Question Qualcomm's first Nuvia based SoC - Hamoa

[poke01]

Qualcomm's working on a 2024 PC chip codename "Hamoa" with up to 12 (8P+4E).

Said to the same cache layout as M1. large private L1$, per-cluster L2$ (cluster = 4 cores, 12MB for every cluster) and a lot of LLC.

source:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1589405172979339264

 

[adroc_thurston]

Just me here

And voices in your head.

Realistically Strix won’t actually hit devices until 2025.

But 8cx g4 is the same.

Fabric is a serious concern though yes

Not really, I just hope 8cx g4 is better at least in that; it needs a reason to exist since on-die modems are no more.

No power benefits? Doubt.

35W PPT long everywhere.

Gaps are much smaller now

Yeah it traded modems and battery life for perf.

WoA has improved and will continue to.

No.
Just no.
It doesn't have catastrophic issues like the lack of native aa64 Chrome anymore but it is and will be a joke for a long long long long while.

But look, if you want to be civilized for a moment here and stop your browbeating agita reminiscent of barrack trash talk

meds.

 

[SpudLobby]

And voices in your head.

Spec frankly I think most in the hardware community see you as delusional after your repeated hype cycle ditch dives. You are spinning your wheels with this. Some humility is in order.

But 8cx g4 is the same.

We’ll see.

Not really, I just hope 8cx g4 is better at least in that; it needs a reason to exist since on-die modems are no more.

ACPC is a crutch for you now that the perf/power looks decent. It’s ok, I think ACPC and on-die modems tor PCs didn’t make sense. We agree.

35W PPT long everywhere.

I’m excited.

Yeah it traded modems and battery life for perf.

Hmmmmmm

No.
Just no.
It doesn't have catastrophic issues like the lack of native aa64 Chrome anymore but it is and will be a joke for a long long long long while.

Didn’t Da Vinci Resolve announce a port coming? That’s a niche program but a serious one, a bellwether here.

meds.

Gonna play an uno reverse here.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Spec frankly I think most in the hardware community see you as delusional after your repeated hype cycle ditch dives

?

Some humility is in order.

I know, I'm tired of winning, but only ever gonna win more.

We’ll see.

Not much to see here, the part missed the H1'24 refresh cycle it was aligned to.

ACPC is a crutch for you now that the perf/power looks decent

It was a genuine gimmick that made at least Chromebook usage model viable on WoA.

Hmmmmmm

yeah 8cx g3 was a meme.

Didn’t Da Vinci Resolve announce a port coming?

That's a single piece of software in an ecosystem that's two decades old

Gonna play an uno reverse here.

Yes, voices inside your head are no bueno.

 

[SpudLobby]

?

I know, I'm tired of winning, but only ever gonna win more.

Lol, this is spoken like an ESL hot head in a Call of Duty Lobby. Come on…

Not much to see here, the part missed the H1'24 refresh cycle it was aligned to.

It was a genuine gimmick that made at least Chromebook usage model viable on WoA.

yeah 8cx g3 was a meme.

Agree the delay hurt and 8cx Gen 3 is garbage.

That's a single piece of software in an ecosystem that's two decades old

We’ll see what Adobe does.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Lol, this is spoken like an ESL hot head in a Call of Duty Lobby. Come on…

Again, I'm tired of winning but I'm still gonna win more.

Agree the delay hurt and 8cx Gen 3 is garbage.

8cx g3 being bad isn't even the issue.
QC trying to build a performance SoC for a software ecosystem with no software to leverage said perf is an idiotic idea to begin with.

We’ll see what Adobe does.

But a small part of what Windows PCs are.
Mac survived the aa64 transition and it still torched a whole lot of niche software down, DAW and plugins in particular.
Doing that on Windows is effectively impossible and one shall never talk about using Adreno on PC.

 

[Henry swagger]

Anyways, back to the topic at hand — I wonder how Strix Point will do against Hamoa/X Elite. Could get interesting. I don’t think AMD will do well with the uncore elements though. Iirc Andrei mentioned he doesn’t see Intel and AMD ever realizing all-day battery life on parts like this.

Doesn't he work for Qualcomm lol ? . obvious he thinks that way

 

[soresu]

Didn’t Da Vinci Resolve announce a port coming? That’s a niche program but a serious one, a bellwether here.

Niche?! 😱

Easily a sizable fraction of all content on Youtube was edited and rendered in DVR - being free is a huge advantage in its favor for content creators on top of its great versatility.

Not to mention the many professional Hollywood + streaming media films and TV series edited, composited and color graded with it.

