Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite SoC is just around the corner, and it aims to be a renaissance of sorts for Windows on Arm. With that comes a promise of beating Apple's M3 chipsets in its Macbooks, though there's more to a chipset than the raw power that it's capable of. There are a ton of things that Qualcomm needs to get right in order to best Apple, and these are five of the most important aspects.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X chips are expected to arrive sometime in the summer, with the Snapdragon X Elite at the helm. There are four SKUs that we know of currently, and it seems like there may be a fifth to be announced in the future, too.

1 Sustained performance

Burst performance doesn't matter all that much

Burst performance straight up does not matter if your chipset can't sustain its performance, and that's why sustained performance is one of the most important metrics of any chip. If it can be world-class for five seconds before becoming one of the worst after that, then it's not a good chip, no matter what theoretical benchmarks may tell you.

The ability to sustain performance typically means that the chip also manages to keep its thermals under control, which leads us to the next point.

2 Low power consumption

All-day battery life is important

Apple's M series of chips have one major advantage that has tainted all other laptops for those who have used a Macbook, and that's battery life. Apple Silicon chips are so ridiculously power efficient, largely thanks to the Arm architecture inside and the custom cores that the company has designed to populate it. If Qualcomm wants to compete with Apple, the company needs to get power consumption right.

With Apple's Macbooks, you can conceivably use one of them for several hours for semi-intensive tasks like photo-editing, browsing, and video editing, and it won't even break a sweat. That kind of battery life is unheard of on other, x86-based machines, and it's something that Qualcomm will most certainly be gunning for.

3 A killer NPU

AI is here to stay

Whether you like it or not, artificial intelligence is clearly here to stay. Apple's Macbooks going as far back as the M1 are great at doing things like running LLMs locally, to the point that Apple Silicon machines can outperform most desktop computers when it comes to local generative AI. Qualcomm will almost certainly be eyeing up the capabilities of Apple and other competitors like AMD and Intel when it comes to AI, and the Snapdragon X Elite is said to have an NPU capable of 45 TOPS.

With that said, numbers aren't everything. TOPS is just one metric to measure AI performance, whereas the most important thing will be whether developers can leverage that power effectively or not.

4 Powerful graphics capabilities

Gamers don't choose Macs... yet

While Apple's Macbooks aren't exactly known for their gaming prowess, things are slowly moving in that direction. Apple released the Game Porting Toolkit for Macboook users to try out applications built for Windows and x86 architectures, and the performance is shockingly good. Since then, we've seen some developers make mild commitments to making more games for Mac, though with some mild setbacks.

Graphics aren't just useful for gamers though, and developers can reap the benefits of powerful graphics capabilities for a number of uses. Either way, Apple is packing a lot in the graphics department even if it isn't always obvious, and Qualcomm will undoubtedly be looking to take its graphics chops from its Android smartphones and upscale it to a computing context.

5 Industry-wide support

Developers need to make programs before consumers care

The most important aspect of getting the Snapdragon X Elite into the hands of consumers is sadly something mostly out of Qualcomm's control, and that's developer buy-in. Google Chrome only recently came to Windows on Arm for the first time, despite being available natively on Apple's Arm chips for quite a while now. If other developers don't buy-in, then people won't switch to a platform where they can't even get their usual applications.

Qualcomm has work with developers to ensure that they get working applications built for Windows on Arm, though, and that seems to be working given that this is the first time Chrome is available for Windows on Arm. We'll be waiting to see if any other big applications pop up, too.

Qualcomm can beat Apple, but it's an uphill battle

Qualcomm is fighting an uphill battle when it comes waging war with Apple. Apple has been the king of Arm-based computing for the last few years, and Qualcomm's chips are going to need to blow the competition away to have a chance at swaying the eternal Windows on Arm haters. To be fair, Windows on Arm has been a miserable experience with Qualcomm's previous chips, but the Oryon cores in the Snapdragon X series are very, very different.

I'm excited for what Qualcomm can pull off, but I'm apprehensive of how good they can truly be. There's a lot Qualcomm needs to get right, and then it also needs to get successors right and all of multiple SKUs right, too. Competition is always a good thing for consumers though, and it's an exciting time to be a fan of Arm.