Arm-powered Snapdragon X Elite laptop shown outperforming Intel Core Ultra by up to 10X in AI tests — Qualcomm fires early NPU shots at Intel [Updated]

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But Intel has Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake waiting in the wings.

Qualcomm
(Image credit: Qualcomm)

Qualcomm has published a short video that shows a Snapdragon X Elite laptop outpacing an Intel Core Ultra 7 laptop by up to 10X in AI workloads. According to the video description, the unnamed Snapdragon X Elite model offers “a groundbreaking 45 TOPS NPU that delivers unparalleled AI capabilities.” The NPU (neural processing unit) tests run by Qualcomm included AI image generation in Stable Diffusion and GIMP. Of course, the tests used the onboard processors rather than the cloud.

The above video starts with side-by-side Stable Diffusion tests. While the Snapdragon X Elite laptop completed its summer fruits image generation task in 7.25s, it wasn’t until 22.26s that the Intel Core Ultra 7 laptop finished creating an image from the same prompt.

Qualcomm demonstrated that it had been reasonably fair in its side-by-side Stable Diffusion demo. As you can see from the screengrab below, the Snapdragon designers made sure the v1.5 of the image generator was “running on the most efficient configuration” for the Intel chip, splitting the processing between the Meteor Lake CPU, NPU, and GPU as appropriate. Please note that the Qualcomm machine seems to have benefitted from a specially optimized Stable Diffusion release, though. 

EDIT: Qualcomm shared the details of the config with us: 

(Image credit: Qualcomm)

Again, in GIMP, Qualcomm set up the two machines to do some AI image generation. This time, the prompt was “majestic lion basking in the golden afternoon sun.” We see the Snapdragon X Elite machine’s AI plugin, using the Qualcomm AI Stack, finish processing in a fraction of the time it takes the Intel OpenVINO plugin to complete the same task. Qualcomm asserts the demo shows its 45 TOPS packing chip can outpace the x86 rival by generating 10X more images in a given timeframe.

Perhaps it isn’t that surprising that the upcoming Qualcomm chip triumphs so convincingly in any NPU tests. The Snapdragon X Elite has an officially touted 45 TOPS to tackle AI workloads, while Intel’s official materials suggest that the Core Ultra series “delivers up to 34 TOPS” in a best-case scenario.

Meteor Lake was, of course, Intel’s first processor family with an integrated NPU, and it has already set out its stall to leapfrog its performance with the next generation – Arrow Lake (desktop) and Lunar Lake (laptop). We learned at CES that these chips are "in the deep and final stages" of development. Most importantly, concerning today’s story, Intel says its Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake CPUs, which are due later this year, will triple AI performance via improvements in GPU and NPU architectures.

A few days ago, we also spotted a Snapdragon X Elite chip in the Geekbench database, delivering convincing and top-x86 mobile chip rivaling performance. Overall it looks like Arm is going to make an even bigger impact on the mobile market soon. 

Edit 2/27/24 2:05pm PT: Added details from Qualcomm about the test configuration.

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Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Roland Of Gilead
    Will be good to see some real benches and side by sides. I hope AMD's version can be tested along the other two. See the difference and similarities each have and how they perform.

    Interesting times ahead with this AI malarky.
    Reply
  • setx
    Very nice demonstration that if you lose CPU performance and start substituting it with accelerators, someone is going to slap you hard, since it's not a walled garden of x86.

    All "AI technologies" should be marketed and measured separately as they are not an indication of general performance.
    Reply
  • Neilbob
    I'm so weary of the whole AI thing at the moment. Everything seems to be about it and disregards the fact that most things people do are still in the category of 'general workload.'

    I kind of prefer to think of the current jiggery-pokery as Artificial Augmentation, plus I like the AA acronym, so... sure, I completely understand that AA will be an increasing thing in the future and can do things like clever image manipulation and I've been shown one or two cool things it can do right here, but for now I'm unenthused about the so-called benefits it has with things like targeted search results, real-time chat and text responses and yada yada yada. I can do these things myself. Is it only me who doesn't care in the slightest about that stuff?

