Discussion Qualcomm Snapdragon Thread

[poke01]

View attachment 101511
So do you guys think X2 Elite (Oryon V2) will come in 2025Q3?

That market will be totally different. M5, Panther Lake, Strix refresh and Nvidia SoCs.

So much competition

 

[adroc_thurston]

Strix refresh

There is none.
Medusa, though.

 

[Doug S]

but no one at large is fighting ARM at all.
It's just Qualcomm.

Its not about today. It is about if someone has a beef with them 2 years or 5 years from now, and considers their options, then someone says "remember what happened with Qualcomm, we should come to the negotiating table with them and work this out rather than stonewalling and waiting for them to sue us"

 

[adroc_thurston]

It is about if someone has a beef with them 2 years or 5 years from now

That's the thing, no one does.
Only Apple and QC do custom cores now, and Apple never had any beefs with ARM since they hold em by the balls since times immemorial.

 

[Doug S]

That's the thing, no one does.
Only Apple and QC do custom cores now, and Apple never had any beefs with ARM since they hold em by the balls since times immemorial.

You don't think contract disputes are possible in ARM's core licensing business?

 

[adroc_thurston]

You don't think contract disputes are possible in ARM's core licensing business?

The last time anyone was upset in that segment was ~A15 era so yea they're not happening.

 

[FlameTail]

It's called Glymur and it's on shelves somewhere H1'26 which is what the roadmap shows anyway.

So it will be mid:

 

[FlameTail]

The last time anyone was upset in that segment was ~A15 era so yea they're not happening.

A15 Bionic? Or Cortex A15?

 

[adroc_thurston]

So it will be mid:

Idk they just need to make the cores themselves chug less juice.

Or Cortex A15?

This.
ARM overpromised and severely underdelivered, it was a powerhungry mediocre performer and then Cyclone in A7 just deleted it.

 

[FlameTail]

That market will be totally different. M5, Panther Lake, Strix refresh and Nvidia SoCs.

So much competition

Qualcomm failed to get a foothold in the PC market twice.

First, they bungled their opportunity in the 8cx era. It was a time when Intel/AMD were not as competitive as they are today, and Qualcomm reigned as the sole WoA hardware supplier.

Second, they have seemingly bungled it again - now with the X Elite, which has seemingly failed to reach it's efficiency and compatibility promises. Qcom is still the sole WoA hardware supplier, but Intel/AMD's products are much more competitive.

As you said, X2 Elite will be landing at a time of unprecedented competition. AMD Zen6, Intel PTL, Apple M5, Nvidia ARM SoC, Mediatek ARM SoC etc...

Qcom's future in the PC space looks uncertain.

 

[FlameTail]

New leak dropped:

Qualcomm Adreno GPU driver files confirm unannounced Snapdragon X SKUs - VideoCardz.com

Snapdragon X Series has 10 different SKUs Adreno GPU driver files confirm new Snapdragon processors. The reviews published two days ago were few in number and primarily focused on one SKU, featured in the ASUS Vivobook S 15 laptop. The flagship Snapdragon X SKU is currently limited to Samsung...

videocardz.com

More SKUs!

 

[FlameTail]

It seems the Surface devices have lower power consumption;

My hypothesis is that Microsoft has actually optimised for the Snapdragon X chip, in a manner similar to Apple's vertical integration.

Not all OEMs are going to do that. Asus seems to have chucked in the X Elite chip into their generic Vivobook chassis.

This is also lines up with how the people at r/Surface are raving about how good X Elite is.

 

[Nothingness]

It seems the Surface devices have lower power consumption;
View attachment 101515
My hypothesis is that Microsoft has actually optimised for the Snapdragon X chip, in a manner similar to Apple's vertical integration.

Not all OEMs are going to do that. Asus seems to have chucked in the X Elite chip into their generic Vivobook chassis.

This is also lines up with how the people at r/Surface are raving about how good X Elite is.

I guess that's measuring the power efficiency of the HW decode block.

 

[DavidC1]

ASUS Vivobook S 15: ~11.2 min / WHr
RedmiBook 14 Pro: ~9.9 min / WHr
Dell XPS 13: ~17.4 min / WHr

NBC uses a flawed methodology. While understandable, measuring AC power means most laptops do not have all the power management turned on, thus you often see a difference in figure between actual battery life and power in W.