That's not even getting into the sizable back catalog filmography for older software packages Fairlight sound and Fusion VFX integrated into DVR in previous iterations.

So yeeeaaahhh, not niche at all - especially once Blackmagic made it free to use for the non Studio version.

 

[SpudLobby]

Again, I'm tired of winning but I'm still gonna win more.

Just saying this doesn’t make it true. Keep banging your head man.

8cx g3 being bad isn't even the issue.
QC trying to build a performance SoC for a software ecosystem with no software to leverage said perf is an idiotic idea to begin with.

Eh this is now copium since you see the lines shifting. Very obvious. Crazy how viscerally upset you grow over…. A product you don’t think is a threat. Curious

But a small part of what Windows PCs are.
Mac survived the aa64 transition and it still torched a whole lot of niche software down, DAW and plugins in particular.
Doing that on Windows is effectively impossible and one shall never talk about using Adreno on PC.

Lmao. No one cares about those Plugins. It is possible too and that’s the purpose of Arm64EC.

Adreno: fair.

Niche?! 😱

Easily a sizable fraction of all content on Youtube was edited and rendered in DVR - being free is a huge advantage in its favor for content creators on top of its great versatility.

Not to mention the many professional Hollywood + streaming media films and TV series edited, composited and color graded with it.

That's not even getting into the sizable back catalog filmography for older software packages Fairlight sound and Fusion VFX integrated into DVR in previous iterations.

So yeeeaaahhh, not niche at all - especially once Blackmagic made it free to use for the non Studio version.

Yeah that’s a good point, seems like a Da Vinci Resolve port is a bigger deal than I had realized — I knew it was nontrivial for the creator market but yeah.

Trying to be kind to Spec (adroc) since he’s having a hard time now resorting to “WoA will never make it” blah blah — it’s a cope for what’s coming. Anyways VS is ported, Office is, MS built Arm64EC with the express purpose of easing transitions for say the above (Excel for ex with plugins), Adobe is going to port iirc per Qc, IntelliJ & plenty of JDK/JRE versions available. Surprisingly got full Python for Arm64 on Windows last year too. I couldn’t use it just yet fully but we’re not too far off.

AMD’s fans are correct the neckbeard/hentai demographic will be disappointed with Adreno on desktop initially.

I just don’t care, because I don’t game .

 

[FlameTail]

Anyways, back to the topic at hand — I wonder how Strix Point will do against Hamoa/X Elite. Could get interesting. I don’t think AMD will do well with the uncore elements though. Iirc Andrei mentioned he doesn’t see Intel and AMD ever realizing all-day battery life on parts like this.

Isn't that exactly what Qualcomm is rumoured to have troubles with?

The core is good, the uncore is not.

 

[FlameTail]

It's not a competition, just like 835/850/8cx g1/2/3 weren't a competition.

Now that's some plain denial mate.

The Snapdragon X Elite is different.

Also I believe there is no reason to call it 8cx Gen 4, since Qualcomm announced their new X series which supposedly means the old 8c and 7c are gone.

 

[FlameTail]

I don’t know though. Andrei seems pretty pessimistic.

Andrei Frumusanu? I thought he had "retreated" from public life ever since he left Anandtech to work at Qualcomm. Where are you getting his statements from?

 

[SpudLobby]

Andrei Frumusanu? I thought he had "retreated" from public life ever since he left Anandtech to work at Qualcomm. Where are you getting bis statements from?

He still talks in certain corridors.

 

[SpudLobby]

Isn't that exactly what Qualcomm is rumoured to have troubles with?

The core is good, the uncore is not.

Nah that was basically from Charlie which is why Andrei kept saying wait. Qualcomm also effectively disabused us of the notion OEM's have no say in the PMIC setup at a presser too. Charlie overshot. Frankly the results on those charts tell us enough and look solid.

 

[SpudLobby]

Doesn't he work for Qualcomm lol ? . obvious he thinks that way

So? More power to him, he's qualified. Spec has AMD stock through the roof. In my eyes Andrei is vastly more credible and it's not close.

 

[FlameTail]

What's the issue with Adreno GPUs on PC?

 

[SpudLobby]

What's the issue with Adreno GPUs on PC?

Lol not the hardware but the drivers and the fact that games are probably some of the last things that will be ported over the next 2-5 years (if, for some) or at least lower priority. Developer and creative stuff has happened to a degree or in motion.

