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Snapdragon X2 Elite ARM Laptop CPU

(www.qualcomm.com)
163 points wmf | 5 comments | 24 Sep 25 22:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.453s | source
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jasoneckert ◴[24 Sep 25 22:44 UTC] No.45366812[source]▶
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 ;-)

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typpilol ◴[24 Sep 25 22:50 UTC] No.45366858[source]▶
How's the compatibility? Are there any apps that don't work that are critical?
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electroly ◴[24 Sep 25 23:09 UTC] No.45367015[source]▶
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 might be mistaken on this]. Creation of a recovery drive for a Snapdragon-based Surface (which you have to do from a working Snapdragon-based Surface) requires typing your serial code into a Microsoft website, then downloading a .zip of drivers that you manually overwrite onto the recovery media that Windows 11 creates for you.

Day-to-day, it's all fine, but I may be returning to x64 next time around. I'm not sure that I'm receiving an offsetting benefit for these downsides. Battery life isn't something that matters for me.

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brokencode ◴[24 Sep 25 23:12 UTC] No.45367050{3}[source]▶
That’s brutal.. I wonder why the Apple Silicon transition seemed so much smoother in comparison.
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1. bitwize ◴[24 Sep 25 23:15 UTC] No.45367087{4}[source]▶
Because it was handled by the only tech company left that actually cares about the end user. Not exactly a mystery.
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2. okanat ◴[24 Sep 25 23:31 UTC] No.45367230[source]▶
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 intriguing and horrifying. They, however, didn't put any effort into ensuring Qualcomm is implementing the hardware side well. Unlike Apple, Qualcomm has no experience in making good desktop systems and it shows.

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3. cmxch ◴[25 Sep 25 00:00 UTC] No.45367509[source]▶
Given how Apple makes it maintenance hostile and secures against their end customers, no.
4. andsoitis ◴[25 Sep 25 04:07 UTC] No.45369179[source]▶
> 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.

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5. okanat ◴[25 Sep 25 16:48 UTC] No.45375268{3}[source]▶
I didn't say otherwise. They probably realized they can pull a complete desktop CPU design off at the latest with iPad, probably earlier. They were probably not happy using Intel chips and their business strategy has always been controlling and limiting HW capabilities as much as possible.