Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU • Hacker News Board

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#171

Post by jeroenhd » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #168

Here's my big question: are there datasheets/programmers manuals available or is this yet another proprietary mess of a SoC that ships undocumented Linux drivers with binary blobs? No thanks. I will not spend money on hardware no one can reliably patch or write drivers for. I also want other operating system maintainers to be able to write drivers and get booting.

I haven't dug deep, but it looks like Qualcomm has been working on merging code into the Linux kernel: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qualcomm-X2-Elite-Linux-8EG5

With them only merging upstream now, it'll be a while before you can actually use Linux on these devices. You can build your own kernel from upstream, but it's probably a better idea to wait until Arch or Gentoo package the necessary pre-configured kernels.

From what I can tell, the Elite SoCs are a lot less outdated-semi-proprietary-Linux-fork-y than many other Qualcomm chips.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#172

Post by GeekyBear » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:40 PM UTC

NaomiLehman wrote: post #141

hmottestad wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like some benchmarks have started leaking: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Snapdragon-8-Elite-Gen-5-perfo... Mind you, Geekerwan managed to push the A19 Pro to 4019 in Geekbench 6 by using active cooling. https://youtu.be/Y9SwluJ9qPI

Today I learned that people are overclocking phone CPUs/SoCs

Active cooling just means adding a fan.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#173

Post by ack_complete » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

neobrain wrote: post #135

ack_complete wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> People who have worked on the Windows x64 emulator claim that TSO isn't as much of a deal as claimed This is a misinterpretation of what the author wrote! There is a real and significant performance impact in emulating x86 TSO semantics on non-TSO hardware. What the author argues is that enabling TSO process-wide (like macOS does with Rosetta) resolves this impact but it carries counteracting overhead in non-emulat…

How is it a misinterpretation? To re-quote that last sentence:

> In my opinion, TSO is a red herring that isn't really improving performance, but it sounds nice on paper.

That's the author directly saying that TSO isn't the major emulation performance gain that people think it is. You're correct that there are countering effects between TSO's benefits to the emulated code vs. the negative effects on the emulator and other non-emulated code in the same process that are fine running non-TSO, but to users, this distinction doesn't matter. All that matters is the performance of emulated program as a whole.

As for the volatile metadata, you're correct that MSVC inserts additional data to aid the emulation. What's not so great is that:

- It was basically an almost undocumented, silent addition to MSVC.

- In some cases, it will slow down the generated x64 code slightly by adding NOPs where necessary to disambiguate the volatile access metadata.

- It only affects code statically compiled with a recent version of MSVC (late VS2019 or later). It doesn't help executables compiled with non-MSVC compilers like Clang, nor any JIT code, nor is there any documentation indicating how to support either of these cases.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#174

Post by TheCondor » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

It looks like Lenovo and others are starting to get NUCs/MiniPCs out with these. I'd love to have one of these for Proxmox.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#175

Post by Novosell » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

jasoneckert wrote: post #161

adrr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they added low power cores to it, its probably isn't great. Chip design was for originally for datacenters.

If you read anything online, you'll realize that the battery life 'is' great. For example, LTT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFMTJm3vmh0

Reading youtube videos are ya?

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#176

Post by rcoder » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

lazzurs wrote: post #156

Framework wen?

I’m a huge Framework fan: preordered the 13 and Desktop, have done mainboard + LCD upgrades on personal and work machines, etc. Likewise, I’ve used ARM machines as general-purpose Linux workstations, starting with the PineBook Pro up to my current Radxa Orion. It seems like a great combo!

Unfortunately, firmware and OS support are hard for any vendor, especially one as small (compared to, say, Lenovo or HP) and fast-moving as Framework. Spreading that to yet another ISA and driver ecosystem seems like it would drag down quality and pace of updates on every other system, which IMHO would be a bad trade.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#177

Post by ed_blackburn » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

I just want an ARM Linux MiniMac equivalent. At a reasonable price.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#178

Post by electroly » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 3:09 PM UTC

HumanOstrich wrote: post #170

electroly wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nested virtualization is not required for WSL2 or Hyper-V VMs. It's only required if you want to run VMs from within WSL2 (Windows 11 only) or Hyper-V VMs within Hyper-V VMs.

Yeah, I understand this and said it correctly in my post. We need nested virtualization to run WSL2 inside a VM: this is a Linux VM inside a Windows VM inside a Windows host. WSL2 is already a VM, so if you want to run that inside a VM, it requires nested virtualization. Nested virtualization is one of those features that people don't know about unless they need it, and they find out for the first time when they get an error message from Hyper-V. If you have a development VM on a system without nested virtualization, you're stuck with WSL1 inside that VM, or using a "sibling" Linux VM that you set up manually (the latter was my actual solution to this issue).

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#179

Post by antonvs » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 3:10 PM UTC

menaerus wrote: post #158

timschmidt wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple also implemented x86 memory semantics for aarch64 to allow for simpler translation and faster execution.

In HW?

Not OP, but I don’t think so. Rosetta inserts ARM barrier instructions in its generated code to emulate x86 memory ordering.

Re: Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

#180

Post by boguscoder » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 3:12 PM UTC

I wonder how much intended audience for these chips cares about “elite” and “ultra-premium” buzz wording. I’m sure it’s a good chip but cmon, it’s not for TikTok watching..