 

[FlameTail]

The pace of innovation in the smartphone industry is incredible. It's amazing what innovation can happen when you are constrained by a small size, small thermal envelope, need for supreme mobility, and great battery life in a device with tiny batteries.

To enter the PC industry with legacy in the smartphone industry is an advantage.

Apple did it in 2020 with the M1. The world shook.

And Qualcomm is going to do it again, albeit with a less spectacular bang perhaps.

 

[FlameTail]

Lol not the hardware but the drivers and the fact that games are probably some of the last things that will be ported over the next 2-5 years (if, for some) or at least lower priority. Developer and creative stuff has happened to a degree or in motion.

IIRC the Snapdragon X Elite supports only DirectX12, which I find bizarre . Adreno GPUs in mobile support Vulkan, OpenGL and OpenCL.

If it's the same Adrno architecture ported from mobile to PC, I question why the X Elite does not support those APIs ?

 

[FlameTail]

Do you think Snapdragon on PC will become a loved choice by content creators?

Content creators love the incredible battery life and performance of the Apple Silicon Macbooks. But the thing is Appls Silicon has special accelerators for content creation stuff like video editing - such as the Media Engine. If Qualcomm does not have the likes of the media engine, it may not be as performant as the Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[soresu]

Lol not the hardware but the drivers

Perhaps on Windows, I don't know much about their quality in that arena, but in the Linux shop they have 2 open source drivers, Freedreno for OGL and Turnip for Vulkan - both of which only have basic support from Qualcomm themselves and are largely community driven efforts.

I'm not sure about their level of optimisation, but they are easily the most feature complete ARM SoC gfx drivers for Linux and support everything up to OGL 4.6 and VK 1.3 which blows everything else in the ecosystem out of the water including thf V3D drivers for Raspberry Pi 4 and 5.

games are probably some of the last things that will be ported over the next 2-5 years

Depends - many already have ports on Nintendo Switch which takes care of the ARM64 code aspect of game engine porting.

If the gfx backend code is also Vulkanised on top of that it's not a great jump from there to a win for a native port.

 

[SpudLobby]

Perhaps on Windows, I don't know much about their quality in that arena, but in the Linux shop they have 2 open source drivers, Freedreno for OGL and Turnip for Vulkan - both of which only have basic support from Qualcomm themselves and are largely community driven efforts.

I'm not sure about their level of optimisation, but they are easily the most feature complete ARM SoC gfx drivers for Linux and support everything up to OGL 4.6 and VK 1.3 which blows everything else in the ecosystem out of the water including thf V3D drivers for Raspberry Pi 4 and 5.

Depends - many already have ports on Nintendo Switch which takes care of the ARM64 code aspect of game engine porting.

If the gfx backend code is also Vulkanised on top of that it's not a great jump from there to a win for a native port.

Interesting points. Could be yeah

 

[soresu]

IIRC the Snapdragon X Elite supports only DirectX12, which I find bizarre . Adreno GPUs in mobile support Vulkan, OpenGL and OpenCL.

This does seem specific to Windows on ARM.

I have heard from someone in the last year that Vulkan drivers will end up on the platform, this is essential to running Zink which gets you a lot of OGL compatibility with better performance and quality than MS's own rather lackluster OGL -> DX12 translation layer.

Going forward I would not be surprised to find native OGL drivers abandoned in favor of a Zink implementation.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Just saying this doesn’t make it true. Keep banging your head man.

It is what it is.

Eh this is now copium since you see the lines shifting. Very obvious. Crazy how viscerally upset you grow over…. A product you don’t think is a threat. Curious

upset?
QC just started talking the thing >2q before it launches so might as well.

No one cares about those Plugins.

bold words

It is possible too and that’s the purpose of Arm64EC.

It's a marginal improvement that's not gonna cover the legacy gap.

The Snapdragon X Elite is different.

no.
It's a fatter part with more CPU grunt but nothing fundamentally changes there relative to 8cx g3.
Like the latter already had decent nT numbers and was decently efficient but...
Same story here, you get useless GPU and an infinite software gap on top of it.

 

[Shmee]

Both of you need to stop the bickering and stick to the topic. You are derailing the thread, and we don't need back and forth personal arguments. -AT Moderator Shmee

 

[Tup3x]

No.
Just no.
It doesn't have catastrophic issues like the lack of native aa64 Chrome anymore but it is and will be a joke for a long long long long while.

I disagree completely. I could right now replace my work laptop with it and continue working like nothing happened (well, it would be much faster than my Renoir laptop though). Node.js, VSCode, WSL2... That's pretty much all I need. Things are improving and more and more native software is available.