While it’s still yet to debut, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is looking like a big deal for ARM-powered Windows machines and, now, it’s getting a more affordable cousin in the Snapdragon X Plus.
Announced today, Snapdragon X Plus is based on the same Oryon CPU as Snapdragon X Elite, just with a bit less power. The chip has 10 cores to the Elite’s 12, and is also clocked down from the Elite’s 3.8GHz to 3.4GHz.
Ben Schoon at 9To5Google
It really seems like it’s finally happening – ARM computers for the general public (that aren’t from Apple). I really hope that Qualcomm can deliver on its promises, and that Microsoft’s involvement means these computers will be fairly standardised so it’s easier for non-Windows platforms to support them. I’ve seen quite a few rumblings from people invited to Qualcomm’s press events for these new ARM chips that the company is delivering Linux support alongside Windows support, so that’s at least a good start.
Whenever we talk about ARM coming to the generic PC market, people rightfully point out the lack of standardisation in the ARM space, so that really is the deciding factor here for people like us, who tend to not be all too interested in locked-down platforms. If every one of these machines is different enough that supporting them is a nightmare – like the world of smartphones – ARM for PCs will be dead on arrival for me because I have zero interest in buying Windows-only hardware.
One thing Microsoft tends to be good at is getting at least some standardisation to stick in the PC market, and I hope they’re going to that here, too – Microsoft probably isn’t relishing supporting each individual ARM machine in Windows ‘by hand’ either. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
I own a Lenovo Yoga C630 (the 13″ model, not the 15″ model that has the same model number but uses an x86 chip). It has a Snapdragon 855. The computer is five years old now; I bought it used in 2021, and am very happy with it. I have booted it with Windows a couple of times, but since the day it arrived, I run it with Linux.
Hardware support, right, is NOT as good as it should. I still have no reliable audio, and getting HDMI video out through the USB-C port is far from trivial… but the computer’s weight and solidity, not having any moving parts, >10hr battery life… Make me more than happy for spending my money on it. And while it’s very far from a compilation speedster (10x the time of my x86 systems), regular laptop usage (web browsing, delivering presentations and the like) feels as snappy as I can care for.
Hats off to the aarch64-laptops group (https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/) that have put so much work in getting this hardware to the level of support it currently has!
I can only expect newer Snapdragon laptops to be even better. Hopefully the distributors will have a decent amount of hardware support.
Microsoft will in my opinion never help to popularize ARM on desktop, maybe Google some day. Said that even with Google i feel that that ship has sailed. As for the impression of Microsoft helping to standardise things. If you are a monopoly then you are the standard and that is about it. As for open vs lock-down platforms and ARM, that is rather debatable. True you can build your own hardware with ARM, after paying royalties, and if we look at Apple and ARM. It’s one of the most if not the most lock-down platform intended for general consumers in existence. It’s worst then Wintel.
Geck,
Not sure how it compares to Wintel of recent times.
However, mac hardware can run Linux:
https://asahilinux.org/about/
Not that Apple is helping with it of course.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft locks down the ARM laptops (and desktops?) to Windows-only and restrict software to the Microsoft Store.
I doubt Microsoft will have any particular input
They already have a ARM windows version they with their surface line. And that probably shows how things will go.
My expectation is this will go like all other wintel hardware and be driver/market driven. Will a manufacturer Want to release their ARM code so open source might make driver for them, or will they just make and release drivers for windows? I expect the later.
I doubt Microsoft will have that much input in that part and let the manufacturers deal with it.
I wouldn’t hold my breath so far. This article is pretty pessimistic : https://semiaccurate.com/2024/04/24/qualcomm-is-cheating-on-their-snapdragon-x-elite-pro-benchmarks/
Yeah… thats not good. I’ll wait for launch of purchasable products and benchmarks, reviews but thats a real reason for concern and an argument for Apple. If only Mac OS wasn’t as non ideal for my use cases.
I believe perhaps many of the designers of these ARM devices really are enthusiastic to see them widely supported, but I can’t help my impressions that, for all their laudable efforts they are more in a nature of engineers left unsupervised, than a product strategy.
(podcast – 16:10 https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/latenightlinux/LAD36.mp3 for some background I thought was interesting).
Product strategy, last time around (I have an RT device), when they had all the choices to make and were determined to make all the wrong ones, left us with only these approaches to take –
https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/windows-rt/jailbreak-exploits
The old hardware, even now is fast enough for many uses.
I will be happy not to get what I expect. But if the lesson learned from 2014 (when indeed apps `could’ only be installed from the store), is that they simply weren’t locked down, enough; it will still fundamentally fail, to us (and deserve it). And that’s if it gets close to qualcomm’s claims.
Apple at least launched with ‘the best’ cpu to kickstart their product range, and they’re basically still there. Run Asahi on one of them.
If there’s an open bootloader, my eyes are too.
If i am moving to ARM, i am not bringing the dirt that is windows with me. NO WAY!
When you move to a new house, do you also bring with you the sewage?
NaGERST,
I share your dislike of windows, especially with the direction it’s been going down. However as Thom was saying, the standardization that microsoft requires of vendors can actually be extremely valuable to linux as well. Even if I have no intention of using windows, I welcome anyone who is able to standardize ARM so long (obviously as the hardware isn’t actually locked down, in which case I;d have to strongly criticize it).
If I’m moving to ARM (I need to see clearer benefits than I’m currently seeing), I still want to be able to run legacy x86/x64 binaries, that I don’t have the luxury of recompiling. This means, the ARM chips have to be a LOT faster than similar x86 chips in the same power envelop (that’s the benefit I’m not really seeing yet), or they have to have special modes similar to what Apple does in its chips to support legacy x86. Are either of these the situation with these new chips? If not, it’s as it has been for the last decade – dead in the water.
Also – yeah, why would I run Windows? Bleh!
CaptainN-,
I understand each of these statements in isolation, but taken together I don’t really miss x86 at all when I’m using linux. I’m curious what is it that you need x86 for? I know the most obvious reason is wine/proton/steam, just wondering if you had a different reason.
It occurred to me you might be running x86 VMs. I need VMs but it’s usually only on servers, not on laptops.
I’m hoping the age of RISC is finally here. Always sitting in the background, Sparc, Power, HP, Arm….
X86 has been stale for a long time. Stable, but stale.
We’ve come a long way from the likes of the atom and Via socs. The iPhone 14 matches most desktop computers of the 2010s in real world benchmarks. The high end first gen M chips blow the FX 9590 away.
A long way in less than 10 years. And that shows something: AMD64 was an innovation, but a dead end. RISC continues to grow, expand, and surpass.
Here’s hoping