Qualcomm's Nuvia-based advanced ARM chip for PC to rival Apple by 2023

By Daniel Rubino
published

Apple's dominance in fast and efficient computer processors may have a new challenger sooner than later.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 Compute Platform
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 Compute Platform (Image credit: Qualcomm)

What you need to know

  • Qualcomm expects to have a next-gen ARM processor to rival Apple's M-series ready in 2022, and ship in 2023.
  • Qualcomm purchased Nuvia, whose members lead the development of Apple's chips, in January 2021.
  • The news comes from Qualcomm's investor day event.

Earlier this year, Qualcomm dropped $1.4 billion to purchase Nuvia, which designed mobile processors based on ARM architecture. What made the acquisition so meaningful is the founders of Nuvia are the same people who led the development of Apple's famed A-processors leading to the powerful M1 for laptops.

Now, Qualcomm is starting to flex a bit at its investor event, where the company touted it was on track to release its "next-generation Arm-compatible CPU designed by Nuvia team," according to PCMag.

Source: PCMag (Image credit: Source: PCMag)

The newly designed chips are set to hit hardware customers (aka PC OEMs) sometime in 2022 (in nine months, to be specific) to set them up for a 2023 commercial launch in new Windows PCs. Qualcomm notes these chips are "designed to set the performance benchmark for Windows PCs" and will be an "M-series competitive solution for the PC."

This isn't the first time Qualcomm has touted its Nuvia talent. The company boasted back in July it could beat the M1 chip from Apple.

The Nuvia-designed chip from Qualcomm will depart from the Arm licensed architectures used currently for the Snapdragon series. However, Qualcomm gets the best of both worlds, too. As noted in Reuters, if Arm Ltd. designs an even better chip, Qualcomm can still license it (as it has in the past) and go that route as well.

While the current Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 is a decent offering for the Windows world, it pales compared to Apple's M1 for power and performance. Qualcomm, however, seems ready to take it to the next level with actual devices in consumers' hands by 2023, assuming there are no delays.

Qualcomm is expected to have newer processors coming to Windows PCs for 2022, in the meantime, as the company is gearing up for its annual December Snapdragon Summer event. However, it is unclear whether these will be minor refreshes or a shift to a more powerful Cortex-A78c.

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.