Qualcomm Working on Snapdragon 1000 for Always Connected PCs

Qualcomm has been busy over the last few months. The company has announced its Snapdragon 850 and XR1 processors. The latter is a mixed/virtual reality specific processor that could be a game changer in that market. As for the Snapdragon 850, it will drive the next generation of Always Connected PC and Windows 10 on ARM. However, a report from WinFuture suggests Qualcomm is already looking to the future. With that in mind, an upcoming chipset is in development that is codenamed the SDM1000. As that name suggests, the processor will be called the Snapdragon 1000. The report points to this being a new category of processor for Qualcomm, specifically for ultrabooks. That would explain the jump from the upcoming Snapdragon 950 to the Snapdragon 1000. Although, the company often makes these larger jumps from an older family to a new one. WinFuture says the 12W Snapdragon 1000 will be socketed, which means it will not be part of the motherboard. Under development, the chipset supports up to 16GB LPDDR4X RAM and two 128GB UFS 2.1 modules.

Boosting Windows 10 on ARM

Such a processor would provide a major boost to Always Connected PCs and Windows 10 on ARM. To run a laptop Windows environment, the 835 needed some tweaks. Creating an exclusive processor like a Snapdragon 1000 would solve that issue for Qualcomm. In fact, the Snapdragon 850 may solve many of these issues, so the 1000 will take performance a step further. It would also mean Always Connected PCs could stay relevant with generations lasting longer. In other words, Qualcomm would not upgrade the exclusive Windows 10 on ARM processor as often as its smartphone CPUs.