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Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

qualcomm.com

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Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#121

Post by magic_hamster »

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.

Apple had a great translation layer (Rosetta) that allows you to run x64 code, and it's very fast. However, Apple being Apple, they are going to discontinue this feature in 2026, that's when we'll see some Apple users really struggling to go fully arm, or just ditch their MacBook. I know if Apple does follow through with killing Rosetta, I'll do the latter.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#124

Post by TiredOfLife »

zamadatix wrote: post #90
nulld3v wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that's due to the GPU and not due to Prism, because they basically just took a mobile GPU and stuffed it into a laptop chip. Generally performance seems to be on par with whatever a typical flagship Android devices can do. Desktop games that have mobile ports generally seem to run well, emulation is pretty solid too (e.g. Dolphin). Warcraft III runs OK-ish.

The GPUs don't go toe-to-toe with current gen desktop GPUs but they should be significantly better than the GTX 650, a mid range desktop GPU from 2012, the game (2019) lists as recommended. It does sound like something odd is going on than just lack of hardware. https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Snapdragon+X+... https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+6...

That something odd is called GPU drivers. Even Intel struggled (they recently announced that they are dropping all gpu driver older than Alchemist development) to get games running on their iGpus

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#125

Post by pjmlp »

electroly wrote: post #49
viraptor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it? From that list: SQL server doesn't work on Mac and there's no Apple equivalent, virtualisation is built into the system so that kind of worked but with restrictions, games barely exist Mac so a few that cared did the ports but it's still minimal. There's basically no installation media for Macs in the same way as windows in general. What I'm trying to say is - the scope is very different / smaller there. Ther…

Out of the gate, Apple silicon lacked nested virtualization, too. They added it in the M3 chip and macOS 15. Macs have different needs than Windows though; I think it's less of a big deal there. On Windows we need it for running WSL2 inside a VM.

On Windows nested virtualization already existed before WSL, all the kernel and device drivers security features introduced on Windows 10, and made always enabled on Windows 11, require running Hyper-V, which is a type 1 hypervisor.

So it is rather easy having to deal with nested virtualization, even those of us that seldom use WSL.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#126

Post by daoistmonk »

leidenfrost wrote: post #104
kwanbix wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Apple controls verything vs Windows/Linux world where hundres (thouthands?) of OEM create things?

I agree with you on the Windows side. Linux is different. Decades of being tied to x86 made the OS way more coupled with the processor family than one might think. Decades of bugfixes, optimizations and workarounds were made assuming a standard BIOS and ACPI standards. Specially on the desktop side. That, and the fact that SoC vendors are decades behind on driver quality. They remind me of the NDiswrapper era. Also,…

my asahi linux m1 mac book air would disagree with you

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#127

Post by fulafel »

electroly wrote: post #49
viraptor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it? From that list: SQL server doesn't work on Mac and there's no Apple equivalent, virtualisation is built into the system so that kind of worked but with restrictions, games barely exist Mac so a few that cared did the ports but it's still minimal. There's basically no installation media for Macs in the same way as windows in general. What I'm trying to say is - the scope is very different / smaller there. Ther…

Out of the gate, Apple silicon lacked nested virtualization, too. They added it in the M3 chip and macOS 15. Macs have different needs than Windows though; I think it's less of a big deal there. On Windows we need it for running WSL2 inside a VM.

I'd guess the M3 features aren't required for nested virtualization, and it was more of a sw design decision to only add the support when some helpful hardware features were shipped too. Eg here's nested virtualization support for ARM on Linux in 2017: https://lwn.net/Articles/728193/

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#128

Post by wtallis »

OptionOfT wrote: post #99
jasoneckert wrote: post #8

As someone who has used the Snapdragon X Elite (12 core Oryon) Dev Kit as a daily driver for the past year, I find this exciting. The X Elite performance still blows my mind today - so the new X2 Elite with 18 cores is likely going to be even more impressive from a performance perspective! I can't speak to the battery life, however, since it is dismal on my Dev Kit ;-)

Wait, you got one of those Dev kits? How? I thought they were all cancelled. Edit: apparently they did end up shipping.

They got cancelled after they started shipping, and even people who received the hardware got refunded.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#129

Post by pjmlp »

rossy wrote: post #72
makeitdouble wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people complaining about battery control and android emulation on linux, ChromeOS is a boon. You effectively get an actual Linux distro + most of android, with a side of Chrome. It's way closer to "a real computer" than an iPad for instance, and only loses to the Surface Pro/Z13 line in term of versatility IMHO. It really wasn't bad, my only deal breakers were keyboard remapping being non existent and the bluetoo…

I got a ChromeOS device a few years ago and it was great. I think they get an underserved bad reputation from being the locked-down devices you're forced to use in schools, but a personal ChromeOS device is a capable computer that can run any Android app or desktop Linux app. Though having said that, in the past year I've replaced ChromeOS with desktop Linux (postmarketOS) and I love it even more now. 4GB of RAM was…

Not really any, Crostini has plenty of restrictions.

Cool if one wants to CLI stuff alongside Web and Android apps, but that is as far as it goes for GNU/Linux, with many yes but.

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/1792b43f...

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#130

Post by menaerus »

magic_hamster wrote: post #121
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 had a great translation layer (Rosetta) that allows you to run x64 code, and it's very fast. However, Apple being Apple, they are going to discontinue this feature in 2026, that's when we'll see some Apple users really struggling to go fully arm, or just ditch their MacBook. I know if Apple does follow through with killing Rosetta, I'll do the latter.

It's a transpiler that takes the x86-64 binary assembly and spits out the aarch64 assembly only on the first run AFAIK. This is then cached on storage for consecutive runs.
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