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Qualcomm revealed X Elite's benchmark scores
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Apple designs its Apple Silicon for iPhones and it just happens they are adaptable for Macs. Apple is a cell phone company and makes almost all its money from phones.
Companies that don't have a "phones first" priority will be able to do things Apple is not willing to do. This includes building really fast desktop and server computers.
Companies that don't have a "phones first" priority will be able to do things Apple is not willing to do. This includes building really fast desktop and server computers.
Umm yeah. Doesn’t every fan base do that?
Even companies highlight the benchmarks they excel at. MS cheery picked the “58% faster than M3 MacBook Air” in multithreaded benchmarks. Well, duh. It was comparing a 12 P core X Elite to 4 P core M3.
Microsoft "AI" is always super advanced, their marketing is always super honest and not creepy at all. Ask Milo.
This is not how it works. It's way more complicated than that and depends on a combination of the ISA, microarchitecture design and the platform integration. All three are extremely good on the Apple Silicon due to about 20 years of careful design, shaping and the scalability up to server-sized machines is proven. I very much doubt Qualcomm and Microsoft can pull off all three with any competence in a couple of years. They are more than left in the dust at this point and have a track record of non-delivery.
Incidentally, server-wise the most important thing now is what you are billed by and that's watts. So you want the most work done for those watts.
Phones don't need matrix coprocessors or industry-leading per-core performance. I'd guess there might be more strategic factors in play than what you appear to assume.
Sounds logical, doesn't quite work out like that in real world. Intel famously has a server-first design mentality, and they have designed themselves to a point where an iPad is faster than their end-of-the-line desktop and server cores. Similarly, ARM has two types of cores targeting servers and both of them are less capable than what Apple is shipping.
It appears that Arm has unveiled its alternative to Apple's cores, but without SME.
newsroom.arm.com
It would be interesting to know to what extent the Oryon core can compete with the new Arm cores.
By the way, rumors say that these cores could be in some of next year's notebook SoCs.
New Armv9 CPUs for Accelerating AI on Mobile and Beyond
Latest Armv9 CPUs significantly elevate next-gen AI experiences through advanced compute performance, efficiency and features.
newsroom.arm.com
It would be interesting to know to what extent the Oryon core can compete with the new Arm cores.
By the way, rumors say that these cores could be in some of next year's notebook SoCs.
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The performance claims are very vague. "+36% over 2023 premium Android" could be anything between 2500 and 2900 GB6 points.
No SME. ARM hyped up SME in a blog post last week. It’s funnyIt appears that Arm has unveiled its alternative to Apple's cores, but without SME. View attachment 2383347
New Armv9 CPUs for Accelerating AI on Mobile and Beyond
Latest Armv9 CPUs significantly elevate next-gen AI experiences through advanced compute performance, efficiency and features.
It would be interesting to know to what extent the Oryon core can compete with the new Arm cores.
By the way, rumors say that these cores could be in some of next year's notebook SoCs.
The graph doesn't resolve any doubts.
Arm Launches Next-Gen Flagship Cortex-X925
Arm launches its next-generation flagship processor, the Cortex-X925, formerly Blackhawk.
fuse.wikichip.org
The presentation appears to have been short on technical details.
I like how the 1.36x bar is at least 3 times longer than the 1x bar.The graph doesn't resolve any doubts.
Arm Launches Next-Gen Flagship Cortex-X925
Arm launches its next-generation flagship processor, the Cortex-X925, formerly Blackhawk.
The presentation appears to have been short on technical details.
There's no x axis so it probably just starts at 0.9 or has literally no meaning. It's a common misleading plot trick.
Arm used the same trick with another chart.
Arm takes aim at client PCs with new 3nm compute subsystems, offering pieces of its IP to its customers for desktops, laptops, and tablets
Arm's new compute subsystems can enable PCs and tablets running Android, Linux, and Windows.
