Not a competitor to Apple and Intel: Qualcomm cheats on Snapdragon X chip tests - insiders say manufacturers didn't achieve claimed results

Qualcomm is accused of presenting misleading test results for new processors for Windows laptops Snapdragon X Elite and Plus. These chips are positioned as the first potentially competitive Windows on Arm processors compared to Apple, Intel, and AMD products. However, the site SemiAccurate claims that Qualcomm and its partners did not achieve the test results that were presented to the press.

Sources at Qualcomm testify that at least two major OEM manufacturers could not reproduce the test results presented by Qualcomm in their devices. The company has not commented on the situation in response to the request from the site.

At the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit conference, the public saw the first tests of the future X Elite processors. Their results, which according to sources are "clean," were worse than expected. Qualcomm claims that unfinished software was used. Also, the tests were a complete "black box" - no one at the conference could see the settings used for testing, and blurry diagrams showing performance compared to Apple and Intel could not be verified.

After OEM manufacturers received X series processors, according to sources, none of them could reproduce the advertised Qualcomm test results. In fact, original equipment manufacturers saw figures that were "significantly less than 50%" of the results claimed by Qualcomm. Allegedly, Qualcomm engineers claimed that the situation was due to poor optimization of Windows for Arm and poor laptop cooling. Even after some time had passed and the cooling could be improved, testers did not reach Qualcomm's benchmarks. One source compared Snapdragon X Elite with Intel Celeron processors.

At the Snapdragon summit, the company avoided answering technical questions about its future X series and promised more answers and detailed technical briefings before releasing its chips. Reviewers were also promised the opportunity to independently test the processors before release. None of these promises have been fulfilled yet - although there is still time before the chips are launched in mid-2024. The press could test the devices at practical events, but all software was pre-installed and configured.

The information from Qualcomm disclosed yesterday does not contain deep technical data: the company talks about potential camera specifications, etc., without providing enough detailed technical information. The number of cores, cache size, clock speed are known, but there is nothing deeper than specifications.

Until the laptops are released, it is difficult to find confirmation of these accusations or Qualcomm's statements. It is expected that Microsoft will make announcements regarding Windows on Arm at the Build developer conference in May, which could shed more light on this issue.