Qualcomm revealed X Elite's benchmark scores

[Bodhitree]

I find it odd that people would say that there is competition between Apple and Qualcomm on these products. It seems to me that is an error in thinking, people who want a Mac will get a Mac, and people who want a Windows laptop may now get Windows-on-ARM instead of Wintel.

Whether that will move the consumer-interest needle remains to be seen. I suspect they will be seen as “not as good as a Mac” by the Apple fans, and ”not as good as x86” by Wintel fans. They will have to make a very strong case to convince people to put up with emulation problems and such.

As far as I’m concerned, putting the 80W version out there is shooting themselves in the foot. They would make a much stronger case by putting the 23W version in a big chassis and pointing to the excellent battery life, and fighting the whole battle for market share on that front.

 

[leman]

TechTechPotato interviewed Gerard Williams and titled the video "Scary Faster". I wonder who came up with that title.

I don't like this interview. No tough or even obvious questions asked.

 

[Gudi]

I don't like this interview. No tough or even obvious questions asked.

So much self-aggrandizing for something that won’t even match Apple’s lineup from two years ago. ☺️

 

[dgdosen]

Was the size of these Oryon chips disclosed anywhere? Given the high wafer costs (and higher projections for wafer costs), I'm curious about the size of these chips vs M2/M3.

 

[leman]

Was the size of these Oryon chips disclosed anywhere? Given the high wafer costs (and higher projections for wafer costs), I'm curious about the size of these chips vs M2/M3.

SemiAccurate estimates the die size to be around 170mm2

Sources:
https://www.semiaccurate.com/2023/11/02/how-big-is-qualcomms-snapdragon-x-elite-soc/

 

[Chuckeee]

Any thoughts on whose machine this new Qualcomm chip will reside in? Do you think it will be a consumer product (vs an imbedded application)?

 

[leman]

Any thoughts on whose machine this new Qualcomm chip will reside in? Do you think it will be a consumer product (vs an imbedded application)?

It’s going to be premium laptops. I don’t remember whether Qualcomm is rolling their own laptop brand or partnering with someone…

 

[jdb8167]

It’s going to be premium laptops. I don’t remember whether Qualcomm is rolling their own laptop brand or partnering with someone…

Qualcomm had several laptop vendors as partners. What they demoed was their own prototypes though.

• Acer
• ASUS
• Dell
• HP
• HONOR
• Lenovo
• Microsoft Surface
• Samsung
• Xiaomi

Source

 

[Chuckeee]

Qualcomm had several laptop vendors as partners. What they demoed was their own prototypes though.

• Acer
• ASUS
• Dell
• HP
• HONOR
• Lenovo
• Microsoft Surface
• Samsung
• Xiaomi

Source

It is surprising to think Qualcomm will want to enter the retail laptop market.

 

[jdb8167]

It is surprising to think Qualcomm will want to enter the retail laptop market.

I doubt that they have any plans to release their own laptops. The prototypes are to have something to test first-silicon with.

 

[deconstruct60]

I doubt that they have any plans to release their own laptops. The prototypes are to have something to test first-silicon with.

Those are likely not 'prototypes' for very early testing. Those are likely 'reference designs'. Intel and AMD have reference logicboard / laptop designs that system vendors can license , modify (e.g, put into a different enclosures), and sell. It is a completed system baseline benchmark platform. A large block of the PC market consists of designs not 100% designed from scratch for every single model.

