Earlier today, Qualcomm held its annual developer summit, where it announced its new flagship processor for smartphones, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. However, the company did not ignore its recently launched Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips that were made for Windows 11 PCs.
While Qualcomm did not reveal plans for a next-generation chip for the Snapdragon X series today, it did announce that several content creation apps for Windows now, or soon will, natively support Qualcomm"s chip made for Windows 11 devices that are labeled as Copilot+ PCs.
In a press release, Qualcomm said that one of these apps is Blender, the well-known open source 3D creation suite that is used extensively in the movie and TV industry, The new Blender app for Qualcomm X-based Windows PCs is available to download now from Blender"s site. Qualcomm also announced it is a new member of The Blender Foundation.
In addition to the new Blender app, there"s also a new free NPU-based plug-in for that app available to download on Github. Qualcomm says it will "simulate rendering on the NPU using a neural network at warp speed" and "reduce the time it takes to enhance your early 3D object file into a higher-quality 2D image with text-to-image AI."
Other popular content creation apps that will have native Snapdragon X-based Windows PCs versions include:
- CaptureOne: Photo software for pro photographers who shoot in studio and need to make professional edits in real-time will be available with AI features for photographers to achieve near-final results faster with AI Cropping and AI Color Grading
- Digital Audio Workstation (DAW): Audio cleanup, mixing and remixing, reverb removal, and more, its the perfect tool for musicians to record and perform, and the place for music app developers to innovate. Utilize MIDI Support and first-ever Microsoft developed ASIO Driver.
- Steinberg Cubase and Nuendo: A powerful professional Digital Audio Workstation app for audio editing and arranging used by Hollywood blockbuster composers and Billboard Hot 100 producers
- Moises: Simply drag any audio or video into their Web or Mobile App, and it’s uploaded to their cloud-based AI service to isolate vocals and instruments with state-of-the-art quality
There"s no word on when Qualcomm might launch its second-gen Snapdragon X chips.