The sun has set on another Snapdragon Summit, the ninth edition of Qualcomm’s annual technology summit where the firm typically announces its most-important product updates for the year ahead. As is tradition, the show played host to announcements of the latest platforms from Qualcomm — crucially, its flagship smartphone chipset — and shone a light on the company’s automotive efforts, which are a key strategic focus.
However, I’d argue that the most important message was the diffusion of the firm’s Oryon CPU across its platforms, as Qualcomm looks to flex its computing muscles throughout more of its investments. This theme was omnipresent at the show, in fact, it almost felt like CPU was mentioned as often as AI, which few may have expected before the event.
Looking at the smartphone news first, Qualcomm once again delivered a chipset aimed at the premium Android smartphone market in the shape of the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The new naming convention here borrows from the Elite branding — which appears to have struck a strong chord in the PC market, given the early excitement for the Snapdragon X Elite line of designs — but reflects a strategic approach too.
The Oryon CPU is a central element and differentiator in the Snapdragon X Elite for PCs, and this piece of technology now makes the leap over to the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset, with a custom second-generation of the CPU designed especially for mobile devices. It’s an important pillar of the overall experience and means that Qualcomm now has a strong story across the Oryon CPU, Adreno GPU and Hexagon neural processing unit, which unite to build a platform for next-generation smartphone experiences with AI at the forefront.
Qualcomm demonstrated applications enabled by these advancements, such as a more-intelligent, multimodal and contextually aware AI agent that can run on-device, and camera upgrades including object removal for video. However, as we wrote in our Instant Insight report from the event, the onus is now on developers to take the tools Qualcomm has built and create exciting new AI applications.
The firm’s strong focus on tooling for developers to enable the on-device AI opportunity is generating considerable momentum. A notable development is the chipmaker’s partnership with Mistral to optimize its Ministral 3B and Ministral 8B models for Snapdragon 8 Elite, Snapdragon Cockpit Elite, Snapdragon Ride Elite and Snapdragon X Elite compute platforms; the Mistral 7B v0.3 model is already available in Qualcomm’s AI Hub.
In addition, the keynote appearances of CEOs from Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI were defining moments of Snapdragon Summit, representing an acknowledgement of the importance of Qualcomm in enabling models to run on devices and in addressing constraints of scale, power and efficiency. We expect more announcements in the coming months, particularly from OpenAI.
Stepping back to Oryon, the CPU also had a key role to play in automotive updates. Qualcomm unveiled new Snapdragon Ride Elite and Snapdragon Cockpit Elite designs for connected vehicles. Ride Elite is designed to enable more intelligent self-driving vehicles, and Cockpit Elite provides improvements in navigation and entertainment for an enhanced in-car experience for drivers and passengers. These two platforms can also be combined and run on a single chip.
Again, Qualcomm highlighted that the Oryon CPU has been configured specifically to power connected vehicles, while the Adreno GPU is put to work for rich experiences such as in-car entertainment, and AI provides a more interactive experience for drivers and passengers. There was a palpable sense of excitement from Qualcomm, which has a strong line-up of partners across the automotive industry and clearly sees this as its next billion-dollar business. During the two days of presentations at Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm called on BMW, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz and others to discuss their partnerships and strategic alignment.
Taken individually, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Ride Elite and Cockpit Elite platforms were the most critical announcements from Snapdragon Summit, but the overall framing and messaging of the event was far broader. Viewers of the first day’s keynote session could have been forgiven if they’d missed the big reveal of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, given how quickly Qualcomm returned to talking about the triumvirate of compute, connectivity and AI as the components of its wider strategy. Quite clearly, its focus is on addressing a breadth of opportunities including mobile, PC, automotive, extended reality and, indeed, all the segments in which Qualcomm plays.
This is a more conceptual pitch than focusing on specific chipset releases, and although at times it led to the product announcements slipping down the pecking order, Qualcomm’s desire to tell the grander story is understandable given the investments it has made to diversify and gain more control over its own design story, particularly in CPU.
Its rapid progress in compute, built on the acquisition of Nuvia several years ago, provides Qualcomm with some real thrust when talking about the power of its products, and the firm is clearly bullish about its ability to offer category-leading performance. At Snapdragon Summit, it celebrated the claim that Snapdragon X Elite is leading in PC benchmarking measures, and it expects that Snapdragon 8 Elite will set a similarly high benchmark for the mobile segment. The automotive market doesn’t offer the same chance to demonstrate dominance through benchmarks, but the list of customers that Qualcomm has speaks for itself.
Qualcomm’s goal will now be to use this approach to power next-generation experiences, particularly in mobile and PC. In both areas, the promise of AI has yet to be matched by the actual experiences available, so encouraging more developers to get on board with Snapdragon Elite platforms will be a major focus. The pieces Qualcomm has put in place should provide a good grounding — it’s now a case of driving this through to the rest of the ecosystem.