Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme uses TSMC’s 3nm process

Power is the keyword: Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme uses TSMC’s 3nm process to reach maximum clock speed!

Qualcomm has officially introduced the Snapdragon X2 chipset family, designed for high-performance notebooks.

The announcement took place during the Snapdragon Summit or Hawaiia few months ago, and recently the company carried out a in-depth technical event. The series’ flagship is System on a Chip (SoC) of 18 cores built on the 3 nanometer process TSMC.

X2 Elite Series Manufacturing Process and Configurations

A technology giant confirmed that the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme uses the manufacturing node N3X da TSMCone performance-focused 3nm variant. The chip integrates more than 31 billion transistors.

The X2 Elite series is made up of three models: two variants with an 18-core CPU and one with 12 cores, all with the same NPU of 80 TOPS. Memory is unified, similar to Apple architecturewith the most powerful variant reaching a bandwidth of 228 GB/s.

Third-generation Oryon CPU architecture

A CPU use three clusters. Two are clusters.”prime” with high-speed cores and 16 MB of L2 cache each, and one is a performance cluster with 12MB L2 cache. Each cluster contains six cores.

To ecompany claims that the X2 Elite Extreme offers a 39% gain in CPU performance compared to the previous generation, with a 43% reduction in energy consumption. The maximum clock speed reaches 5 GHz when a single core is active.

Performance in benchmarks and comparisons

In tests like the Geekbenchthe single-core performance of X2 Elite Extreme surpasses 4,000 pointsa significant increase compared to the previous model.

No benchmark 3DMark Steel Nomad Lightthe X2 Elite Extreme’s score (5,621) is ahead of the Apple M5 (5.291), but behind the Apple M4 Pro (6.739).

A Qualcomm also compares your GPU with competitors, claiming to be 50% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V e 29% faster than AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.

Adreno X2 GPU and sixth generation NPU

In turn, the GPU Adreno X2 employs a new architecture with four “slices“, offering graphics performance up to 2.3 times higher than the previous generation. Qualcomm has implemented 21 MB of SRAM on the GPU die itself for efficiency.

O Sixth generation NPU reaches 80 TOPS performancean increase of 78%. The company emphasizes that this power is necessary to agentic AI workloads.

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Connectivity and platform features

A Snapdragon X2 platform includes the Snapdragon X75 modem for 5G and the system FastConnect 7800 para Wi-Fi. Three ports are offered USB4 40Gbps12 PCIe Gen5 lanes and support for up to 128 GB of memory.

Qualcomm also detailed its security and management solution “Guardian“, which operates an environment of independent execution within the SoC. To complement this, the company announced a partnership with Frore Systems for AirJet cooling in future devices.

Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme uses TSMC’s 3nm process; conclusions

A Detailed architecture disclosure by Qualcomm is an unusual move for the company, known for being secretive. The demonstrated performance positions the platform as a direct competitor to the company’s solutions. Apple, Intel e AMD no Windows notebook market.

With the Most modern applications already support Arm64the architectural transition becomes less problematic. The first notebooks with Snapdragon X2 Elite chips should hit the market in 2026.

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Sources: Wccftech | Moor Insights & Strategy