So, “a computer company can’t make phones” is now “a phone company can’t make computers.” Apple is agile 🙄
First reports on the new Snapdragon X Elite laptops starting to surface… although admittedly this is based on a report paid by Microsoft there seems to be some good info there, and I like that they did a comparison of five devices, the new Snapdragon X Elite Surface Laptop, an older SQ3 laptop, two Intel devices and a MacBook Air M3.
Same reports as previous page in this discussion. Temperatures are terrible on the Elite.
What's "2023 best in class"? I assume A17 Pro? A17 Pro does boost to 3.78Ghz which is close to their "@3.8Ghz" remark.The graph doesn't resolve any doubts.
Arm Launches Next-Gen Flagship Cortex-X925
Arm launches its next-generation flagship processor, the Cortex-X925, formerly Blackhawk.
The presentation appears to have been short on technical details.
If so, that's pretty impressive if it's really faster than A17 Pro. Of course, A18 Pro will likely take the lead if it has the same 25% M4 boost.
Then again, we don't know what wattage ARM is using for their Cortex-X925 @ 3.8Ghz claim. It could be highly overclocked and well beyond the normal phone range. The current gen ARM SoC goes up to 3.4Ghz in a Galaxy phone.
And the "system" optimizations could be some advanced cooling system.
It must be because the Copilot+ PCs would be released on 18th June, after the WWDC.
Pretty good chance they are comparing to the X4. From same article.
There have been rumors about the 'Cortex X5'. This appears that Arm is doing some renaming to a longer naming scheme. ( In part probably because they are going to sell it as a CSS chiplet. )
The X4,X5 probably have some overlap with the Neoverse N1,N2,N3 work. It would be pretty surprising if the Xn got SME ( especially something like SME FP64) before the Neoverse series got it.
Not sure Arm is really trying to match the P/E cores of Apple. They are still trying to throw a triad of cores at their standard cluster.
Nominally, the phone is likely running off the middle ( or smaller A core) one most of the time. Except for folks who stare at their phones all day with it plugged in, there are nominal loads most of the time.
(and again.. the curve shows X3 , X4, 'X5' progression.
Rumor reports earlier this year were that X5 wasn't being a perf/watt champion. Perhaps X5 tried on TSMC N4 instead of N3. Or perhaps an X5 that is on Intel 3. It looks like Arm is trying to kill two birds with one stone. One a top end phone SoC along progression path with somewhat similar PPA as X1,X2,X3 and two trying to blunt Oryon ( relaxed some of the area to chance the General PC market for single threaded scores. ) .
Pretty likely that is "placed in a bigger tablet or PC laptop chassis". A bigger cooling systems isn't necessarily more advanced one; just has a bigger thermal capacity if it has a decent design. Qualcomm may have given up on pushing something like the Spapdrogn 8cx into the PC Winows market, but decent chance another player will show up to fill some lower BOM cost optoin than what Qualcomm is selling.
They don't necessarily have to try to fill exactly the same gap. x86-64 goes quite broad in line up from low cost Celeron (and trailing edge Rzyen 2/3 cores ) up through the desktop range. These new X Elite/Plus laptops are all > $900. That is not where the average Windows laptop price point is located. Ditto with average Chromebooks.
If X Elite/Plus spurs a substantive jump in native Arm64 apps then these chips typically do not have to pay the "PRISM conversion" overhead tax. And more of the competition is Intel's E-core only from a generation back .
Toss in an NPU and a Nvidia GPU and some folks will buy the package because not leaning as heavily on the CPU for tasks.
In 2025-26 x86-64 will stil be selling way more notebook/laptop SoCs than Qualcomm will. That is the real competition in Windows space.
Arm already has some deep traction into the server space vs x86-64. That is the higher $/CPU margin they are looking for. If Qualcomm walks in the Phone space that is a also a high priority revenue source to defend. The Windows stuff is 'extra'. Over time Arm will close the 'hole' between server and phone to better fill Windows laptop space, but if they loose either side chasing Windows , they won't be in a better place. ( They are already losing lots of ground in the embedded controller space to RISC-V ).
I would find that very surprising. The comparison with the X4 is on another slide.
It's a shame Arm hasn't posted the slides.