[modeless]

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme trounces Nvidia's chip in single core CPU performance. It beats Intel and AMD's best, too. It has unified memory. It's the only CPU in the same league as Apple's M-series in both CPU performance and power efficiency. And it's available in laptops today, not later this year. People are sleeping on Qualcomm.

[arjie]

Garbage operating system support. If you can’t do Linux support it’s a bit pointless because there’s two platforms for this that matter: Linux and Darwin.

Qualcomm is like AMD was for GPUs for like decades. Lots of announcements and people on the Internet are huge fans based on web pages they’ve read but if you try to make it work it’s a nightmare.

Snapdragon X Elite doesn’t work on Linux so it’s a pointless platform. Enthusiasts have made M1 work better. Literally have old Macs running rather than use Qualcomm.

[someguyornotidk]

Yep, very much this. I don't bother looking to them for anything in this space because the hostility they show towards general Linux support appears to be rooted in principle and appears to be very much deliberate. It almost feels like Linux support would run counter to how they want their processors to be used.

Whether this is true or not, it's pretty safe to assume anything based on their stuff is not for me.

[zozbot234]

It's the usual issue with Qualcomm SoCs being designed as bespoke embedded platforms as opposed to standard general-purpose compute. So Linux support for these chips ends up being heavily vendor specific, i.e. it's not just Qualcomm it's also the platform OEMs.

[danslo]

Support is slowly landing... https://www.phoronix.com/news/Lenovo-Yoga-Slim-7x-Gen11-Linu...

[KeplerBoy]

How does Darwin matter more than Windows?

[davemp]

I assume because most windows installs are corporate IT garbage that if anyone cared about performance they could just turn off one of the three endpoint protection services or tune the backup service down and get better results than processor upgrades.

[pjmlp]

I can 100% assure you that there is corporate IT garbage available for macOS and Linux as well.

[raudette]

this

It drives me nuts, I look at cumulative CPU time, and this is all my work laptop does.

[satvikpendem]

Alternatively, just use Windows.

[TiredOfLife]

It has Linux support from wsl2

[ksec]

It trounces ARM's old CPU design. The X925 used in this Nvidia chip is 2 years old. X930 or C1 has shipped with Mediatek Dimensity 9500 which is what the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 / X2 Elite should be compared to. Although Qualcomm still has a lead in performance, but it is increasingly shrinking.

But perhaps more importantly. Nvidia seems to be doing a lot better with its ecosystem. Nvidia has much better distribution channels and partners building on top of their PC Gaming GPU. It also have gaming developers relations that is unmatched by any in the industry.

Qualcomm has so far failed to execute this, both in PC and on there Server CPU side.

[dismalaf]

Too bad Qualcomm provides shit drivers for Linux, never updates any of their drivers (had a Samsung/Qualcomm phone with drivers years behind the equivalent Google Pixel phone), etc... They are the absolute worst actor in the entire computing world, don't care how fast their chip is.

[Danox]

Microsoft is sleeping on Qualcomm with their lousy port of Windows to Arm processors…

[hypercube33]

I'm not sure they are sleeping. I have an older version and it can run games and other things just fine, its just over priced and not properly cooled. The driver/firmware support from Lenovo / Qualcomm is purely garbage. You're lucky to get a driver update to fix anything. For months it just overheated and video would start corrupting but that got fixed finally. You cant just go to Qualcomm's website and download new drivers even though it looks like you can - they really dont get how modern GPU's work on Windows - a driver updates to optimize for games is really something important because of how Windows is but the experience is pulling teeth. If the systems were Neo priced (500-700 USD) and had a cooling fan I'd be all on board with these systems. Right now, AMD with unified memory is just the better deal for the $1200 (2025) systems to run Windows and an average workload.

[sedatk]

> with their lousy port of Windows to Arm processors…

What's lousy about it? I use it daily and have zero problems.

[criticalfault]

and is Qualcomm is sleeping on Linux?

