Only 720k Snapdragon X laptops sold in Q3 – less than 0.8% of PCs | Hacker News Reader

Only 720k Snapdragon X laptops sold in Q3 – less than 0.8% of PCs

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21 pointsironyman51 comments

For most people, it's a random laptop.

The amount of people who specifically want an ARM laptop is not too big. People who want ARM based laptop AND Windows is even smaller. Most of the first group already bought Apple silicon, or some random variant of PineBookPro & Co (or that Lenovo with ARM CPU that's name escapes me. But these folks can run Windows too).

Otherwise the rest of the people amount to this (0.8% is still more than I expected - that's quite respectable actually).

For most people it's a Windows laptop that claims to have Apple like performance and battery life. I'm not sure it quite delivered on that, but at least that is how it's positioned itself.

It’s been my experience.

Switched from a X1 Yoga to a T14s with Snapdragon

My battery on my previous PC (1.5 yrs old) would just manage to get me through a meeting. New PC can go all day on a single charge, and it does seem to be quicker as well.

What's Windows like on it? Any major app limitations you've run into?

To be honest I'd love to try it out with Debian once all the upstream support is merged.

IME the only major app limitations are games. All the browsers now have a native ARM version. It's possible to get ARM Emacs, R, Visual Studio etc. Most other stuff works fine over compatibility. I have run into one program that would not install because it hard-codes a check for x64. It wasn't anything major and I cant even recall what it was though.

I have heard about issues with printer drivers but I don't have a printer or any other devices that don't just use some generic driver.

Microsoft released an update to their Prism x64 emulator for ARM, see https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/6/24289844/microsoft-window...

    With this update, Microsoft’s emulator will open up support for 64-bit x86 software to use processor extensions like AVX, AVX2, BMI, FMA, and F16C. However, it says 32-bit software still won’t be able to detect the new emulator support, so some programs still might have trouble.

Supporting newer-than-MMX-SIMD CPU instructions may help some games run on ARM now.

Assuming “a meeting” is one hour (you should really provide a lot more detail if it isn’t when making a claim like that), then something was seriously wrong with that PC. My 3 year old Intel PC (Dell 7420) easily gets through 4 or 5 hours before I start worrying about plugging in.

If we know anything about Microsoft, they’ll get there. This is their second (recent) try at getting ARM off the ground (first was SQ1 which had a much lower adoption rate). Feedback about them has been mostly positive, but mostly from people who use regular office and web apps.

Most major app developers seem to be on-board, and I’ve seen a lot of small developers starting to provide beta versions.

Indeed. The most important apps already have native Windows ARM builds: 7Zip, Notepad++, Firefox, Sumatra PDF etc. It's pretty usable for Average Joes.

Google Chrome and Microsoft Office also have native Windows ARM binaries.

https://blog.google/products/chrome/download-google-chrome-w...

and

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/microsoft365...

It's funny how Google finally caved in a d released a Chrome build for Windows ARM after many years of avoiding it to not enable Microsoft's Arm product to compete with their Chromebooks.

I'm not sure about the his view. Microsoft attempted smartphones twice. Failed both times. And stopped.

They're not infallible. But also not bad.

I mean, starting from Windows on client devices isn't a very good basis to set up a cloud, but theirs is clearly number two.

I'd love to have one of those laptops, with Debian, 12" not 15.

This time does feel different. The x64 emulation through Prism is a technological marvel and they just got AVX512 working which means that a lot more games will start to work. For companies that due pursue native ARM64 support, it's not all or nothing, there are ways to iteratively bring over pieces of that app. They also have this new App Assure program where they are working with both their customers as well as 3rd party app developers to get as much compatibility with existing apps as possible. Microsoft's previous attempts were silo'd platforms that weren't compatible at all with existing apps, so to me I see this eventually taking off like you say.

Huh? Can you name any game that requires AVX512? I haven't encountered any so far.

I don't think any games require AVX512 but the current x64 release emulator doesn't support AVX or AVX2 either which is needed by some games. The preview release of Windows for ARM does add support for AVX/AVX2.

