windows on arm Rumor has it that Qualcomm’s SC8280 is their answer to Apple’s M1 chip

[captain_to_fire]

Summary

 Qualcomm is reported in the works of making a new ARM chip to compete with Apple’s M1 

 

Quotes

Quote

 Qualcomm is currently developing the Snapdragon SC8280 (not the final name), which is described as the successor to the Snapdragon 8cx and 8cx Gen 2. “In the developer platforms tested by Qualcomm, in addition to a variant with eight gigabytes of LPPDR5 RAM, variants with a total of 32GB of LPDDR4X memory are used,” 

 

WinFuture claims Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SC8280 measures 20×17 millimeters in size — bigger than the current 20×15 mm size — so it may have more than 8 cores. However, we don’t know any details about the microarchitecture of these CPU cores, what their maximum clock speeds are, and how they’re clustered. Will Qualcomm utilize ARM’s Cortex-X1 cores for a high-performance cluster, or will it primarily use ARM’s new Cortex-A78C?

 

Today’s report, along with confirmation of an acquisition of NUVIA, highlights how serious Qualcomm is about breaking into the PC space. 

Since at the moment, there’s nothing like the M1 in the PC world so it’s nice that Qualcomm is doing so. However, I feel that once 8cx successor arrive, it’ll be too late as Apple probably have a M1X or M2 chip with even larger caches and more transistors. It has been three years since Windows 10 was launched and until now, only a few developers made an ARM64 version of their programs. Apple devs on the other hand rushed and made universal binary versions of their apps which will run native on both Intel and AS Macs. I feel that Qualcomm’s success with their M1 competitor is in the hands of Microsoft to convince devs to embrace Windows on ARM. 
 

 

 XDA Developers

[Doobeedoo]

That's good. Definitely need an alternative.

[Commodus]

Not counting on this being a true answer to the M1 based on the description so far.

 

Qualcomm is starting with a disadvantage: Snapdragons in recent years have historically trailed a generation or so behind in performance versus Apple. The 888 is a big step up, but even then I saw that AnandTech had it behind the A14 in GeekBench and GFXBench (not the whole story, but important to know). I wouldn't expect the SC8280 to fare all well against whatever Apple M-series chip is available at the time.

 

I'd add that Qualcomm has the same problem with CPUs that Google does with Android: it has no idea how to support any device that isn't a phone. With PC and smartwatch chips, there's a very "eh, we'll get around to it" mindset where the company has an inconsistent release schedule with the occasional dubiously useful upgrade. Apple's advantage is that it turns up with a new in-house chip every year, if sometimes with modest upgrades. Even if the SC8280 surpasses the equivalent Apple chip, there's a very real chance Qualcomm will squander that lead by letting the processor languish for a couple of years.

 

And yes, a lot of this is contingent on Microsoft making Windows on ARM more palatable.

 

Here's hoping for Qualcomm's sake that the SC8280 is both real and competitive, because the ingredients are in place for a sea change in the market hat hurts both Qualcomm and Microsoft. I'm not expecting Apple to suddenly become the dominant PC maker (its prices preclude that), but the last thing QC and Microsoft want is for Windows on ARM to languish and Macs to develop an unambiguous speed/battery advantage over Windows PCs in key areas.

 

 

[wamred]

Yes, this is awesome, the more competition there is the better. 

[RejZoR]

It just doesn't matter if it can compete on raw compute power when there is no real software support behind it. Which is why M1 is such a success. And same can be said for their mobile Bionic chips. It's the excellent software support (OS) backing excellent hardware (M1 SoC). Just having one or the other won't ever compete with M1. So, until that happens, all this news is like whatever. Irrelevant because both Linux and Windows are meh when it comes to ARM because of things that Apple addressed when making M1.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Honestly it's become a yearly occurrence where people marvel at a new Qualcomm chip that competes with Apples offerings. And every time the performance is just... meh, it's alright. I've seen picnic table cloths with less consistent patterns. 

[JLO64]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Irrelevant because both Linux and Windows are meh when it comes to ARM because of things that Apple addressed when making M1.

Just out of curiosity how is Linux (desktop not server) support for ARM?  All I really know about is the Raspberry Pi which is just one manufacturer. 

[whm1974]

6 hours ago, JLO64 said:

Just out of curiosity how is Linux (desktop not server) support for ARM?  All I really know about is the Raspberry Pi which is just one manufacturer. 

The Pinebook Pro is supposedly fairly decent.

[Video Beagle]

Just when qualcomm has the answer, Apple changes the question.

 

kidding aside, Movement in this space is a good thing. As @RejZoRsaid, it's the software piece of the puzzle that really needs encouragement, so players in the arm space will only be an encouragement to microsoft. (Though I still think Apple has slipped some M1's to them to encourage them to get some work going).

[LAwLz]

Microsoft and Qualcomm have been saying "our chip is fast enough for PCs" since the Snapdragon 835 and it has not even once been true. 

There is a long list of reasons why Windows on ARM has and keeps failing and even if they fix the CPU problem it still won't be enough. 

[igormp]

17 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Irrelevant because both Linux and Windows are meh when it comes to ARM because of things that Apple addressed when making M1.

