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Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

arstechnica.com

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Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#21

Post by mtgx »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #11

> With a Snapdragon inside your PC, you'll no longer need Wi-Fi to fetch your latest e-mail and catch up on Twitter. Instead, you'll be able to get online wherever there's cellular connectivity. I'm not buying the optimism, especially not in the US. The cellular data is still horribly limited. In Canada it is even worse. The "unlimited" plan is surging back, but it has automatic throttling at varying points. Oh and s…

Yeah, I'm not really buying the LTE being the "killer feature" thing either. I hope Qualcomm is not betting the farm on that. Its ARM processors will have to stand on their own feet in regards to performance alone. Few people buy their laptops based on LTE support, and although I do believe it could become more popular in the future, I don't think it will have a fast pick-up, with or without Qualcomm's promotion of LTE laptops.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#22

Post by drzaiusapelord »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #11

> With a Snapdragon inside your PC, you'll no longer need Wi-Fi to fetch your latest e-mail and catch up on Twitter. Instead, you'll be able to get online wherever there's cellular connectivity. I'm not buying the optimism, especially not in the US. The cellular data is still horribly limited. In Canada it is even worse. The "unlimited" plan is surging back, but it has automatic throttling at varying points. Oh and s…

To MS's credit, Win10 does have a metered connection mode that tries to save data.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/633571e5-...

Not sure how this is worse than what Android or iPhone do. My apps are constantly chatting on the internet and I have zero visibility over it and any attempt to control it involves a lot of behind the scenes controls not obvious to the end user.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#23

Post by johnhattan »

al2o3cr wrote: post #18

Asus, HP, and Lenovo are all planning to introduce Snapdragon Mobile PC systems at some unspecified time in the future, for some unspecified price. In other news, today at the Vaporware Expo every computer manufacturer announced plans to release a new device featuring unspecified hardware at some unspecified time in the future for an unspecified price.

My first impression was "Oh great. The only thing we'll ever see from this is a bunch of luxurious overpriced Surface-branded hardware."

At least if they're sharing the spec with other manufacturers, we'll possibly get some reasonably priced hardware.

Myself, I'm crossing my fingers for some Raspberry Pi-class machines that'll work with this.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#24

Post by pawadu »

mtgx wrote: post #20
walterbell wrote: post #10

> the new operating system will include x86 emulation, giving it the ability to run 32-bit Windows desktop applications unmodified Is this emulation done with a combination of hardware & software?

How would hardware emulation even work? Wouldn't it mean Qualcomm would have to support the x86 instructions on its ARM chip? You may be thinking of how the Android emulator supports hardware acceleration for emulation, but that's just because your laptop has an x86 chip in it and the emulator is actually serving you the x86 image of Android, not the ARM one, so the "emulation" is more like Apple's "native simulation…

> How would hardware emulation even work?

Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Crusoe

In fact, most high-performance CPUs be it ARM or AMD or Intel do instruction translation internally.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#25

Post by sbarre »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #11

> With a Snapdragon inside your PC, you'll no longer need Wi-Fi to fetch your latest e-mail and catch up on Twitter. Instead, you'll be able to get online wherever there's cellular connectivity. I'm not buying the optimism, especially not in the US. The cellular data is still horribly limited. In Canada it is even worse. The "unlimited" plan is surging back, but it has automatic throttling at varying points. Oh and s…

Hasn't this market for small/light/cheap "net PCs" been proven out by Chromebooks though?

I know this isn't exactly the same thing, and the baked-in LTE is an interesting feature, but I feel like this is Microsoft going after that market specifically..

I know that if the price point was low enough, I'd get one of these as a travel machine, especially if I can get it onto my "share everything" data plan and split the usage between it and my phone ..

I already tether my Macbook Pro to my phone when I'm travelling and need on-the-go internet anyways, so it would amount to the same thing.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#26

Post by wyldfire »

I look forward to learning more about this product. I love that we're moving non-x86 into mainstream consumer products like this (and not limited to low-end chromebooks, e.g.).

