Qualcomm Brings 5G to Always-Connected Windows PCs
Ron Perillo / 5 years ago
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx 5G Launched
Qualcomm first announced the Snapdragon 8cx SoC back in December. This was intended to compete directly with Intel‘s 15W processor for Windows 10 PCs and laptops. Now Qualcomm is officially launching a new variant called the Snapdragon 8cx 5G, equipped with the Snapdragon X55 modem.
The Snapdragon X55 was announced five days ago, bringing speeds of up to 7Gbps on a single chip. It is also backwards compatible with up to 2.5Gbps on 4G networks. Which is great news since separate chips are not necessary just to bring 5G support.
Flagship smartphones shipping in 2019 with a Snapdragon 855 chipset for example will still be using the Snapdragon X50 for 5G and the Snapdragon X24 for 4G LTE.
The 8cx sports eight Kryo 495 cores, which makes it faster than the Snapdragon 855. Even its new Adreno 680 GPU is twice as fast as the Adreno 630 from the Snapdragon 850.
When Can We Expect 5G Windows 10 Laptops to Arrive?
Despite the announcement, it will take some time for actual 5G enabled laptops to arrive. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 modem itself will not arrive until later in 2019. So the earliest arrival would be around Q1 2020.
Some partners, namely Lenovo have already expressed that they will be first to have devices equipped with this hardware.
