Qualcomm's First 5nm PC Chip, 8cx Gen 3, Is Coming Next Year

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A new 7c+ Gen 3 for budget PCs and Chromebooks is also coming.

Qualcomm is taking its next stab at the PC space with two new SoCs. At its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit in Hawaii, the company announced its flagship Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 for PCs and budget-oriented Snapdragon 7c+ Gen 3 for laptops and Chromebooks. 

The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is based on a 5 nm process (the first in a PC, Qualcomm claims), with a Qualcomm Kryo CPU and Adreno GPU. Qualcomm hasn't listed specific core counts or clock speeds as of this writing, but the company says that the 8cx Gen 3 offers an 85% CPU performance improvement over the 8cx Gen 2 and 60% faster GPU performance, Additionally, it claims 60% better performance per watt over "the competitive x86 platform," as measured running Geekbench 5.

Like previous PC chips, Qualcomm is continuing to tout the idea of an "always on, always connected" PC, with support for 5G, 4G LTE, and Wi-Fi 6/6E. 5G modem support tops out with the Snapdragon X65, with 10 Gbps peak download speed and support for both sub-6 and mmWave technologies.

The on-board Qualcomm AI engine allows the 8cx Gen 3 to deliver over 29 TOPS (tera operations per second, measured in trillions), which is three times greater than the Gen 2. Qualcomm also continues to suggest its chips enable multi-day battery life (at least 25 hours) on a single charge.
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