Qualcomm and Lenovo have unveiled a laptop for Computex 2019, which they call the first 5G PC or , - a system built on a quad-core 7nm processor introduced in December last year (Snapdragon 8 Compute eXtreme), specially designed for Windows laptops. What's more, the companies even shared the first performance tests of their system, and it's no surprise why they did so. According to benchmarks, the Snapdragon 8cx processor manages to outperform the quad-core Intel Core i5 processor with Kaby Lake-R design.
While the name Project Limitless implies that this is not yet a production product, the collaboration between Qualcomm and Lenovo suggests that this entire project will eventually result in a mainstream product, which Lenovo plans to release in early 2020.
Recall that the 64-bit ARMv8 Snapdragon 8cx processor is oriented by Qualcomm specifically for laptops. The goal set by the developers is to achieve performance at the level of Intel Core i5 U-series processors. At the moment, Snapdragon 8cx samples are still running at lower frequencies, but they are already quite close to the target. So, in the demonstrated version of Project Limitless, the processor worked at a frequency of 2,75 GHz, while the final versions of the chip will have to reach a frequency of 2,84 GHz.
Qualcomm processors that have existed so far have not been able to match the performance provided by Intel's power-efficient solutions for thin and light laptops. However, the new Snapdragon 8cx chip is a significant step forward. According to the company, the Kryo 495 cores that underpin the Snapdragon 8cx are about 2,5 times more powerful than the Kryo versions of the Snapdragon 850 chip, which can put the Snapdragon 8cx on par with the Intel Core i7-8550U. The Adreno graphics core used in Snapdragon 8cx should be about twice as fast as Snapdragon 850 graphics and three times faster than Snapdragon 835 graphics.
However, now we can speak more definitely about the performance of Snapdragon 8cx: today Qualcomm presented the results of testing this processor in tests from the PCMark 10 package. For comparison, we used tests in office applications, a graphics test and an autonomy test that measures battery life. The Snapdragon 8cx was matched against the Core i5-8250U, a 15 quad-core, eight-thread, 2017-watt Kaby Lake-R processor running at 1,6 to 3,4 GHz.
The Project Limitless test system was installed with 8 GB of memory, 256 GB of NVMe storage and the Windows 10 May 2019 update (1903) operating system. The battery capacity was 49 Wh. The competing platform with an Intel processor had a similar configuration, but used a slightly different version of the operating system - Windows 10 October 2018 update (1809), and also had a 2K display, while the Project Limitless matrix ran at FHD resolution.
In application tests, the Snapdragon 8cx outperformed the Core i5-8250U in all but Excel.
In the 3DMark Night Raid gaming benchmark, the Qualcomm processor also outperformed its rival Intel, but it's worth bearing in mind that the graphics in the Core i5-8250U are just UHD Graphics 620.
But the autonomy tests are especially impressive. While the performance of systems based on Snapdragon 8cx and Core i5-8250U is generally similar, battery life for Project Limitless turned out to be about one and a half times longer and reached from 17 to 20 hours with fairly active interaction with the system.
There is currently no evidence that the Snapdragon 8cx processor is going to be used by anyone other than Lenovo. In addition, Lenovo itself is in no hurry to reveal the details of its promising 5G PC, so we cannot speak with certainty about prices or availability dates. Nevertheless, the presented platform looks very promising, especially since another of its strengths is support for 5G wireless connections, for which it includes a Snapdragon X55 modem.
Source: 3dnews.ru