    When the 'intelligence' actually manages to have an original thought and work with something other than what already exists, then I might be impressed... for the few seconds we have before the AI launches nuclear weapons at it's targets in Russia and they counterattack accordingly (that's a T2 reference just in case anyone is unaware, or I'm being political).

    Perhaps this is just me being my grouchy old self being completely past it when it comes to modern tech. I have to keep up my thing of everything I say coming from a place of extreme cynicism and bitterness.

    Yep, I'm the duffer waving a rake and yelling at the local brats to get off my lawn.
    Reply
  • Roland Of Gilead
    Neilbob said:
    for the few seconds we have before the AI launches nuclear weapons at it's targets in Russia and they counterattack accordingly (that's a T2 reference
    Brilliant :ROFLMAO:
    Reply
  • Notton
    I don't really care for the AI stuff, but I would like to see how it performs against Strix Point, which is speculated at 48+ TOPS.
    Reply
  • jojosbuddy
    Good chance QC is benchmarking the SOM vs just the npu core on the ultra. Qc's famous for repurposing their kyro/hexagon GPU/dsps and this is likely the case. The GPU will edge out IntelAI boost, an fpga, as well as consume less power. But it's all from software: more prone to bugs and more expensive. nVidia is in the same camp and why it's about gpus today. Also if they benchmark a core ultra w/integrated arc GPU would be a way different story.

    But once Intel figures out better parallelism in their fpga design, the NPUs going to blow gpus away and much easier and 10x cheaper to scale.
    Reply
  • sonichedgehog360
    But Intel has Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake waiting in the wings.

    COPE.

    Intel just released Meteor Lake, and we are comparing a product coming out in a few months (ETA June for Snapdragon X Elite) with two from Intel that quite possibly won't be out until end of year. Further, we have no idea how much better than AI performance is on Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake. Additionally, Intel is notorious for delays. Q3 and Q4 2024 is a best case scenario for Intel.
    Reply
  • Loadedaxe
    Neilbob said:
    I'm so weary of the whole AI thing at the moment. Everything seems to be about it and disregards the fact that most things people do are still in the category of 'general workload.'

    I kind of prefer to think of the current jiggery-pokery as Artificial Augmentation, plus I like the AA acronym, so... sure, I completely understand that AA will be an increasing thing in the future and can do things like clever image manipulation and I've been shown one or two cool things it can do right here, but for now I'm unenthused about the so-called benefits it has with things like targeted search results, real-time chat and text responses and yada yada yada. I can do these things myself. Is it only me who doesn't care in the slightest about that stuff?

    When the 'intelligence' actually manages to have an original thought and work with something other than what already exists, then I might be impressed... for the few seconds we have before the AI launches nuclear weapons at it's targets in Russia and they counterattack accordingly (that's a T2 reference just in case anyone is unaware, or I'm being political).

    Perhaps this is just me being my grouchy old self being completely past it when it comes to modern tech. I have to keep up my thing of everything I say coming from a place of extreme cynicism and bitterness.

    Yep, I'm the duffer waving a rake and yelling at the local brats to get off my lawn.
    No need for me to post, spot on what was in my head.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Please note that the Qualcomm machine seems to have benefitted from a specially optimized Stable Diffusion release, though.

    ARM in a nutshell, they run great when the software is designed for them.

    But there are many legitimate uses for machine learning algorithms in many fields which will have a great positive effect, and the ability for an ARM chip to efficiently run them does bode well for them being able to be run natively , efficiently, and quickly locally on phones, tablets, and ARM based laptops which will extend their uses to medical and legal fields, among others, where privacy laws prevent their use on cloud based systems.
    Reply
  • usertests
    Has anyone given a TOPS number for Intel's first-gen NPU? Because if Qualcomm's future 45 TOPS NPU is beating an 8-10 TOPS showing from Intel, the results aren't really a surprise.
    Reply