Yeah that makes sense, those two have been around for quite a while I guess.

What is their incentive? Intel fixed their mobile battery life issues, so why should Microsoft care anymore? Furthermore why should app developers care? And then why should consumers care?

As long as x86 performance / efficiency is in the ballpark, which it is (mostly). No one is going to bother.

Intel isn't fixed.

Intel had to outsource much of their CPUs/GPUs to fix their battery issues.

Meteor Lake (Core Ultra series 1) outsourced all to TSMC but the CPU and Foveros base tile. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_lake#Process_technology

Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V) is more TSMC than Intel, providing only the Foveros base tile, while TSMC provides the CPU tile this time as well. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lake#Process_node

Same with Arrow Lake (Core Ultra series 2). see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Lake_(microprocessor)#Ar...

It's like Intel provides just the car exterior and frame while TSMC provides the engine, entertainment system, tires, et al.

Also TSMC makes Intel's recent GPU chips.

Everyone is looking at the next Intel CPU, codenamed Panther Lake, which is supposed to return to the Intel fold and be Intel-only-fabricated chip sometime in 2025.

Business-wise, Intel's revenue has dropped from an all-time high of $79B during the pandemic to $54B (close to annual revenue from 10 years ago). see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Business_trends

In the Lunar Lake wikipedia article, a Goldman Sachs analysis states that Intel is spending about 10% of revenue ($5.6B) for TSMC foundry services in 2024, expected to almost double in 2025.

Apple uses TSMC's 2nd gen 3nm process node. Intel uses TSMC's 1st gen 3nm process node for its compute tile. AMD uses TSMC's 1st gen 3nm process node for the Zen 5c core, 4nm for the other parts of the chip. Qualcomm uses TSMC's 4nm process node for Snapdragon X Elite.

Qualcomm has the most to improve when it goes to smaller process node, while AMD is halfway there with its mobile CPUs. Intel is already at the smallest process node available, until TSMC (or more likely Apple stops buying) gets more capacity at smaller/more efficient process nodes.

During the early to mid-2010s, Intel has shown that they'll take their sweet time providing CPU improvements to customers (app developers and computer users) if they have no competition (and they hide from the public how poorly their new fabs are doing).

Running on more chips with more providers is just sensible for an OS.

Developers will care if increasingly more ARM devices get sold. And for many apps its not that hard anyway.

Consumers will care because more company make products and advertise those products, some consumers will buy them.

Qualcomm's exclusivity for consumer Windows ARM devices ends in 2025. It sounds like there may be several others starting up competition in this area e.g. https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/gaming-pcs/nvidias-arm...

A demand spike for Windows laptops is next fall.

That's when Windows 10 stops getting free support and laptops that can't run Windows 11 will need replacement...yes, Linux is an option for some people but don't put your money on 2025 as the year of the Linux Desktop.

Right now, there's just ordinary laptop demand and ordinary laptop demand has been low for many years.

But when demand spikes next year, there will be mature products in the market.

How many % of PCs in the same price range? Would have bought one, but even the cheapest one I could find right now (ASUS Vivobook S5507) is too expensive for me (and it seems like it goes for about the half of the "normal" range).

With Intel and AMD figuring out x86 battery life, Windows based arm is DOA unless ARM chip makers are willing to sell on razor thin margins to out compete on price. Even then, business will be reluctant to switch.

Over-marketed the technology, under-marketed the benefits.

Almost a percent of PC sales with a certain CPU configuration doesn't seem that bad at all.

Would be happy to buy a supported Linux variant

It's Qualcomm, not happening...

There's a significant upstreaming effort and their engineers have presented at a Linux con. While not an official product, this time it might actually be different.

https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-...

I gave up waiting :(. The first time in 20 years I've not used Linux on a laptop at home. The recent MacBook air deals were too inviting, and I hate to say, solved every complaint I had with my last intel machine.

Asahi not running on latest Air yet?

