Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon C Entry Tier Processor For Budget Windows Laptops Featuring On Device AI Capability and Fanless Efficiency Starting This Year
To support Windows laptops at a cheaper price point, Qualcomm has just unveiled their newest entry tier ARM processor, the Snapdragon C. This chip will appear in budget friendly machines as low as $300 and should provide tough competition against affordable machines like the MacBook Neo. According to Qualcomm's announcement, it's engineered to excel in "basic PC needs including browsing the web, document creation, video conferencing and streaming."
The Snapdragon C chip does not share the custom Oryon CPU cores that were included with the more premium Snapdragon X machines. Instead, it is architectured to focus on having a basic processor speed while staying thermaly efficient enough that it's possible to create fanless and quiet laptops. This cheap silicon does pack on a Neural Processing Unit to do AI on the machine itself rather than through a cloud.
According to Senior Vice President and General Manager, Compute and Gaming at Qualcomm Kedar Kondap, this hardware will target a specific market:
"As costs rise and customer expectations evolve, Snapdragon C brings together value oriented computing, all day battery life, AI capabilities and responsive performance in cool quiet devices for expanded platform choice."
The first laptop available on this hardware will be the Acer Aspire Go 15 which comes with a 15.6 inch display, 8 GB of memory and up to 512 GB solid state storage. For connections it comes with two USB Type C ports, a HDMI port and has support for Wi Fi 6E. HP and Lenovo are both also currently working on new laptops utilizing the Snapdragon C platform, which will appear at retailers late this year.
