Finally, Snapdragon X Plus Chromebooks are on the way

Well folks, I think I speak for everyone when I say this feels like a long time coming. After the quiet cancellation of the anticipated Snapdragon 7c+ Gen 3 lineup back in August of 2023, Qualcomm seemed to fade into the Chromebook ecosystem background as MediaTek has since taken the reins for high-performance ARM-based Chromebooks. With their upcoming Kompanio Ultra on the way sooner rather than later, it almost felt like ChromeOS on ARM had become the exclusive playground of MediaTek.

Still, the untapped potential of Qualcomm’s newer SoCs found in Windows laptops has remained an exciting prospect. I wrote about that potential right around one year ago, and since that post, I’d basically given up hope that a Snapdragon X chip would ever actually make it into a Chromebook. But today, that hope came back to life:

Digging through the Chromium Repositories this morning, I stumbled across pretty concrete evidence that development has begun for Chromebooks utilizing the powerful Snapdragon X Plus processor. As you can see in the commit message above, drivers are being added for the Qualcomm X1P42100 – otherwise known as the Snapdragon X Plus.

This isn’t just a vague hint or a potential test; adding an SoC ID at the depthcharge level is a fundamental step required to actually build and boot ChromeOS on new hardware. It signifies that work is actively underway to bring this chip to the platform.

This development is particularly welcome given the previous disappointment after the fallout of the ‘Herobrine’ family of devices based on the Snapdragon 7c+ Gen 3. That entire lineup, which promised a solid generational leap over the capable 7c Gen 2 found in devices like the Lenovo Duet 5, was scrapped before any hardware made it to market, leaving a notable gap in the Snapdragon-powered Chromebook portfolio.

A massive leap in performance

The arrival of the Snapdragon X Plus, however, represents a far more significant leap. Built around Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU cores, the X Plus promises a substantial boost in both raw performance and power efficiency compared to anything we’ve seen from Qualcomm on ChromeOS previously.

While positioned slightly below the top-tier Snapdragon X Elite, the X Plus platform still delivers multi-threaded performance that rivals contemporary chips from Apple and Intel, all while maintaining impressive power efficiency. Furthermore, it boasts a capable 45 TOPS NPU (Neural Processing Unit), ready to handle the on-device AI features that are becoming increasingly important across ChromeOS.

Just like we’ll soon see with the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra, you can imagine thin, light, fanless Chromebooks and tablets with truly all-day (or multi-day) battery life and performance that breezes through demanding tasks, Android apps, and Linux containers without breaking a sweat. The Adreno GPU integrated into the X Plus should also provide a welcome boost for graphics-intensive applications and gaming, too.

While this commit marks the earliest of stages in the development process, it’s the most concrete evidence yet that Qualcomm is making a serious return to the Chromebook space with extremely powerful silicon. I’ll be watching the repositories like a hawk for further developments, including the first signs of specific device code names built around the Snapdragon X Plus. The era of truly high-performance ARM Chromebooks looks to be upon us, and the Snapdragon X Plus will most definitely be showing up ready to compete.