Qualcomm may have a more powerful PC-specific trick up its sleeve, following new reports regarding a job listing and details associated with a Snapdragon 1000 SoC. The news follows earlier releases about a Snapdragon 850 SoC meant for always-on PCs and seems to indicate that the company plans to take on that sector of the market more directly. Of course, everything starts with a listing for Qualcomm positions tied in with the Snapdragon 845 and Snapdragon 1000. According to those listings, the company is looking for employees to work with those SoCs for desktops, HoloLens, audio, video, displays, and cameras. At a reported 20 x 15 mm, the Snapdragon 1000 would not be well suited for mobile use, which appears to suggest that the most likely use will be in desktops or other portable computing solutions such as laptops.
However, the chipset is also said to be a 12-watt socketed design, which would place it closer in power to Intel’s U-series silicon as well as eliminating the need to have it installed directly to the motherboard. The competing chips are a 15-watt design but also occupy a much larger footprint at 45 x 24mm. Testing of the new design is reportedly configured to support up to 16GB LPDDR4 RAM and two 128GB Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.1 disks. Moreover, there’s been some speculation about the support of 5G networking, on top of the more standard connectivity hardware. All of those specifications would place the Snapdragon 1000 as a direct competitor and alternative to current and expected chipsets from Intel. In particular, this may be an answer to Intel’s expected 5G-capable designs.
While nothing about the currently listed test specifications suggests that the technology giant is targetting high-end enthusiast consumer machines, the company does appear to be stepping in that direction. Any of those aspects could change between now and a final design, especially with Qualcomm still actively seeking employees to work on it. There has been some speculation that the chipset might be part of a mobile hybrid desktop OS project called “Andromeda.” In the meantime, the new information seems to place the Snapdragon 1000 on course to compete above the tier occupied by Intel’s Atom or Y-Series processors. So it may only be a matter of time before competition between the two companies begins to really heat up.