Qualcomm bringing technology first developed for its ‘laptop chips’ to its ‘mobile phone chips’

With an aim to make its mobile phone processors more powerful for generative AI tasks, Qualcomm is coming up with technology first developed for its laptop chips to its mobile phone chips. The San Diego-based company chipset major revealed this development, saying Samsung Electronics, Asustek Computer and Xiaomi, among several others, will use the new chip.

Qualcomm is the leading seller of mobile phone chips worldwide. In a bid to expand its operations, the company reportedly brought on a group of ex-Apple engineers in 2021 to help design laptop chips. These chips, which were released this year, are now supporting AI features in Microsoft’s Windows.

According to reports, the technology created by that team—a suite of custom computing solutions branded by Qualcomm as “Oryon”—is now being integrated into the company's mobile phone chips for the first time.

Qualcomm has also revamped components of the chip, named Snapdragon 8 Elite, to manage tasks like generating images and text. The company plans to provide software developers with specialized tools in addition to those already offered in Alphabet’s Android operating system to utilize these chip features.

Reports quoted Chris Patrick, Qualcomm’s Senior Vice President and GM for mobile handsets, as saying, “AI has been one of those where I think Google is moving fast, but we have our own technology to offer that end developer.”

Samsung Electronics, Asustek Computer and Xiaomi, among several others, will use the new chip, said Qualcomm.

At its flagship Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm rolled out its latest flagship mobile chip – the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This is the first smartphone chip from the company to feature custom Oryon CPU architecture, which debuted with the Snapdragon X Elite/Plus chips for ARM-based Windows laptops.

The company confirmed that smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite will arrive from brands like ASUS, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, and more in the coming weeks, with the OnePlus 13 being one of those smartphones, launching on October 31 in China.