 

14 hours ago, JLO64 said:

Just out of curiosity how is Linux (desktop not server) support for ARM?  All I really know about is the Raspberry Pi which is just one manufacturer. 

Linux ARM support is not that far behind x86 tbh. I'd say it's the 2nd best supported ISA (with maybe POWER in 3rd?). The problem is that most consumers don't care about linux, so that's a moot point.

Some ARM CPUs are almost on par with x86 ones too, see here.

 

Source: work with some ARM servers because cheap, and have an arm chromebook with crostini.

[Commodus]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Microsoft and Qualcomm have been saying "our chip is fast enough for PCs" since the Snapdragon 835 and it has not even once been true. 

There is a long list of reasons why Windows on ARM has and keeps failing and even if they fix the CPU problem it still won't be enough. 

I can't help but wonder if QC and Microsoft have inadvertently nullified some of Windows' advantages, possibly for the long term.

 

Windows' edge has long been its third-party support: more software, more hardware, longer legacy support. But a lot of that goes away with ARM. And that suddenly makes Apple look much better. It has much stronger support for x86 apps, and its greater performance (even with code translation in effect) gets more time to shine.

 

And that's a real problem in the greater scheme of things. Again, I don't think Apple is going to dominate the computing space, but there could come a point where you have to explicitly rationalize why you're sticking with a Windows PC instead of certain things just being assumed. That you're a gamer and need a high-end GPU, even if the CPU is now inferior. That you really want to use 10-year-old Windows app X and are willing to sacrifice performance to run it. And of course, that you can't justify a $1,000 laptop when a $500 system is good enough (that happens already to some degree, but now there will be more sacrifices involved).

 

If Qualcomm and Microsoft are going to compete with Apple in ARM computers, they have to treat this with more urgency. As in iPhone-rivals-circa-2007, "everything we're doing is wrong" levels of urgency. For Qualcomm, that means much more aggressive development of PC-oriented CPUs rather than treating them almost as phone leftovers.

[kvuj]

Linux/Windows on Arm is really cool, the problem is: Do you really want your PC to be powered by Qualcomm?

 

With x86, you get 15+ years of software support (GCC defaults to using super old instructions so that it works on nearly all of x86 CPUs) whereas Qualcomm has difficulty offering more than 1.5 years on mobile.

 

Intel and Amd offer mainline Linux/BSD support because they take the time and effort of working with upstream devs and offering quality implementations. There's also the fact that x86 has a standardized boot sequence. This means you can basically boot any x86 CPU with pretty much any OS conformant with the spec.

 

But easily the worst aspect is Qualcomm' security. Months after months, their media/modem implementation have been the worst source of Android vulnerabilities (and let's not forget that Android has a strong security model compared to Linux/Windows).

 

If you want PC marketshare, you need PC grade software support.

 

I'm personally more interested in the upcoming POWER10 CPU (Power ISA which is RISC) from IBM since they actually offer proper support, and it looks quite interesting (7nm, revamped memory interface and I/O, new SIMD/VSX functionality).

[kpluck]

On 1/16/2021 at 5:34 AM, like_ooh_ahh said:

Summary

 Qualcomm is reported in the works of making a new ARM chip to compete with Apple’s M1 

I am sure they are but the M1 works so well, in part, because of the tight integration Apple has between the chip(s) and iOS and macOS. There is only so much Qualcomm can do in that regard.

 

Qualcomm doesn't need to worry about Apple. They need to be concerned about Microsoft and Google developing their own chips designed specifically for their operating systems.

 

-kp

[igormp]

1 hour ago, kvuj said:

Intel and Amd offer mainline Linux/BSD support because they take the time and effort of working with upstream devs and offering quality implementations. There's also the fact that x86 has a standardized boot sequence. This means you can basically boot any x86 CPU with pretty much any OS conformant with the spec.

I agree with yout points about QC, but you somewhat extend qualcomm's problems onto ARM itself. There are ARM vendors with amazing upstream support, and some ARM CPUs (specially the server ones) that are UEFI-conformant, so it's just as easy to boot it.

 

The problem with x86 is that it's basically a duopoly, but in your scenario it looks like a good thing since there's no fragmentation (like with ARM vendors) and it's pretty easy for both to standardize on some processes.

[kvuj]

19 minutes ago, igormp said:

I agree with yout points about QC, but you somewhat extend qualcomm's problems onto ARM itself. There are ARM vendors with amazing upstream support, and some ARM CPUs (specially the server ones) that are UEFI-conformant, so it's just as easy to boot it.

 

The problem with x86 is that it's basically a duopoly, but in your scenario it looks like a good thing since there's no fragmentation (like with ARM vendors) and it's pretty easy for both to standardize on some processes.

I'm sorry if I didn't convey my true feelings so I will say: I'm 100% for a new Architecture in the PC world and Arm is looking sick. Especially with the recent extensions like ARMv8.6-A, which bring Fine Grained Traps, refinements to memory tagging, GEMM, and a lot of cool stuff.

 

I just really really hope Qualcomm doesn't become the new mainstream CPU maker for reasons stated above.