Qualcomm yesterday in Maui announced a new 7nm processor, Snapdragon 8cx that is exclusively designed for Windows 10 and not just another iteration of a smartphone processor like how it was in case of Snapdragon 835. The company targets the third quarter of 2019 for launch.
The fact that the 8cx is designed for PCs automatically boost expectations on the ARM computers. On papers, it looks far more capable than that of a flagship Qualcomm smartphone processor. It is equipped with all new Adreno 680 and Kyro 495 CPUs. With this, the company is claiming two times better performance over the Snapdragon 850 processor. With all the boost in performance, Qualcomm is still sticking to ‘Multi-day battery life’ slogan.
Otherwise, there is X24 LTE category 20 modem which promises a download speed of 2Gbps and an upload speed up to 316 Mbps. Qualcomm has made improvements with the graphics as well as the 8cx now handle 4K HDR video playback at 120 frames per second. With the 8cx, the GPU now supports two external 4K HDR monitors, has support for faster NVMe solid-state drives(SSDs), support for Bluetooth 5.0 and Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology.
Interestingly, the ‘cx’ has a short description of the new processor as it stands for ”compute” and ”extreme”.
Snapdragon 8cx also becomes the first Snapdragon processor to receive a Windows 10 Enterprise certification.