ARM SoCs lack the backward compatible x86 BIOS-style bootstrap. This is great because it's kinda crazy to think about booting into stuff like MBR, real mode, etc in 2017. But this is bad because without good standards it's really tricky to have a generic installer for another OS. Also, all or nearly all ARM SoCs have signed bootloaders. Great: less fear of a rootkit/virus hiding in my system. Awful: often used to protect subsidies or other business model hijinks; can't install an alternate OS.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#27

Post by 52-6F-62 »

mtgx wrote: post #21
kevin_b_er wrote: post #11

> With a Snapdragon inside your PC, you'll no longer need Wi-Fi to fetch your latest e-mail and catch up on Twitter. Instead, you'll be able to get online wherever there's cellular connectivity. I'm not buying the optimism, especially not in the US. The cellular data is still horribly limited. In Canada it is even worse. The "unlimited" plan is surging back, but it has automatic throttling at varying points. Oh and s…

Yeah, I'm not really buying the LTE being the "killer feature" thing either. I hope Qualcomm is not betting the farm on that. Its ARM processors will have to stand on their own feet in regards to performance alone. Few people buy their laptops based on LTE support, and although I do believe it could become more popular in the future, I don't think it will have a fast pick-up, with or without Qualcomm's promotion of L…

I definitely think it will be popular in the future. It depends on who wins the race for ubiquitous network coverage, though.

Google, Facebook, and SpaceX have all moved to initiate programs to install global high speed wifi access.

This is probably the last edge chance for cellular network companies in the long term. If wifi hits first, with projects like Google home offering free calling as well as other ip-phone services I think we could see those companies begin to fall.

I'm taking the rather long view, though.

For average, non-power users, I could see these being quite popular -- especially if they can handle Windows 10, MS Office, some light Photoshop, and fast internet. Otherwise I wouldn't mind one to turn into a highly portable Linux machine -- stars in my eyes, and all that.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#28

Post by disconnected »

mtgx wrote: post #16
Noctix wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically an emulator though; it will be quite slow.

We don't know yet. Overhead could be something like 5% or 25%. We'll see when the reviews come. For what it's worth, it seems to run x86 apps just fine in Microsoft's own demo (keep in mind it's still a mobile ARM processor, so performance will be similar to Atom/Celeron/Pentium, rather than Core i5, etc). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U

I don't trust product demos, movie trailers nor press releases, so I'll reserve my enthusiasm until someone on the "real world" has had the chance to get their hands on this.

What I know is this: ARM emulation via QEMU on my core i7 was pretty slow last I tried it. Not unusably slow, but still slow. And I have tons of ram and a fat CPU.

These laptops, especially if they are made on the cheap side, won't have tons of RAM and a fat CPU. Unless Microsoft pulled some magic tricks, I don't see this emulation being usable.

But I could be wrong.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#29

Post by paulftw »

al2o3cr wrote: post #18

Asus, HP, and Lenovo are all planning to introduce Snapdragon Mobile PC systems at some unspecified time in the future, for some unspecified price. In other news, today at the Vaporware Expo every computer manufacturer announced plans to release a new device featuring unspecified hardware at some unspecified time in the future for an unspecified price.

Any threats to Intel's (almost?) monopoly on laptops/desktops is a good thing.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#30

Post by DCKing »

pawadu wrote: post #24
mtgx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would hardware emulation even work? Wouldn't it mean Qualcomm would have to support the x86 instructions on its ARM chip? You may be thinking of how the Android emulator supports hardware acceleration for emulation, but that's just because your laptop has an x86 chip in it and the emulator is actually serving you the x86 image of Android, not the ARM one, so the "emulation" is more like Apple's "native simulation…

> How would hardware emulation even work? Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Crusoe In fact, most high-performance CPUs be it ARM or AMD or Intel do instruction translation internally.

Nvidia makes an architecture (Denver [1]) that is made by former Transmeta people and is in many ways a direct successor to this chip. In its current forms, Denver is implemented to execute ARMv8 instructions, but it could in theory execute x86 just the same. Now it's performing its internal exotic VLIW instructions by performing ARM "hardware emulation", but it could do x86 "hardware emulation" just the same.

Qualcomm uses a less exotic architecture in their chips so that's not an option for them.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver

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