Last year, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8cx chipset for PCs. But the firm is planning a lower-end PC chipset, too.

Qualcomm has never formally announced this product. But Qualcomm vice president Don McGuire revealed its existence in an episode of the Mobile Tech Podcast timed for this past week’s Computex tradeshow.

As you might imagine, given the name, which McGuire said was only “provisionally” named at this time, the Snapdragon 7xc will be less powerful than the Snapdragon 8cx and less expensive for PC makers to acquire. As such, it will target lower-end PCs in the $300 to $800 range, whereas the 8cx is aimed at premium PCs.

Also unclear at this point is what kind of performance we can expect from the 7cx. Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 8cx is roughly as powerful as a U-series Intel Core i5 processor. So it’s possible that the 7cx will offer something akin to Intel Atom, Celeron, or even Core i3 performance levels.

MacGuire also makes an interesting claim about Google, noting that the search giant was originally interested in porting its Chrome browser to the Arm platform but held off when initial sales of the woefully-underpowered Snapdragon 835 and 850 didn’t deliver many new customers. The improved performance of the 7cx and 8cx, he says, should change Google’s mind.

PC makers are expected to ship the first Snapdragon 8cx-based PCs in time for the holiday selling season. But it’s not clear if the 7cx will be available at that time as well.

Tagged with Qualcomm, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Snapdragon 7cx, Snapdragon 8cx