During the recent Snapdragon Summit held in Hawaii, Qualcomm unveiled an exciting development for creative professionals using Snapdragon-powered PCs. The spotlight was on a range of high-profile applications now optimized to harness the power of Neural Processing Units (NPUs), enhancing their performance and efficiency.
What you need to know
- Qualcomm showcased several prominent creative applications that are now optimized for NPUs.
- Applications such as Blender, Affinity Photo 2, Capture One, Moises, Cubase, and Nuendo are either already leveraging Snapdragon X processors or will soon be able to do so.
- The collaboration between Microsoft and Qualcomm on Windows on Arm has reached a pivotal moment in 2024.
Rather than introducing new hardware or chips, the Snapdragon Summit emphasized how existing Snapdragon-powered PCs equipped with NPUs can significantly enhance the performance of popular creative applications. Notable software like Blender, known for its 3-D modeling capabilities, has introduced an NPU-powered feature available for free download on GitHub. This plugin allows Blender to simulate rendering on the NPU, drastically reducing the time required to convert a 3-D object file into a 2-D image using text-to-image AI.
The Affinity suite of creative applications has also made strides, with Affinity Photo 2 now optimized to better utilize the hardware capabilities of Copilot+ PCs. Features such as object and subject selection are enhanced through NPU integration, with these improvements currently in beta and expected to roll out by November 2024.
For photographers, Capture One has been adapted to run natively on Windows on Arm, providing improved battery life and performance. The latest updates introduce AI cropping and AI-assisted color grading, both of which leverage the power of Snapdragon NPUs.
In the realm of audio production, Moises has been optimized for Windows on Arm, allowing musicians to isolate vocals and instruments from tracks more efficiently. The app’s capabilities, including chord detection and pitch shifting, are now enhanced by the NPU, making it a valuable tool for audio professionals.
Additionally, Cubase and Nuendo, both renowned Digital Audio Workstation applications, have gained native support for Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus PCs. This enhancement is a result of Microsoft’s comprehensive overhaul of its MIDI stack for Windows, further solidifying the platform’s capabilities for musicians.
Snapdragon X tease
While Qualcomm did not divulge extensive details about its forthcoming Snapdragon chips, the company did present intriguing charts and benchmarks. The anticipated 2nd Gen Oryon CPU promises significant performance improvements while consuming 57% less power than its predecessor. Although the data primarily focused on single-core performance in Geekbench tests, if these projections hold true, Qualcomm could soon have a formidable competitor against leading processors from Intel and AMD.
With app developers optimizing their software for Snapdragon-powered PCs and Qualcomm hinting at the capabilities of its next-generation Oryon chips, the future looks promising for the Windows on Arm platform. As 2024 marks a turning point for Arm-based computing, the industry is poised for significant advancements in 2025.
