Qualcomm has another Snapdragon X tier coming soon

Qualcomm held its Investor Day today, where it made some key announcements about its compute business, which is unsurprisingly one of its largest areas of growth. It also teased an upcoming announcement for a new Snapdragon X chip.

Before you get excited, it’s not the Snapdragon X Elite Gen 2 (or however Qualcomm decides to determine generations). It’s a new, more entry-level tier chip that will sit below the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core. It’s likely it will be called Snapdragon X.

Right now, Qualcomm has three tiers (all of which have their own tiers), which have 12, 10, and eight cores. Presumably, this one, which we’ll call the Snapdragon X, will have six, but Qualcomm isn’t saying. It’s only teasing it right now.

What is the Snapdragon X?

One thing it is saying is that this new chip will have the same NPU that it’s using throughout the rest of the Snapdragon X lineup. That means it’s bringing Copilot+ capabilities to lower price points, this time down to $600, something that Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon promised in a Q&A session back at Computex.

This is notable because no one else is doing it. Intel’s Lunar Lake processors are reserved for the premium tier, unlike its previous laptop chips that would typically be available at all price points. The same goes for AMD. There’s more potential for AMD to hit lower price points just because it hasn’t announced much, but for now, it’s just a few Ryzen 9 SKUs.

As for when this new Snapdragon X chip will be announced, Qualcomm isn’t saying anything for sure. However, CES is less than two months away, and that’s the biggest PC show off the year.

This should round out the Snapdragon X lineup, although I actually thought that after Qualcomm announced Snapdragon X Plus 8-core. As for when the big and exciting new product (Snapdragon X Elite Gen 2) is coming, that will be at Snapdragon Summit later next year.