Discussion Qualcomm Snapdragon Thread

[Hesperax]

There were a few comments from Qualcomm's Earning Call about the Ventana acquistion:

We also acquired Ventana Micro Systems, reinforcing our leadership and commitment to expanding the RISC V standard in ecosystem, and development of our high-performance RISC V CPU for data center workloads.
...
We're executing on two fronts. It's CPU. We added a RISC V CPU now to our roadmap in addition to Oryon, which is ARM compatible.

Sounds like they plan to offer both ARM and RISC-V for the datacenter. Maybe we will see Veyron V3 after all.

 

[MerryCherry]

CPU team with a headcount of ~300. How does it compare to others?

 

[mvprod123]

View attachment 137922
CPU team with a headcount of ~300. How does it compare to others?

Apple

 

[jdubs03]

View attachment 137922
CPU team with a headcount of ~300. How does it compare to others?

I would assume the CPU design team is larger. That 300 number excludes any QCOM folks outside of Nuvia and Ventana.

Maybe SemiAnalysis will do a similar write up on Qualcomm in the future.

 

[soresu]

Apple View attachment 137923

Oh how weird, their LP µArch is designed in the same place ARM Ltd's smol cores are 😅

Had no idea so much of their CPU and GPU design infra was in the UK.

 

[MerryCherry]

X2 Elite performance preview by Hardware Canucks

 

[Tup3x]

Looks promising. In my use case, this would probably do very well.

 

[mvprod123]

Looks promising. In my use case, this would probably do very well.
View attachment 138060

The TDP value is rather suspicious. I would like to see the actual power consumption.

 

[Hesperax]

What to know about Windows 11, version 26H1

At this time, devices with Qualcomm Snapdragon® X2 Series processors will come with Windows 11, version 26H1.

• Windows 11, version 26H1 will only be available on new devices with select new silicon as they come to market in early 2026.
• Windows 11, version 26H1 is not offered as an in-place update from Windows 11, version 24H2 or 25H2 on existing devices.
• Devices running Windows 11, version 26H1 will not be able to update to the next annual feature update in the second half of 2026. This is because Windows 11, version 26H1 is based on a different Windows core than Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2, and the upcoming feature update. These devices will have a path to update in a future Windows release.

Sounds like Qulacomm will get to beta test a new Windows version again.

 

[Doug S]

The TDP value is rather suspicious. I would like to see the actual power consumption.

Charlie has an article up at semiaccurate about this. If you ignore the usual histrionics that accompany his articles he makes a good case. The only reason you invent a new way to measure power is because you suck in the existing ways of measuring power. If it was truly the case they thought their metric was better, they'd report it IN ADDITION TO existing metrics, not hide that information and only report their new bogus metric.

Obviously when systems are in the hands of quality (i.e. not bought off by Qualcomm) reviewers they'll be able to conduct proper power measurements so it won't affect the minority who pay attention to that stuff like those of us here. But what they're counting on is Best Buy et al putting Qualcomm's made up number in the system specs for typical consumers to unwittingly compare against Intel & AMD reported TDP values as if they are measuring the same thing.

 

[Doug S]

Sounds like Qulacomm will get to beta test a new Windows version again.

Hard to believe that after all this time they haven't fully merged the ARM and x86 Windows builds. Imagine if there were special versions of Linux for ARM, like if 6.17 was an ARM only release and x86 skipped from 6.16 to 6.18, but ARM couldn't upgrade to 6.18 and had to wait for a future version.

 

[MerryCherry]

With chiplets being all the rage these days, does anybody know of Qualcomm's future plans concerning chiplets?

Perhaps Snapdragon X3 series might leverage them.