Linux exclusive for now: Dell sells notebook with Qualcomm accelerator

Dell is converting its Dell Pro Max 16 Plus notebook into a Linux AI workstation. Three variants use AI accelerators from Qualcomm's Cloud AI 100 chip family, also known as AIC100. In the notebook variants, two AIC100 accelerators are soldered on, sharing 64 GB of LPDDR5X RAM independently of the rest of the system memory, apparently with a transfer rate of 272 GB/s.

An AIC100 integrates 16 compute cores with a VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) architecture and 144 MB of SRAM cache. In total, there are therefore 32 cores, which are intended to behave like a single accelerator towards applications. Qualcomm originally introduced the Cloud AI 100 chip family back in 2019, using 7-nanometer manufacturing technology. Delivery has only been ongoing since this year. Dell is thus replacing the previously used Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, which will remain available in separate configurations.

Dell and Qualcomm are promoting the AIC100 chips for inference, i.e., for executing pre-trained AI algorithms. According to the manufacturer, AI models with up to 120 billion parameters run locally. The focus is on FP16 compute performance with 16-bit floating-point values of up to 400 teraflops. According to the Qualcomm datasheet, the maximum power consumption should be 150 watts for both AIC100 chips combined.

Only with Intel CPUs

The Dell Pro Max 16 Plus is exclusively available with Intel processors from the Arrow Lake-HX family, up to the 24-core Core Ultra 9 285HX. There are no options with the Qualcomm processors Snapdragon X Elite.

This could also be due to software support: Qualcomm currently only offers its Cloud AI SDK for software development for Linux or for virtual machines and Docker or Kubernetes containers. Dell pre-installs Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Snapdragon processors, on the other hand, run poorly under Linux. Dell plans to offer Windows configurations in early 2026. The notebook primarily serves as a mobile developer kit for AI development.

All variants of the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus with Qualcomm accelerators use a 16-inch IPS display with 1920 x 1200 pixels, with 120 Hertz in the more expensive configurations. In addition, there are 64 to 128 GB of RAM (in addition to the 64 GB of the AI accelerators) and a 1 to 4 TB SSD.

Connectivity includes, among other things, two Thunderbolt 5 ports, one Thunderbolt 4 port, RJ45 for 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI 2.1. Wi-Fi 7 is on board wirelessly. The weight is 2.55 kg.

High Prices

Interested parties will have to dig deep into their pockets. The cheapest configuration with a 60 Hz display, 64 GB RAM, and a 1 TB SSD costs just under 7040 Euros including taxes. The variant with 128 GB RAM and a 4 TB SSD costs just over 9500 Euros. So far, the Qualcomm variants are exclusively available in the Dell Shop.

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(mma)