Relevant quote regarding Snapdragon X
“As this was the first full quarter of shipments for Snapdragon X Series PCs, we saw sequential growth of around 180% compared to Q2 2024. However, as a proportion of the total Windows market, the products remain very niche, at less than 1.5% share. The top shipping vendor was Microsoft, which has transitioned most of their Surface line to the platform. Behind them was Dell who has embraced the new platform quite strongly in terms of SKU count, followed by HP, Lenovo, Acer and Asus (all four with similar volumes).”
This is such a bizarre story. First as others pointed out 1 in 125 is 0.8% not 0.008%. They presumably forgot the 100 but in percent conversions. It’s presumably 0.8% as if it’s 0.008% then they’re saying 9billion devices were sold on the last quarter. At 0.8% it’s 90million laptop devices. They later say 20% of all laptop sales were AI laptops at 13.3 million which would be 66.5 million laptops overall, not 90milljon. 720,000 would actually 1.1% of all laptops and 5.4% of the AI subcategory.
So whoever wrote the article doesn’t seem to know how to do basic maths? They also don’t make clear how they arrived at their figures with these contradictory figures elsewhere in their own article.
But the main thing is this whole story is some bizarre idea that a new device getting nearly 1% of global sales in its first quarter is doing badly?
To me that’s actually good? But maybe the manufacturer had some crazy expectations? Or maybe the writers think that all products should behave like incumbents?
This reads like shitty journalism - trying to make big claims to get clicks. I have no idea if the product is doing well or not versus expectations, but I don’t trust this articles take on it.
I’m personally skeptical about the “AI” bullshit in these products, but I do think the power efficiency of ARM chips may give these Snapdragon X a chance to take market share from traditional chips.
But the main thing is this while story is some bizarre idea that a new device getting nearly 1% of global sales in its first quarter is doing badly?
There was a lot of hype for this and some sketchy work by Qualcomm around benchmarks (initially posted benchmarks that were based on a linux setup with 100% custom cooling, none of the released products came close to this result and it’s not really viable to run Linux on Snapdragon X devices even to this day).
- Ars Technica - Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite looks like the Windows world’s answer to Apple Silicon
- The Verge - Qualcomm’s next round of PC chips will fight Apple under the name Snapdragon X
- Tomshardware - Snapdragon X Elite Outperforms Intel, AMD, Apple CPUs (In Vendor Benchmarks)
it’s not really viable to run Linux on Snapdragon X devices even to this day
Really? That’s too bad, because I’ve been interested in a new laptop and those laptops looked interesting. I’m not actively shopping though, so hopefully Linux compat improves by the time my laptop dies.
Their math is fucked.
1 in 125 devices would be 0.8%, whereas 0.008% would be 1 in 12500 devices. I mean I guess technically 1 in 12500 is “less than” 1 in 125 devices, but come on.
They later note that it captured “less than 1.5%” of the ecosystem, which… yeah, the numbers they already gave us support that, but by how much? We have no idea, because of their fucked up math.
I assume “1 in 125” is correct, because otherwise, to have sold 720,000 units, there would have had to be about 9 billion total sales in that period.
Their headline, and the summary above, actually say 0.8%. so either they updated their headline or there was some kind of error when posting it here.
I posted the headline as-is. Updated it with the new headline.
It’s just an expensive paperweight until we can run Linux on it.
Now you can install uboot and get a proper uefi implementation it shouldn’t take too long: https://social.treehouse.systems/@cas/113539953511804908
I need to check the driver situation but I don’t think there was anything particularly windows only on the SoC.
Partial support is coming in four years time they’ve announced. We just have to wait 🫠.
Cool, maybe I’ll get one in 4+ years. Or maybe I’ll get an x86 laptop. But I’m not getting something that doesn’t support Linux properly OOTB.
0.008% is 1 in 12,500, not 1 in 125…well, technically it is still less than 1 in 125, but I doubt that’s what they mean.
My neighbor bought one, it didn’t boot / light up. He sent it back to get a new one.
He’s happy so far as you can tell…
I bought mine a month ago and I am very happy with it so far. The efficiency is very impressive.
I had number of Windows laptops including 2 versions of the earlier Surfaces before and this one finally somehow feels like not having issues with running the OS. If I need Linux, I run WSL on it and it even runs Unreal Engine simple scenes in editor on 60 FPS so I can prepare my lectures on it in the train without needing to use the charger.
And somehow they ignore anything related to ARM software compatibility
How about a big Snapdragon laptop sale?
Maybe if Microsoft hadn’t fucked it up first time around, it would have done better.
I think if they have done it properly now, like Apple did at their first attempt, these will soon ( a couple of years ) outsell X86 laptops.With Lunar Lake proving that x86 can contend with ARM if it wants to, I’m not sure why anyone would consider these laptops which perform about the same but with compatibility issues.
Power efficiency. Arm promises the same performance at lower temps and wattage than x86 at competitive price points. That’s a really attractive proposition for the laptop market. x86 can be as small format, as power efficient, as cheap, or as powerful than ARM but not all at the same time.
That’s not true at all. It’s a common misconception but there’s nothing stopping x86 from also targeting a power efficient design. It’s all about architecture and not the instruction set. There just hasn’t been an incentive for Intel and AMD to focus their architectures on power efficiency since they make much more money in the server space. Lunar Lake is Intel’s first real attempt at it.
The Z1 Extreme has already shown very comparable and sometimes better performance and power efficiency as the M2 chips and the Lunar Lake chips trade blows with the X Elite not just in performance but also power draw.
If you wanna know more, this goes very in depth on what the differences are: https://chipsandcheese.com/p/why-x86-doesnt-need-to-die
I agree it is not because they can’t but because they didn’t want to. But the truth is they haven’t. Current offers match exactly what I have described in my comment. Intel and AMD have been sleeping on their laurels and ARM is coming for their lunch unless they move quick.
One of the reasons why it’s harder for x86 is because the instruction set is simply more complex. You either need a decoder to turn it into simpler instructions, or more hardware to handle the complex instructions, both of which increase the number of transitors, and therefore power draw until we create a room temp superconductor
Both RISC and CISC decode into micro-ops regardless. Read the article, it goes into detail, the diagrams make it pretty clear if you don’t want to read the whole article. Modern processors have no notable differences between RISC or CISC designs anymore in the way you described. The only thing RISC and CISC differs in is essentially just the interface that assemblers assemble code into. Which is different across ISAs anyways.
Thanks for taking the time to correct me. I shouldn’t rely on elementary knowledge from a BSc that discussed chips from 3 decades ago.
Should have sold at all price points, not just high end.
Didn’t work last time on the low end surface go line. I’d bet the low end was loss leaders intended to just get people on arm
I, for one, am waiting on ARM to upgrade my Surface Go.
I just recently bought my framework and would not like to upgrade this soon. However, I really want a Qualcomm Mobo for my framework to come out. Or a competitive risk V, but that’s probably a pipe dream until I actually need an upgrade
Needs less AI bullshit and then maybe I’d consider it.
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