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What is the Oryon CPU? The future of Snapdragon explained
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At the Snapdragon Summit 2023, Qualcomm finally revealed its attempt at taking on the AppleM-series. TheSnapdragon X Elitewas revealed and it’s powered by the Oryon CPU. It’s also set to come to mobile phones in the future too. But, just what is it?
Apple has led the way in performance and efficiency on laptops ever since theM1 chiplaunched. In response, the Windows laptop world has continued to tinker with Arm chips but nothing has stuck.
The Snapdragon X Elite system-on-a-chip (SoC) aims to change all that, with the Oryon CPU at its compute processing core. Here’s all the key details.
What is the Oryon CPU?
The Oryon CPU is the compute element of the Snapdragon X Elite SoC. It is a custom Arm CPU initially created by a company called Nuvia, whichQualcomm acquired in 2021, before being fully realised as the new Qualcomm Oryon.
Qualcomm initially announced the Oryon CPU inNovember 2022at its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, before revealing its first appearance on a consumer product at the same event this year (2023) — that being the Snapdragon X Elite.
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Qualcomm has touted the Oryon CPU as being at “the centre of next-generation premium experiences on Snapdragon platforms”, with it also revealing that its next flagship mobile SoC, theSnapdragon 8 Gen 4, will utilise it as well.
The 4nm Oryon CPU inside the Snapdragon X Elite chip is touted by Qualcomm as offering “up to 2x faster CPU” performance when compared with x86 chips. It also states the Snapdragon X Elite can match “peak PC performance at 68% less power.” Up against its key competitor, Apple, it is said to offer “50% faster peak multi-threaded performance vs M2.”
Unlike many Arm chips, including Apple’s, the Snapdragon X Elite does not use a mix of performance and efficiency cores. Instead, using 12 Oryon CPU high-performance cores that all offer up to 3.8GHz (4.3GHz with Dual-core boost) processing speeds.
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Adam is the Computing Editor of Trusted Reviews. He joined as a staff writer in 2019 after graduating from Newcastle University with an MA in Multimedia Journalism. After spending two years at WIRED,…
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
