There is a bit of Qualcomm in all our lives. The San Diego-headquartered company is at the cutting edge of developing semiconductors, software and services related to wireless technology. At the moment, it is helping usher in the AI era on countless devices, whether smartphones, laptops or beyond. Recently, we had an opportunity to meet some of the top executives of the company at its headquarters to discuss the Snapdragon X Series and, in particular, the Snapdragon X2 Elite.
We spoke about best-in-class CPU performance, the fastest NPUs for laptops, advanced graphics, the ability to manage PCs from anywhere with Snapdragon Guardian Technology and how the company is scaling form factors. In between the many sessions, a small group of journalists from around the globe found time to meet Kedar Kondap, SVP and GM, Compute and Gaming, Qualcomm.
Kedar Kondap, SVP and GM, Compute and Gaming, Qualcomm. Picture: Mathures Paul
On the one hand, cyberattacks, data breaches and device theft are increasing. On the other, the number of connected PCs is going up, bringing challenges around managing them and keeping them secure. At the same time, more parents want to keep children safe while using PCs. What kind of control does Snapdragon Guardian Technology offer IT teams or consumers as built-in cellular modems and always-on connectivity keep devices manageable at any time?
There are two different segments — consumer and commercial. When you look at the commercial side, we are putting control in the hands of either the IT administrator or the user, depending on company policy. They have full rights to decide how they want to manage the device.
Everybody wants younger children to be protected, and parents often want some level of geofencing, for example, being able to know if your child is at school or has left school, as long as they are within the same vicinity. If children forget their PCs somewhere, parents want to locate those devices quickly. These are very traditional use cases.
I genuinely believe there is a lot you can do once your PC is connected, irrespective of where it is. It doesn’t have to rely only on Wi-Fi; it can operate through the cellular modem as well.
Commercial use cases are very straightforward. If there is a malicious attack or a bad actor in the system, IT administrators have the ability to remotely control the device. They decide how they want to manage it, as long as the device is not in a completely dead-battery situation. If it is, it’s not a malicious threat at that moment. The minute the device is charged, IT has full control over what needs to be done. Our goal is to give that level of control to both IT teams and consumers so that devices can be managed properly.
What is the contribution of the India team in developing the new X Series chip?
From a development standpoint, the India contribution is significant. We have a fairly sizeable team in India, across various locations, and they contribute in a meaningful way to our designs, including the Snapdragon X Series, whether in hardware, software or across the platform. We have labs globally, including in India, that conduct ecosystem testing for components.
There are substantial improvements from the previous generation. How positive are you about its acceptance, especially in the Indian market, and which price segment are you targeting? Is it going to be “elite”, as the name suggests?
Let me draw a parallel to phones and what happened in India, although the pattern was similar elsewhere. Once consumers begin using a certain class of phone, they often see a need to move up if they recognise value in the experience. Value comes from real use cases.
Gaming power on computers running Snapdragon chipset
Back in the day, India and several other markets were predominantly 2G feature-phone markets. When we launched 4G, we spoke a lot about data consumption as a major use case, and about video as a use case. We said people would consume a lot of content. A lot of people dismissed that — “Video? What are you talking about?” It was hard to imagine.
Look at cameras. Now everybody uses their phone cameras. Look at payments in India — a street vendor selling vegetables today has a QR code. People use their phone cameras to scan the code and make digital payments.
That is how consumers moved from 2G to 4G and then to brighter, more powerful smartphones across different price points. The market expanded because consumers saw the benefit.
The PC industry hasn’t seen that kind of excitement. In the last 10 years, most people have been buying essentially the same device, and they’re not buying immediately. They buy only when it becomes a distress purchase — when the old PC is no longer working. In phones, people buy because they see value in upgrading.
We expect consumers to upgrade PCs for the same reason — because they see value. We believe the world is headed towards agentic computing. Right now, it’s hard for an average user to understand the value of an AI-agentic workflow on their PC.
So our job first is to enable the foundation for the use cases that will drive that value.
At Qualcomm, we want to drive use cases in a way that consumers don’t need to understand the underlying technology. They simply see the benefit: “This is a beautiful camera; my video calls look better.” We keep innovating because we want to turn technology into a differentiator... consumer-friendly experiences.
Our goal is to communicate this value clearly at the point of sale. That is why we are investing in fixtures in stores — in India we have set them up in Croma stores, and they are expanding rapidly. In the US, it’s Costco and Best Buy. We want to tell the story directly to consumers so they understand the benefits this platform brings.
AI is moving at a tremendous pace. At the same time, companies like Qualcomm work on roadmaps years ahead. You are moving at a certain pace, and AI is moving at another. How do you keep up?
AI is evolving at a pace that is unprecedented. When we launched the X1 platform, we talked about running a 13-billion-parameter model on our devices. We demonstrated how quickly we could generate tokens. Since then, so much has changed.
Models have evolved, and quantisation techniques have become far more sophisticated. Models are now more accurate, and quantisation methods are better.
The way we approach this is by asking: How do we drive use cases using the best possible approach?
You will see tools we are developing... with partners like AnythingLLM and Nexa AI. And we’re working at the highest level to drive use cases on top of that.
At the bottom of the stack, we provide a horizontal orchestration layer because models are moving so quickly. If you are a developer, it is incredibly hard to pick one model and optimise only for that. We want to be the orchestrator that takes different models and manages the orchestration so everything above the stack becomes seamless. We want to make it easy for developers to build quickly.
When Apple works on its silicon, it knows exactly what it wants from its software because it controls the full stack. Qualcomm works with multiple OEMs. Is that an advantage?
There is a very strong ecosystem. The Windows market is substantial. Different players have strengths in different areas, and all of them are driving innovation. These OEMs also want to be disruptive in how they approach the consumer space.
Microsoft has been a great partner in helping us drive many of these use cases. I see far more positives in working with a broad ecosystem and pushing innovation together.
Five reasons why people should consider the new X2 Elite in their laptops?
First, leading performance. Second, leading battery life. Third, leading AI capabilities. Fourth, leading technologies — including camera, audio and video — where users will see real advantages. Fifth, form factors — you will see some interesting new designs.