Qualcomm eyeing the desktop market, new Snapdragon will be able to run full Windows 10

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Qualcomm eyeing the desktop market, new Snapdragon will be able to run full Windows 10
Mobile processors have come a long way since the beginning of cell phones. What we consider standard for mobile processors today used to be high-range for desktop not too long ago, when it comes to productivity. So, it's only natural that Qualcomm, one of the leaders in mobile processors manufacturing, is looking to enter the desktop market.

On Thursday Microsoft held a Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) event and Qualcomm made a surprising appearance. The two companies announced that they're partnering up to bring the full Windows 10 experience to the Qualcomm line of processors, starting with the next Snapdragon.

This is a pretty big deal, mostly because Qualcomm processors are based on an architecture that, until now, has been used on desktop machines only with some Linux distributions. The new Snapdragon will be the first chip of its type to run a 64-bit operating system, different from iOS or Android, ever.

Microsoft and Qualcomm said that Snapdragon-powered laptops could become available as early as next year, so this partnership has probably been cooking for quite some time. Such devices will run Windows 10 without any hiccups, including a variety of CPU-heavy apps and programs, while providing thin design and long battery life.

In the demo below, Microsoft shows a Snapdragon machine running Adobe Photoshop, known for its heavy impact on a computer's performance, and some other apps that run as smoothly as they would with any other desktop processor.

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source: Microsoft via MSPowerUser
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