Snapdragon 7c Gen2 is a new chipset being developed by Qualcomm to cover the budget notebook segment. The development will not be limited to the Windows platform and will be able to run other operating systems such as Chrome OS.
Qualcomm is with its multiple ARM-based solutions the most relevant semiconductor producer for mobile devices on the planet, but the PC segment is another matter and here the dominance of x86 architectures from Intel or AMD has been overwhelming in the last three decades.
The same can be said of Microsoft. It monopolizes the computing desktops with Windows operating systems on x86 platforms, but the move to ARM architecture has been incomplete, limited, and underperforming. Running Win32 applications is still an unresolved issue.
If Windows on ARM has not achieved its goals, Apple’s silicon project is showing that it is possible to create sufficiently high-performance hardware on the ARM platform. Capable of running older software and convincing developers to port their applications to the new architecture and run natively.
Snapdragon 7c Gen2 specs
In this scenario, Qualcomm is preparing a new version of a chipset that would be intended for entry-level PCs. It is a chipset manufactured in 8-nanometer processes, with an eight-core Kryo 468 CPU and an Adreno 618 GPU. According to the rumors coming from WinFuture, it has the internal model number SC7295. The biggest news over the original comes from the frequency increase of the higher-performance CPU cores to 2.7GHz.
It includes a fourth-generation AI engine; The Hexagon 692 and Spectre 255 image processing and camera engines; And the Snapdragon X15 modem for 4G-LTE networks. Supports Bluetooth 5.1, USB 3.1, 2133MHz LPDDR4 memory, eMMC 5.1, and UFS 3.0 storage, and displays with resolutions up to 2048 x 1536 pixels.
Intended for basic and inexpensive laptops, given the lukewarm acceptance of the original under Windows on ARM, Qualcomm hopes to sell it to its partners working with Google on the commercialization of Chromebooks, the devices that grew the most in sales in 2020.
Whether this type of chip can succeed remains to be seen. Qualcomm has the more powerful, 5G-enabled Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 on the way, which is Qualcomm’s real answer to the Apple M1. Of course, this is not just about chip performance, and operating system performance and application execution are just as important, if not more so.
