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Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

qualcomm.com

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Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#111

Post by someNameIG »

brokencode wrote: post #31
electroly wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surface Pro 11 owner here. SQL Server won't install on ARM without hacks. Hyper-V does not support nested virtualization on ARM. Most games are broken with unplayable graphical glitches with Qualcomm video drivers, but fortunately not all. Most Windows recovery tools do not support ARM: no Media Creation Tool, no Installation Assistant, and recovery drives created on x64 machines aren't compatible [EDIT: see reply, I…

That’s brutal.. I wonder why the Apple Silicon transition seemed so much smoother in comparison.

Every Mac transitions to ARM, only a very small amount of Windows PCs are running ARM. SO right now there's not an large user base to incentivise software to be written for it.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#112

Post by evanjrowley »

otterley wrote: post #13
evanjrowley wrote: post #10

Today Qualcomm CEO stated[0] that the combination of Android and ChromeOS, e.g. Android Computers, will be available on Snapdragon laptops. Maybe these X2 CPUs will be in those laptops. [0] https://www.techradar.com/phones/android/ive-seen-it-its-inc...

Does anyone buy these?

If you look at the verified hardware list for ChromeOS Flex[0], you can get an idea of what ChromeOS devices are being deployed for. Apart from education and companies that use Google Workspace, there's a lot of ChromeOS devices deployed as kiosks and call center computers. This is reflected not only in obscure documentation, but also in the marketing material[1].

The "enterprise" managability and reduced attack surface is driving Google to jack up Chromebook prices. The "Chromebook Plus" models are nearing the same price as a midrange Dell Inspiron, HP OmniBook, or Lenovo IdeaPad. You may have also noticed M4 MacBook Airs can be bought for the price of an iPhone 17, and I suspect that's partially a response from Apple to the Chromebook price increases. Buying a $600 Chromebook might have been sane for someone tired of Microsoft and not interested in a $1000 Macbook Air, but in 2025, with the Macbook Air prices going down significantly[2], Chromebooks are not as appealing to regular consumers (different story for businesses).

[0] https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094?sjid...

[1] https://chromeos.google/business-solutions/use-case/contact-...

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-m4-macbook-air-is-selling-...

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#113

Post by eigenform »

wmf wrote: post #88
eigenform wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprising considering I haven't seen a programming manual or actual datasheet for these things in the first place. Usually helps if you tell the community how to interact with your hardware ..

That ended 10-20 years ago. The best you can hope for now is vendor-provided drivers.

Not even true: Arm, Intel, AMD, and most other hardware vendors (who are actively making an effort to support Linux on their parts) actually publish useful[^1] documentation.

edit: Also, not knocking the Qualcomm folks working on Linux here, just observing that the lack of hardware documentation doesn't exactly help reeling in contributors.

[^1]: Maybe in some cases not as useful as it could be when bringing up some OS on hardware, but certainly better than nothing

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#114

Post by evanjrowley »

electroly wrote: post #30
typpilol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's the compatibility? Are there any apps that don't work that are critical?

Surface Pro 11 owner here. SQL Server won't install on ARM without hacks. Hyper-V does not support nested virtualization on ARM. Most games are broken with unplayable graphical glitches with Qualcomm video drivers, but fortunately not all. Most Windows recovery tools do not support ARM: no Media Creation Tool, no Installation Assistant, and recovery drives created on x64 machines aren't compatible [EDIT: see reply, I…

On the bright side, there's a good chance that Windows on ARM is not well supported by malware. There's a situation where you benefit from things being broken.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#115

Post by bri3d »

ack_complete wrote: post #95
bri3d wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have benchmarks for Rosetta with TSO vs the Linux version with no-TSO? I guess it might be a bit challenging to achieve apples to apples, although you could run a test benchmark on OSX and then Asahi on the same hardware, I think? I've always been curious about just how much Rosetta magic is the implementation and how much is TSO; Prism in Windows 24H2 is also no slouch. If the recompiler is decent at tra…

People who have worked on the Windows x64 emulator claim that TSO isn't as much of a deal as claimed, other factors like enhanced hardware flag conversion support and function call optimizations play a significant role too: http://www.emulators.com/docs/abc_exit_xta.htm

This is more like what I’d expect! This is a great article too, thank you, this is the kind of thing I come to HN for :)

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#116

Post by andsoitis »

okanat wrote: post #45
bitwize wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it was handled by the only tech company left that actually cares about the end user. Not exactly a mystery.

Having a narrow product line helped Apple a lot. Similarly being able to deprecate things faster than business-oriented Microsoft. Apple also controls silicon implementation. So they could design hardware features that enabled low to zero overhead x86 emulation. All in all Rosetta 2 was a pretty good implementation. Microsoft is trying to retain binary compatibility across architectures with ARM64EC stuff which is in…

> Apple also controls silicon implementation.

People sometimes say that as if came without foresight or cost or other complexities in their business.

No, in the end they are hyper strategic and it pays off.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#119

Post by dudeinjapan »

ksec wrote: post #92

It doesn't say which generation of core is it. Are they the same as the one in Elite Gen 5? Has Microsoft actually pushed for the ARM changes? Because I don't believe Qualcomm can do it alone.

FOSS support for Windows ARM has been hampered by Github (owned by MS) not supporting free Windows ARM runners. They may be finally getting their act together but are years late to the game.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#120

Post by musicale »

unconed wrote: post #51
brokencode wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s brutal.. I wonder why the Apple Silicon transition seemed so much smoother in comparison.

Apple already went through this before with PowerPC -> x86. They had universal binaries, Rosetta, etc. to build off of. And they got to do it with their own hardware, which includes some special instructions intended to help with emulation.

> Apple already went through this before with PowerPC -> x86

Not to mention 68K -> PowerPC.

Rhapsody supported x86, and I think during the PowerPC era Apple kept creating x86 builds of OS X just in case. This may have helped to keep things like byte order dependencies from creeping in.

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