You'd see "Idle minimum" at 7W, but the laptop is getting 10 hours on a 70WHr battery or the same 7W under WiFi browsing, which isn't "Idle minimum".

 

[MarkizSchnitzel]

Notebookcheck tables for ST and MT look great actually. So what is the catch?

 

[uzzi38]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1803181212602658871

https://twitter.com/x/status/1803181993473220698

https://x.com/carygolomb/status/1803182942199611451?t=vzwZIS3IWaSAUDf4rlqw-A&s=19

FYI, I gave this a try this morning as well on my own 7840U and yeah, the numbers are repeatable.

x.com

x.com

 

[coercitiv]

Notebookcheck tables for ST and MT look great actually. So what is the catch?

The marketing. They said it would be faster, smarter and have better battery life. They hyped it to the moon. Everything the competition could do, the X Elite Copilot+PC could do better. In reality it's just good hardware with a software deficiency.

 

[marees]

I don't think a Chromebook needs 12 cores...

Premium chromebook (thin & light tablets/notebooks)

 

[Nothingness]

FYI, I gave this a try this morning as well on my own 7840U and yeah, the numbers are repeatable.

x.com

x.com

Unless I missed something (which has a high level of probability), what you've shown here is that your notebook with 7840U and his notebook with 8840U have roughly the same power efficiency (I guess this is expected in ST since Zen4c should not be used). It doesn't tell us anything about how correctly the computation was done on the Snapdragon and if other notebooks (both for AMD and Qualcomm chips) wouldn't get better/worse results.

 

[SpudLobby]

Snapdragon still competes on paper just fine vs Intel and AMD this 2023 gen with some battery gain it does seem and a bit of an improved ST curve + low power floor if you want to get some like lower but acceptable ST and lower clocks, which Intel is doing by proxy with Skymont LPE in LNL. But emulation means they needed a bigger jump, and the GPU drivers are about as crappy as expected and then some.


Realistically the main thing that’s just bad from an engineering pov is the core is again guzzling too much watts. This is a Firestorm copy that, even in mid yields and at similar clocks, is using what seems like 3-7 more watts at a platform level for the same ST despite N4P. I still feel pretty positive if Apple made a 12 core, 3-cluster Firestorm part even on N5, ST platform power and MT perf/W would be better.

So whatever’s going on, that’s just kinda sad. 8 Gen 4, 5 and X v2 will show if this is more fundamental to Qualcomm and/or Apple engineering or not.

 

[eek2121]

AMD is apparently planning to launch ARM versions of the Radeon software stack.

NVIDIA already has Geforce up and running on a “modern” ARM platform.

I am a bit surprised that AMD is doing this, honestly. They have an opportunity to make Qualcomm’s life harder, but given the state of Team Radeon at this point, perhaps they need all the sales they can get.

 

[Nothingness]

AMD is apparently planning to launch ARM versions of the Radeon software stack.

I thought it was already working, but I guess people using AMD GPU with Arm rely on the open source drivers.

I am a bit surprised that AMD is doing this, honestly. They have an opportunity to make Qualcomm’s life harder, but given the state of Team Radeon at this point, perhaps they need all the sales they can get.

As there's no Qualcomm machine that could accept a dGPU, get ready to see people say this is proof that AMD will release an Arm CPU

 

[eek2121]

FYI, this was posted in the Intel thread, but use
caution when considering ARM vs x86. Apologies if it was linked here as well and I missed it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/s/h3Jz16IkQo

I would have been returning it if I had decided to purchase one of these laptops.

I thought it was already working, but I guess people using AMD GPU with Arm rely on the open source drivers.


As there's no Qualcomm machine that could accept a dGPU, get ready to see people say this is proof that AMD will release an Arm CPU

I was referring to Windows, specifically. To me, the open source stuff is a given.

 

[FlameTail]

Rumour:

Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 reportedly hits 4.37 GHz

https://twitter.com/x/status/1803758771065540782

What are they doing?

 

[Ghostsonplanets]

Rumour:

Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 reportedly hits 4.37 GHz

https://twitter.com/x/status/1803758771065540782

What are they doing?

Desperation at this point? The last rumors was that 4GHz clock meant an 14W SoC power draw...