Like AMD/Intel, Qualcomm is working with a couple of major laptop assembly vendors. Pretty sure there was a slide with either Quanta or Pegatron or some other major laptop actual manufacturer that is a 'partner' on this also. *(**) So the vendors get a laptop and Qualcomm basically says yours should basically work as good as 'this' (or better).
[ Similar thing happens for GPU reference cards. AMD/Intel laptops. etc. ]


Not sure why there is 'doubt' spinning about which vendors Qualcomm is working with. It was all included in the summit in Hawaii video ( Lenovo , HP , Microsoft , and others all getting copious stage time. )

Here are the 9 PC makers supporting Qualcomm’s game-changing Snapdragon X Elite

Qualcomm wasn’t kidding about having many PC makers on board with its new powerhouse mobile processor, dubbed Oryon.

www.windowscentral.com

and


" .. The PC partners include Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, the Microsoft Surface brand, Samsung, and Xiaomi. Honor, a phone maker, also appeared at the Qualcomm Technology Summit here in Maui to announce its entry into the PC space — though as a Chinese phone maker, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll ship PCs into the U.S. market. ...
...
The number is surprising, because only three PC makers (Lenovo, Microsoft, and HP) have committed to supporting Snapdragon before for Windows on Arm PCs, through multiple generations. The others have not... "

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chip attracts unprecedented PC partnerships

Qualcomm has attracted a relatively massive number of PC makers who apparently will design laptops around its Snapdragon X Elite PC platform -- and games are part of the mix.

www.pcworld.com

With that many vendors Qualcomm will attract at least one of the major laptop makers ( most folks don't make their won. Apple certainly doesn't. )



(**) Found it. ODM Quanta , Compal, and Winstrom ( at approximately 1:15 )

Multiple UEFI vendors. Multiple USB vendors , etc. Not the number you would line up for 1-2 OEMs for 2-4 laptops designs. There is basically a larger foudational ecosystem of multiple suppliers here that need to put a foundation on. Qualcomm ordering up large orders of reference designs and having a substantially large number of internal folks using them, 'eating their own dogfood' , is a pretty good way of getting a solid, stable ecosystem released later.

Part of the delay between the summit (and those demos ) and 'release/ship' in mid '24 is the logistics of getting those large numbers of subcomponent vendors all lined up with more than a couple ODMs and more than several OEMs.

[ If Intel badly fumbles Meteor Lake (and Lunar Lake) then they are in deep doo-doo. Similar with wide rash of AMD APUs for 2024. ]

 

[jdb8167]

Those are likely not 'prototypes' for very early testing. Those are likely 'reference designs'.

Sure. Might be prototypes of reference designs though.

 

[deconstruct60]

Sure. Might be prototypes of reference designs though.

The external chassis are relatively generic. if made by Quanta/Compal/etc it is very likely there are a fair amount of common components across some specific Intel ( or probably AMD since no official Thunderbolt (USB4 ) ) metrics so OEM vendor like Lenovo can sell mostly the same thing with minor variations on logic boards.

Given the Intel/AMD additional design coupling , I doubt these are very early prototype reference designs. Meteor Lake is shipping in just a few weeks. AMD next gen stuff isn't that far behind. Remember this "Oryon" design is a bit 'late' ( at one point was projected to ship around now. So not to show up six months after Intel/AMD's incremental move. ). To give time for vendors who want to tweak the bill-of-material components on reference design to something 'custom' to what they want to do.... the reference design would need to be done at this point.
Those folks also need a couple of months to settle down their own stuff .

 

[Xiao_Xi]

I imagine Qualcomm will have paid Microsoft, not only for exclusivity, but also for a timely release of the next Windows.

Rumors say that Microsoft would release the next version of Windows in June, in time for Qualcomm's SoC.

Windows 12 will launch in June 2024 with a slew of AI PCs, according to Taiwan’s Commercial Times

Acer and Quanta rubbing their hands in anticipation.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[vigilant]

But they are shipping in 2024 right? right?
You just found an excellent excuse for Intel. Intel's 10nm in more closer than TSMC 7nm and not TSMC 5nm, so Intel should compare with 7nm chips shipped one or two years ago and wins most of them instead of the 5nm chips shipping at the same time. From your logic, any comparison using Zen4 to Intel Alderlake is prohibited because Intel uses a subpar process and Alderlake clearly wins 7nm Zen3 by a large margin and Intel wins AMD.

