Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite - looks like the Windows world’s answer to Apple Silicon

desiibond said:
Not right now. Most enterprise laptops fall under 50k-80k price bracket and they all need solid enterprise software support. Anything above 1L, it is mainly MacBook Pros. We need proper laptops with solid enterprise software support and 3-5 year support. LTS is a major factor here. We may see some traction in premium Windows laptops given to executives at high level who are mainly into PPTs and meetings. For them, massive battery life and thin profile will be perfect.
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Depends on industry. Can’t generalise.
 
alekhkhanna said:
Depends on industry. Can’t generalise.
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This is from my experience of working in
Cisco
Wipro
Concentrix
Texas Instruments
Standard Chartered

I am not generalizing. While startups splurge on expensive laptops/Macbooks, majority of corporates keep hardware costs low. For companies that are there for long time, MS integration is a must. I never see these companies try something new or be early adopter. Throughout these 20 years or so, I used laptops that are around 70k-80k (mostly Dells and Thinkpads). Some wont even spend more than 50k. Many non-remote-working industries still rely on desktops. There are many of my friend's spouses (in non-IT) who got desktops delivered to their home during Covid (administrative sector in various industries).
 
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desiibond said:
This is so true. Also, M1 looks insanely fast because Intel chips that time were really bad. Throttling, overheating, very bad battery etc etc. M1 came when Intel was at its worst. The timing was perfect. Intel CPUs improved a lot now (especially the new Core 5 and Core 7 U chips). This is the reason why we are seeing very minute difference between X chips and Intel chips.
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yep, it was around the 10th gen when M1 was released? it was one of the crappiest gens in laptop space, what with a below par performance increase and increased thermal issues. Seeing AMD eating up their market share and the popularity of M1 lit a fire under their asses.
desiibond said:
But, one thing is for sure.The future is WoA. Microsoft is going to support WoA in future windows updates/versions at the expense of x86. Only the gaming and heavy productivity work will remain on x86.

Right now, students and developers are the biggest gainers from this shift.
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what ARM/SD should instead do is target Linux users, instead of focusing on WoA, and they dont even need to do much, just release open source firmware for their chips, its been a while since any AMD/Intel have done it (last I remember it was during the core 2 duo days), that in of itself would massively increase SD's adoption, getting all the benefits for ARM on linux is a wet dream for me, we would finally get decent battery life if this happens along with perf.

Linux on laptops is actually pretty crap to run, what with driver issues, shortcuts not working and not getting even passable battery backup.
desiibond said:
I am not generalizing. While startups splurge on expensive laptops/Macbooks, majority of corporates keep hardware costs low. For companies that are there for long time, MS integration is a must. I never see these companies try something new or be early adopter. Throughout these 20 years or so, I used laptops that are around 70k-80k (mostly Dells and Thinkpads). Some wont even spend more than 50k. Many non-remote-working industries still rely on desktops. There are many of my friend's spouses (in non-IT) who got desktops delivered to their home during Covid (administrative sector in various industries).
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definitely, its only devs who get the new shiny shit, and thats because Apple is not the best at supporting older hardware and the fact MacOS is UNIX based and might as well be linux for all the things that matters practically along with support for software like MDMs which is a must for any big corpo.
 
How does it compare to the Apple M Series chips? Looks like somewhere between M3 and M3 Pro? Not a bad starting point. I wonder if dedicated GPUs can give these windows arm machines an edge over macbooks. This snapdragon chip with say an nvidia rtx 4070m say would make for a very capable machine in a good package.
 
altair21 said:
what ARM/SD should instead do is target Linux users, instead of focusing on WoA, and they dont even need to do much, just release open source firmware for their chips, its been a while since any AMD/Intel have done it (last I remember it was during the core 2 duo days), that in of itself would massively increase SD's adoption, getting all the benefits for ARM on linux is a wet dream for me, we would finally get decent battery life if this happens along with perf.
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Intel and AMD have closed source components, for sure, but they're much more open than Qualcomm in general. The part that got closed source after core2duo iirc are the boot firmware things? Or Intel ME, not sure. But overall, they're both much bigger contributors and generally have a lot of open-source support.

altair21 said:
getting all the benefits for ARM on linux is a wet dream for me, we would finally get decent battery life if this happens along with perf.

Linux on laptops is actually pretty crap to run, what with driver issues, shortcuts not working and not getting even passable battery backup.
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Not sure about what laptops you use, but I usually get over 6h of battery life in mine (Ideapad Flex 5) with usually full brightness. Windows' gets under 4h, though. Not saying linux has better battery support, or that the laptop lasts long, just saying that it's actually good enough battery backup for me. As for driver issues, it actually worked better than Windows' OOTB, except for the fingerprint driver which has no support at all (blame Goodix for that, I guess).


I don't think Qualcomm will openly support Linux though? They're very closed and hostile to FOSS from what I've heard. I expect Intel and AMD to continue being the linux-platform for consumer laptop users wanting to run Linux.

I'll see how the situation plays out, tbh. I expect newer AMD and Intel chips to last even longer (hopefully this Elite X release makes them even more competitive), and at that point, maybe I'll consider buying another laptop with x86. Unless, of course, Qualcomm has a change of heart and has embraced Linux and FOSS.

Though, my view might be biased. My thinking of Qualcomm hating on FOSS is back from like 2021 or some. I don't have any Qualcomm device that still gets proper kernel updates after 2 years or so. Meanwhile, my 12-yr old Intel CPU still gets support, and even older AMD GPU recently got Vulkan support. That's the kind of thing I really like, and Qualcomm really doesn't do anything to make me trust them on that note.
 
KAKAN said:
Not sure about what laptops you use, but I usually get over 6h of battery life in mine (Ideapad Flex 5) with usually full brightness. Windows' gets under 4h, though. Not saying linux has better battery support, or that the laptop lasts long, just saying that it's actually good enough battery backup for me. As for driver issues, it actually worked better than Windows' OOTB, except for the fingerprint driver which has no support at all (blame Goodix for that, I guess).
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admittedly its been a while since I used linux on a laptop so things would definitely have changed, plus it depends from OEM to OEM, lenovo has an excellent track record when it comes to support for linux,
KAKAN said:
I don't think Qualcomm will openly support Linux though? They're very closed and hostile to FOSS from what I've heard. I expect Intel and AMD to continue being the linux-platform for consumer laptop users wanting to run Linux.
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oh I know, its just my wishful thinking, but honestly thats probably the only way they can breakthrough for consumers, Microsoft will keep being microsoft until push comes to a shove and judging by the current state of WoA and the popularity of Asahi, I bet there will be many (including me) who'll jump on the SD bandwagon in a heartbeat.
KAKAN said:
I'll see how the situation plays out, tbh. I expect newer AMD and Intel chips to last even longer (hopefully this Elite X release makes them even more competitive), and at that point, maybe I'll consider buying another laptop with x86. Unless, of course, Qualcomm has a change of heart and has embraced Linux and FOSS.

Though, my view might be biased. My thinking of Qualcomm hating on FOSS is back from like 2021 or some. I don't have any Qualcomm device that still gets proper kernel updates after 2 years or so. Meanwhile, my 12-yr old Intel CPU still gets support, and even older AMD GPU recently got Vulkan support. That's the kind of thing I really like, and Qualcomm really doesn't do anything to make me trust them on that note.
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I'm not aware of anything that Qualcomm has done which is against FOSS so I'll take your word for it, as for kernel updates, Qualcomm has up till now been focused majorly on mobile devices, there's no point releasing kernel updates for them when the OEM itself wont even bother to update them, unless you are talking about their earlier attempt to bring ARM to laptops.
 
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