Qualcomm Seeks to Put AI in All the Things, Including Your Next Phone and PC

pcmag.com:

Qualcomm showed off two new computing platforms this week at its annual Snapdragon Summit that promise to put generative AI into laptops, phones, and more.

The Snapdragon X Elite for PCs and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for phones include powerful new neural processing units (NPUs) that will do things like power Stable Diffusion on next year's premium smartphones.

"Generative AI is the new way to interface with devices," claims Qualcomm. The company says its new platforms bring "a wave of generative AI" to devices and apps with an "enhanced focus on immediacy, reliability, personalization, and privacy."

Laptop buyers will realize these experiences via the Snapdragon X Elite, the rebranded version of Qualcomm's PC computing platform. Qualcomm says the X Elite was built with AI in mind from the start. It packs a powerful NPU and top CPU together in an efficient package for Windows 11 PCs. Smartphone buyers will similarly get to interact with AI thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform. Android flagships next year will have access to a much more capable NPU which can use AI to create content, improve camera results, extend mobile music range, and even manage connections.

"We are entering the era of AI, and on-device generative AI will play a critical role in delivering powerful, fast, personal, efficient, secure and highly optimized experiences," says Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. "Snapdragon is uniquely positioned to help shape and capitalize on the on-device AI opportunity and you will see generative AI going virtually everywhere that Snapdragon goes."

What are those experiences? They will be simple to start. On Windows PCs, Qualcomm demonstrated generative AI tasks including on-device chat assistants at 30 tokens per