[embedding-shape]

Seems like not? Judging based on https://github.com/qualcomm-linux something is happening, although I can't say how much. They definitively seem awake at least.

[jeroenhd]

The problem with these chips on Linux is that something has been happening for months but you still end up needing to download special editions of ARM Linux images to get these devices to work properly.

Some distros still need extracting Qualcomm firmware from Windows to get Linux to work properly. Audio remains a challenge, like x86 Linux decades ago. Apparently camera stuff works these days but produces images of subpar quality.

These issues also occur on normal Linux. My experience with my Lenovo+Intel laptop was that it took three months after release for the firmware to work properly (and the Nvidia drivers took much longer, but that's my fault for buying something containing Nvidia hardware). Intel managed to do what Qualcomm did in months rather than years.

I hope Qualcomm finally sorts this shit out, I really do, but with the prices of computers these days, I'm going to need to see quite the discount before I'll consider buying anything with a Snapdragon.

[ChocolateGod]

> but you still end up needing to download special editions of ARM Linux images to get these devices to work properly

This is a problem with Linux on ARM generally (Android has had it since inception), it's not a Qualcomm problem.

[criticalfault]

it's an UEFI Problem

they seem to have dealt with this for the server hardware

[justincormack]

They run a hypervisor under the OS, and dont support actually running directly on the hardware, its very odd.

[Elixir6419]

one of the biggest issue i see is the devicetree nonsense. It makes every single laptop and bios version very unique and requires a lot of housekeeping. There are also big chunks of work (as i understand it) to be done around hibernate and decent suspend support.

My experience (wanted to use x13s as daily sriver) is that there was good progress for about a year, until jhovold was leading the charge, but something expired and qualcom as far as i can tell forgot that some progress should happen on x1 and x8c as well as x2.

[gsnedders]

It feels deeply unfortunate that even with Windows on AArch64 requiring ACPI that it still doesn’t suffice for Linux, unlike on x86.

And I know a lot of that lies on the vendors, but it does feel unfortunate (from a standardisation/conformance/certification point of view) that Windows requiring it doesn’t make it easy to boot other OSes!

[stefan_]

Yes, Ubuntu on the previous gen Snapdragon X is still trash.

[reactordev]

10000000x this. They have been sleeping on Arm since windows phone. I just don’t see them ever having an original thought again.

They could have had a 128core arm chip by now.

[adabyron]

They have original thoughts! It's just that those employees get squashed by other divisions or having to meet short term quarterly profits it seems.

There's also the whole giant trillion dollar company doesn't want to invest and let small ideas grow. They only focus on things that move the needle, which isn't much at the size.

Had Microsoft executed and invested, they could have made a come back imo in both search, mobile & hardware. Unfortunately major lack of leadership or they just don't want those areas.

[reactordev]

No doubt the individuals have thoughts. It’s just corporate never actually does ANY of them. It’s a MBA mill.

[dylan604]

Unless the chip was called Copilot, they are not thinking anything about it. If was called Copilot, they'd have already figured out how to shove it down your throat.

[reactordev]

I'm sure there's an AI diagram of it on a powerpoint slide on some mid-level executive's deck that he thought would probably be clever.

[bradfa]

Qualcomm is a “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, you don’t fool me twice” kind of situation. So many horrible experiences in the past that people are going to be hesitant.

Qualcomm are trying harder now it seems. But it will take time to repair their reputation in the PC market.

[thewebguyd]

They burned me with the first gen Snapdragon X Elite. Before the various laptops with it were out they promised Linux support. Here we are, years alter, still no fully OOTB support. Ironically, the GPU firmware were just mainlined in the kernel 4 months ago, but they still haven't done the same for the 1st gen X elite.

Tuxedo computers tried and didn't succeed either.

I will never buy Qualcomm again. I avoid them on phones as well by just buying Apple. They do not support their hardware beyond the release.

[jeroenhd]

> I avoid them on phones as well by just buying Apple

To each their own, but I don't recall Apple ever mainlining any of their drivers on Linux. You're rightfully angry on the laptop side of things, but Apple is much worse than Qualcomm when it comes to open source support for their phones.

