Qualcomm will try to have its Apple Silicon moment in PCs with “Snapdragon X”
We should learn more about Qualcomm's high-end Arm chip later this month.
I sincerely hope RISV-V usurps this proprietary bullshit sometime soon. Simply paying the royalties to use the ARM spec costs tens of millions in licensing alone.
RISCV would definitely be nicer but it's just a little early for it. Qualcomm have been using arm for ages so no doubt they're going to be more comfortable using that architecture compared to something that still doesn't have any support. It's going to take a while.
The miracle wasnt apple silicon it was the software transition. A hardware comoany cant pull it off. Windows arm is shit and for some reason nobody even considers the existence of linux.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Qualcomm's annual "Snapdragon Summit" is coming up later this month, and the company appears ready to share more about its long-planned next-generation Arm processor for PCs.
The company hasn't shared many specifics yet, but yesterday we finally got a name: "Snapdragon X," which is coming in 2024, and it may finally do for Arm-powered Windows PCs what Apple Silicon chips did for Macs a few years ago (though it's coming a bit later than Qualcomm had initially hoped).
But those chips have never quite been fast enough to challenge Intel's Core or AMD's Ryzen CPUs in mainstream laptops.
Any performance deficit is especially noticeable because many people will run at least a few apps designed for the x86 version of Windows, code that needs to be translated on the fly for Arm processors.
Even if Qualcomm delivers an Arm chip that's significantly faster and more power-efficient than its current offerings, there are still software hurdles to overcome.
In other words, they were negotiated based on Nuvia's then-stated focus on server CPUs, rather than high-volume processors for consumer PCs.
The original article contains 619 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Unless they can convince MS to release Windows for ARM this wont amount to anything. What holds back PC ARM is the fact that Microsoft isn't selling licenses of Windows for ARM.
Windows does actually have a Windows 11 version of ARM. The Thinkpad X13s for example does use it. It doesn't seem to be widely available though, maybe because it's experimental.
Even if they do, they'd still need a Rosetta-like translator. I don't see that happening any time soon.