“Shipping in 2024” is an incredibly loaded statement. Another thing is Intel for a couple of years now has been using marketing to try to stop conversations about them being behind in fabrication. The whole ”we’re calling it Intel 7” is ridiculous, as the benefits of die shrink don’t really align with reality.

Intel is behind on fab (I think 10nm was 5 years late). They can call it whatever they want. Heck you can buy a low end Kia, put on a custom muffler to make it sound louder then the other cars that can actual go fast. But at the end of the day it’s still just louder.

 

[vigilant]

The next year is going to get very interesting. Are there diminishing returns down the ARM path into the future? Are chiplets going to make Apple have to rethink things? Either way, Snapdragon is impressive--and so is Apple's M-series.

I don’t think there are diminishing returns with ARM. Especially since Apple controls there own destiny and learns from their mistakes.

Just as an example, the M1 Ultra wasn’t a 2x multiplier that everyone expected. I think this is largely to do with the “UltraFusion” didn’t adequately provide enough bandwidth to keep both chips completely filled (Speculation). Clearly some lessons learned that brought the M3 Max within spitting distance of the M2 Ultra.

I expect the next version of M3 Ultra will probably improve the speculative lack of bandwidth that previous Mx Ultras have face.

 

[ricom2ger]

And it went quiet with this project. Are there any dev devices out? Like Apple had it with the iPhone Mac Mini.

 

[leman]

And it went quiet with this project. Are there any dev devices out? Like Apple had it with the iPhone Mac Mini.

There was a product announcement. The actual products are expected around summer 2024.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

it went quiet with this project.

Qualcomm's marketing department will keep the buzz going.

Qualcomm has compared the CPU to the new M3 chip, similarly claiming that its chip outperforms the leading ARM-compatible competitor for single-threaded CPU performance. Qualcomm also says the Oyron chip is 21% faster than the M3 in multi-core performance.

"The experience is not going to be the same because they’re running macOS and we’re running Windows, but in terms of hardware, which is the only thing we can control, it’s good hardware," Sascha Segan, senior public relations manager told Digital Trends.

Qualcomm claims new chips are 21% faster than Apple's M3 | Digital Trends

Qualcomm has tested its Oyron CPU in the Snapdragon X Elite chip against Apple's M3 chip and claims that its new chip outperforms the latest ARM-architecture.

www.digitaltrends.com

 

[leman]

Qualcomm's marketing department will keep the buzz going.

Qualcomm claims new chips are 21% faster than Apple's M3 | Digital Trends

Qualcomm has tested its Oyron CPU in the Snapdragon X Elite chip against Apple's M3 chip and claims that its new chip outperforms the latest ARM-architecture.

www.digitaltrends.com

Of course it is going to be faster than M3 in multi-core. It's a 12P-core design vs. 4P+4E design. Single-core though? Unlikely. They will be close though (assuming Oryon can actually maintain its boost speed).

 

[name99]

Of course it is going to be faster than M3 in multi-core. It's a 12P-core design vs. 4P+4E design. Single-core though? Unlikely. They will be close though (assuming Oryon can actually maintain its boost speed).

Exactly. Boasting about your multi-core performance is Junior League.
What's hard are
- single core performance
- multi-core performance/watt

But claims like this are valuable shibboleths in seeing whom to bother listening to and following...

 

[MrGunny94]

Sounds all good, but until we see some solid battery numbers and UNPLUGGED from various reviews sites I ain't believing anything.

I have too much traumas with Intel in the past

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Rumors say that Microsoft would release the next version of Windows in June, in time for Qualcomm's SoC.

Windows Central quotes Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon at Qualcomm's earnings call:

"We're tracking to the launch of products with this chipset tied with the next version of Microsoft Windows that has a lot of the Windows AI capabilities. We're still maintaining the same date, which is driven by Windows, which is mid-2024."

According to Windows Central, Microsoft will release the next version of Windows in two waves: first, for Qualcomm X Elite around June, and then for the rest of the hardware in September/October.

