Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows features Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Arm SoC for AI PC application development – CNX Software

Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows is a mini PC-looking development platform based on the Snapdragon X Elite 12-core Arm processor with up to 75 AI TOPS of performance designed to help developers natively port apps to the Elite X SoC and develop new AI applications besides the Copilot+ AI PC features developed internally by Microsoft.

Although it’s slightly bigger, the external design looks similar to the Windows Dev Kit 2023 with a  Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 compute platform, but internally, the new devkit features the much more powerful 4.3 GHz X Elite 12-core 64-bit Armv8 Oryon processor coupled with 32GB LPDDR5x RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD, and offering a range of ports and features such as USB4 and WiFi 7.

Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows (2024) specifications:

• SoC – Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-00-1DE)
  • CPU – 12-core 64-bit Armv8 Oryon processor clocked at up to 3.8 GHz, or 4.3 GHz for single or dual-core boost, 42MB total cache
  • GPU – Adreno GPU up to 4.6 TFLOPS, DX12 API support
  • AI accelerators
    • Hexagon NPU with up to 45 TOPS
    • Dual micro NPU on the Qualcomm Sensing Hub
    • Up to 75 TOPS in total when combining CPU, GPU, NPU, and micro NPU
    • Up to 30 tokens per second for 7B LLMs
  • VPU – Adreno VPU
    • Encode – 4K60 10-bit encode H.264, HEVC (H.265), AV1
    • Decode – 4K120 10-bit decode H.264, HEVC (H.265), VP9, AV1
    • Concurrency – 4K60 decode H.264, HEVC (H.265), VP9, AV1 and 2x 4K30 encode H.264, HEVC (H.265), AV1
• System Memory – 32GB LPDDR5x RAM
• Storage – 512GB NVMe SSD
• Video Output
  • HDMI port
  • 3x USB4 ports
  • Up to 3x 4K UHD monitors supported
• Audio – 3.5mm audio jack
• Connectivity
• USB
  • 3x USB4 Type-C ports
  • 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2  Type-A ports
• Security – sTPM
• Misc – Power button
• Dimensions – 199 x 175 x 35 mm
• Weight – 970 grams
• Materials – Shell made with 20% recycled ocean plastic (for ESG points… like in the previous dev kit)

Since it’s designed for Windows developers, the Dev Kit obviously ships with Windows 11. However, note that Linux development is also happening for the Snapdragon X Elite SoC and a lot of the open-source software will be upstreamed. Qualcomm will ship the kit with a 180 Watts (!) AC adapter, a power cable, and a user guide.

Developers will have access to the native Arm64 toolchain with Visual Studio/VS Code, runtimes, libraries, and frameworks, and the ability to run Arm64 VMs and CI/CD infrastructure and services directly on the device to build, test, and release software. Qualcomm also highlights the 45 TOPS NPU to accelerate (generative) AI/ML workloads such as on-device LLMs (Large Language Models) and LVMs (Large Vision Models) through the Qualcomm AI Stack and Qualcomm AI Hub with 100+ pre-trained and optimized AI models for Snapdragon.

Qualcomm is taking pre-orders for the Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows for $899 through an online form, but retail availability is expected by June 18, 2024. Additional information may be found in the press release since there’s no product page at the time of writing…

Via Liliputing

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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