Published in PC Hardware

Snapdragon 1000 might be PC chip

by on25 June 2018


Designed from the ground up 

Qualcomm is rumoured to be working on a chip designed for PCs from the ground up.

The word on the street is that while Qualcomm's Snapdragon 850 processor may be intended for PCs, but a higher-clocked version of the same processor you'd find in your phone. However WinFuture said that it had found details about a chip called the SDM1000 (possibly Snapdragon 1000).

Compared to most ARM designs it would be bigger (20mm x 15mm) and would consume a laptop-like 12W of power across the entire system-on-a-chip. It would compete directly with Intel's low-power Core processors.

A reference design found in import databases shows it would have 16GB of RAM and two 128GB storage modules. There are mentions of gigabit Ethernet and a socketed processor design, although those last two may be more for Qualcomm's development purposes than any real-world use. It's expected to use ARM's next-generation Cortex-A76 architecture, whose overall speed boost - about 35 percent, according to ARM - could be key to challenging Intel.

Qualcomm does not appear to be keeping the development secret. One of its employees has mentioned working on the chip as a Windows Multimedia Project Engineer.

However, SDM1000 could pose a serious problem for Intel if and when it does show up. Intel is already anxious about ARM-powered PCs eating into its dominance of the computing landscape. If Qualcomm starts making chips that powerful it could be that x86 competition gets a lot more stronger.

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Last modified on 25 June 2018
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