this regard, the Snapdragon X series has significant advantages, and both chips can provide 45 TOPS computing power. Now, not only Microsoft favors Qualcomm's powerful NPU capabilities, but many OEMs have also launched new Windows 11 AI PCs equipped with Snapdragon X Elite to usher in the new era of Windows systems. And what is the difference between a PC with a Qualcomm chip and a traditional laptop?
Judging from the test data released by various media, we have made several conclusions:
First, higher energy efficiency. According to the data given by the Lenovo YOGA Air 14s test used in the machine, the single and multi-core score in CineBench 2024 after turning on the beast mode is almost equivalent to the score of Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, and the premise of the latter to achieve such a performance release is that the power reaches 70W, while the Snapdragon X Elite can control the power at about 28W, and the power consumption difference is more than 60%.
It is worth mentioning that the specific SKU used by Lenovo YOGA Air 14s Snapdragon AI Yuanqi is Snapdragon X1E-78-100, and its CPU has a maximum frequency of 3.4GHz (the standard frequency of Snapdragon X Elite is 3.8GHz), and it does not support overclocking (the standard version of Snapdragon X Elite supports dual-core overclocking to 4.3GHz), and the GPU computing power is 3.8TFLOPS (the standard version of Snapdragon X Elite is 4.6TFLOPS), which means that the Snapdragon X is full of blood Elite notebooks are likely to have better performance and energy efficiency.
Second, longer battery life. According to the data released by Xiaobai Evaluation,It uses YOGA Air 14s Snapdragon AI Yuanqi (engineering machine),In the environment of room temperature 25 degrees,Resolution、Refresh rate is adjusted to the highest,Respectively1Hour of text input、Video conference、After web browsing,Play 4K video online,Until shutdown,Of which1 hour of document office only consumes 7% of power,1 hour of video conferencing consumes 20% of power,1 hour of web browsing consumes 10%,3 hours of power remaining63%.
Subsequently, he continued to play the 4K video online for 5 hours and 22 minutes before turning it off. It lasted a total of 8 hours and 22 minutes. And the test results given by the rice evaluation are even more amazing,He adjusted the notebook to60Hz+Best energy efficiency mode,Turn on full Wi-Fi、200nit brightness,Continuous playback of station B 1080P 60 frames of video (barrage on),The machine can play continuously for 11 hours and 16 minutes。
Compared with the X86 platform in the past, this achievement can be said to have improved the battery life pain points of Windows notebooks.
Third, the performance release does not rely on the "power supply". According to the data given by Xiaobai's evaluation, the Lenovo YOGA Air 14s equipped with Snapdragon X Elite ran to 107 points for 3.4GHz single-thread and 1014 points for multi-thread in the CineBench 2024 CPU rendering test, and the second half of the multi-core frequency stabilized at 2.98-3.2GHz floating. This result is actually similar to the YOGA equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 9 version, and the multi-threading is also on par with the 12-core Apple M3 Pro. It's worth noting that the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite is almost the same when powered by the battery as it is when plugged in.
In the test of the machine station, they also mentioned that in the battery state, with the Office suite test, compared with plugging, the performance loss when unplugged is quite small. The previous generation of the YOGA Air 14s, which used the 7840S, has a considerable performance loss, and the response will be slower when it is off power.
In fact, the notebook of the Qualcomm platform has maintained excellent unplugging performance from the first generation, and it still maintains this feature on the Snapdragon X series, which also makes it more stable and excellent than the traditional x86 platform products.
Fourth, device-side AI runs more efficiently. According to the test results of Lenovo's AI Yuanqi version of the notebook used in the machine, they used the built-in Lenovo Xiaotian of the machine, and conducted a comparative test, and the final performance result was that the native ARM version of Lenovo Xiaotian is better than that of platforms such as Core Ultra in local real-time dialogue communication, and LLM dialogue will be faster.
Of course, many users have questioned that compared with the X86 platform, the new architecture and platform often have some problems that are incompatible with commonly used software, which is one of the reasons why the X86 platform can have a huge market share in the PC market. However, for now, the problem of basic software compatibility does not exist.
According to the current test situation announced by the media, Office three-piece suit, Jianying, Kugou, Station B, NetEase Cloud, QQ, WeChat, various browsers, iQiyi, Tencent Meeting, etc., the software commonly used in daily work and entertainment can run smoothly. Plus, even native DaVinci Resolve 19 runs out of the box. In response to the problem of software compatibility, Qualcomm has previously said that it will continue to cooperate with ISVs in the future to launch native ARM versions for more professional software, and continue to enrich the Windows on ARM software ecosystem, not only to meet the light use of ordinary users, but also to meet the needs of professional users. Microsoft is also vigorously promoting the construction of the Windows on Arm software ecosystem.
Written at the end: From the current market environment, we have no reason to doubt that AI will bring a new round of changes to the notebook industry, and at the key node of AI-driven industrial change, Qualcomm is accelerating the popularization of AI PCs. Of course, "Rome" was not built in a day, and Qualcomm, as a latecomer, also needs to continue to make unremitting technological innovations. But judging from the current performance of Windows 11 AI PC, it seems to have become a "pioneer" leading the iterative upgrade of PC.