Qualcomm probably shouldn't have promised Linux support in the first place. Everyone seems to love Apple's hardware even though you're practically stuck with macOS. Had Qualcomm just stuck to Windows-only, they would've probably received a much better reception by the tech press.

[mlinhares]

Apple doesn’t sell general purpose computers outside of their own hardware so this doesn’t make any sense.

[izacus]

It makes absolutely the same amount of sense as the original critique - you just prefer to defend one bad actor because you like the brand.

[dismalaf]

At least Apple tells you they don't support anything except their own OS, Qualcomm just pretends to offer support.

[derefr]

Can you say more? I don't have any memory of Qualcomm-related scandals(?), but I just read the news; I've never really been a user of their chips.

[re-thc]

> Qualcomm are trying harder now it seems.

Not really, the 1st. iteration got stuck in legal land and other delays.

[bradfa]

They hired a good number of smart people who know how to do open source. So they’re trying. We shall see if it works.

[darkwater]

Is it well supported under Linux?

[modeless]

Qualcomm has been upstreaming Linux support for some of their chips but they're not working fast enough and I don't think the latest chips are there yet unfortunately.

[diabllicseagull]

I've been keeping an eye on the state of Linux on the first gen of X Elite and it's sad that the potential is not fully materialized outside WoA. Take a look at what peeps are going through:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-concept-snapdragon-x-e...

[izacus]

No, not at all, those machines are currently unusable on Linux.

[alt227]

Why do people care so much about single core performance? We are all professionals here and I bet most of our workloads are multi core. I get that these new arm chips from Apple and Qualcomm are great at one thing at a time, but for professional workloads high end x64 chips still cannot be beaten on the desktop.

[Remnant44]

I agree with you, but also:

outside of anything else, amdahls law means that as the parallel performance grows, we become _more_ limited by the inherently serial code, and thus single core performance, not less.

Given that single core performance is "harder" (can't just throw more cores/sockets at the problem), it's also critically important.

[dagmx]

What x86 chips have the same or higher number of cores in the form factors that these chips are available in and are also more performant?

Strix Halo is 16 cores. Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX is 24. Apple is 18. Qualcomm is something similar too but I can’t recall. NVIDIA is 20.

Until you get to threadripper/epyc or Xeon territories (completely different form factors and TDPs) the arm chips are ahead on both power and perf than the x86. And even when you get to those areas, arm is equivalent or out performs them as can be seen by the recent neoverse x3 and Vera benchmarks.

[wmf]

Nvidia Spark has 10 mid cores and 10 fake cores. Probably all the others are faster.

[hulitu]

> Why do people care so much about single core performance?

Because that't the only part this chip excels.

People are comparing apples with oranges since ages.

[modeless]

Single core performance is the biggest factor for most day-to-day use of a computer, the stuff I do on a laptop. It's more important than peak multi core performance for web browsing and games. I only care about multi core performance when I'm compiling, and I usually do heavy compiles on a remote machine rather than on my laptop.

[pjmlp]

Which hardly matters because in modern OSes there isn't a single thread that runs to completion without being preempted by other OS work.

[pjmlp]

It is a feel good kind of thing usually repeated by folks that don't understand OS scheduling algorithms.

Unless we're talking about RTOS, threads are always interrupted, thus how fast a single one can race is irrelevant in the whole picture.

[SecretDreams]

People aren't sleeping on Qualcomm, they're tired of Microsoft Windows as a janky ass OS.

[Razengan]

> X2 Elite Extreme

I'll wait for the 365 AI Ultimate Professional Enterprise Edition: Origins version

[re-thc]

> People are sleeping on Qualcomm.

Technically speaking, Qualcomm acquired Nuvia, which is where this came from and that company came from ex-Apple engineers wanting to do what Apple said no for their chips.

So it's almost same CPU design (origins).

[hulitu]

> And it's available in laptops today

Is there a desktop version ? For real work ?