My sources say Microsoft is planning to roll out the next Windows OS update in two waves, with the first wave consisting of the Windows Germanium platform release shipping on new Snapdragon X Elite hardware. This update won't be made available as an OTA for existing PCs, as that's not scheduled to take place until September or October once the Hudson Valley update is finalized.

Qualcomm confirms Snapdragon X Elite PCs will launch with the "next version of Windows" in June

Version 24H2 will ship first on new Arm PCs launching mid-2024.

www.windowscentral.com

 

[deconstruct60]

Windows Central quotes Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon at Qualcomm's earnings call:

I suspect that "next version" doesn't mean what many folks think it does. They are just looking for a Windows 11 update that was coming in April-May anyway. Some coverage seems to want to interwine the Windows AI hype train with this update. I suspect that is overblown. More likely some low level kernel/driver quirks to be worked out than nifty new shiny stuff at the end user GUI level.

According to Windows Central, Microsoft will release the next version of Windows in two waves: first, for Qualcomm X Elite around June, and then for the rest of the hardware in September/October.

Qualcomm confirms Snapdragon X Elite PCs will launch with the "next version of Windows" in June

Version 24H2 will ship first on new Arm PCs launching mid-2024.

www.windowscentral.com

That really isn't two waves.

"... The roadmap for Hudson Valley is also quite interesting. The update is expected to ship on the Germanium platform release, which is set to reach an RTM milestone in April. However, the Hudson Valley update itself won’t be finalized until August, and won’t begin shipping as an update for existing PCs until the September or October timeframe.
...
This means PCs that ship with Germanium in June will be missing most of the features that make up the Hudson Valley release until the fall, when it reaches general availability for everyone.

PCs that ship over the summer with Germanium preloaded will receive the Hudson Valley release as a latest cumulative update (LCU) on top of the Germanium RTM build, whereas everyone else on the current version of Windows 11 will receive Hudson Valley as a big OS swap upgrade.
...."

It isn't being split by architecture. ( newly minted x86-64 PCs bulit and sold in the Summer will get Germanium also). Pragmatically Germanium is going be Windows 11 24H1 . And whatever the refactoring of Hudson Valley is will be Windows 11 24H2 . This has happened before where there is a "H1" and "H2" version of Windows.


That article was December. There is another recent update that is coupled to "Hudson Valley" . In short the management 'running' Windows development got juggled.

" ... There’s no denying a clear divide regarding UX polish between Windows 10 and Windows 11, and to my knowledge, that’s mostly something Panay really pushed for. But now he’s out the door, Windows & Surface have essentially been split up internally, and now Windows resides under the same umbrella as Edge, Bing, MSN, and Copilot ..."

Why Windows 12 (probably) isn’t happening this year

New leadership and a fragmented platform make for a tough argument for Windows 12 this year.

www.windowscentral.com

Depends upon how far down the product rollout they were whether unbundling some "Windows 12" stuff renders a delay or not. From article.

" ...
We know that Microsoft was experimenting with a significant desktop UX overhaul for Hudson Valley under Panay. In fact, an early proof of concept mock up even leaked thanks to someone accidentally including it during an Ignite 2022 keynote presentation.
... "

Pretty decent chance what shows up in the Fall will be called Windows 11. Windows 10 is going out of normal update coverage in 2025 and still well over 50% of systems installed. Doesn't make sense to create a 12 branch before 11 gets to a critical mass. If Microsoft lowers the consumer 'paid for' security update package to something like $10/yr I suspect a large number of folks will just buy it ( versus getting a new Window 11 hardware).

 

[Xiao_Xi]

I suspect that "next version" doesn't mean what many folks think it does.

Microsoft has confirmed that the next version of Windows will be Windows 11 24H2 and not Windows 12.

This denotes that Windows 11, version 24H2 will be this year’s annual feature update.

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/02/08/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-26052-canary-and-dev-channels/