"This time"? It's been months. The DTSes were built and upstreamed by community members. Qualcomm was too busy absolutely wasting their time on the Windows Dev Kit which is now dead in the water. They clearly still don't get it.

And AFAICT they're not taking any leadership in the technical areas where ARM is not great (bootloader/DTS selection-y stuff, which has been a varying level of nightmare the entire time I've been tinkering with non-x86 devices. One thing when you're selling an embedded product; a different one when you start wanting distros to support your platform).

Upstreaming code taking months is not exactly unexpected. Having seen it from the other side (legal sign-off alone can be a nightmare), I wasn't expecting it overnight. ARMs lack of standardisation is a major pain but that's a multi-vendor issue. At least Qualcomm is actually engaging the Linux community. Something that works, even delayed, is better than years of community reverse engineering efforts with no guarantee of fully working.

> At least Qualcomm is actually engaging the Linux community. Something that works, even delayed, is better than years of community reverse engineering efforts with no guarantee of fully working.

I don't know that Qualcomm lifted a single finger to help the non-qualcomm employees who have been doing ALL of the work to make ANY Linux happy on their devices. Trust me, I was there with half a dozen other people trying to figure out what kernel module was so buggy that it would cause reboot when loaded in initrm, but without it would block boot. And that was just until I gave up and said to hell with it.

Nowadays Intel, AMD and even Nvidia have Linux support when a product is launched, so yeah, it's bad that the laptops are in the wild with no support.

For a tech enthusiast, it is hard to get excited about switching from a 2-vendor proprietary ISA (x86) to a 1-vendor proprietary ISA (arm).

I just don’t see why you would go for this when you can buy a m3/m4 Mac with a fully functional ecosystem.

But I do.

Lots of people don't, but they don't need to. I don't need your permission to buy the hardware I prefer, and you don't need mine.

M3 and M4 mac's require you to put up with the overly thin laptop keyboards. (I know some people say they like them.)

Admittedly many Windows PC's also have crummy thin keyboards these days, but the ones on the Thinkpads should be okay.

Personally I like apple laptop keyboards now, I find them better than many windows machines, or at least tolerable; I have a Razer laptop as well which has a decent keyboard.

Thankfully on the macOS front, there’s more than just the laptops. The Mac Mini isn’t a bad machine, albeit you supply the keyboard that inflicts your own misery there

Apple doesn't make a non-crippled tablet. Surface Pro 11 is fast enough and MS doesn't arbitrarily decide how I use the device. It also plays nicer with my mix of non-Apple products whereas Apple is far more annoying in that regard.

But then you would have to use a mac.

Some people dislike that.

I mean, between the lacklustre GPU, compatibility issues, price and the fact that AMD and Intel have made huge strides on battery life I can't see the market for this.

Also Unix nerds who don't like Apple also won't buy these because Qualcomm is shit when it comes to driver and kernel support. Expensive too.

And realistically, no one needs 24hr battery life. 12 hours is plenty. Heck even 8 hours is enough, talking a full working day.

The kind of battery life you get from these laptops is a step change, in that you go from constantly thinking about the charge on them to not really thinking about it at all. That's a pretty big improvement for most people.

(And it's not like your typical dell reliably lasts 12 or even 8 hours anyway, that's only the best case)

The latest Intel laptop chips are really good on that regard.

My 5 year old Surface pro gets 4-5 hours. I find 10th gen and later Intel to get about 8.

I mean, my 16" MSI with 11th Gen Intel and Nvidia GPU gets 6 hours on Linux (openSuse)... Any current gen laptop with APU should be getting 12 hours. But I don't know Windows, it could be that bad?

I travel for work sometimes. You often don't really know about charging. I need a lot more battery capacity than at home to be confident of doing my work.

“24hr” battery life is still usually <8h at significant load (IDE/video editing/etc.), also sometimes I want to use the display at full blast instead of 150 nits when I’m working in a park or cafe, sometimes the power outlet on a plane won’t hold my charger in and I wanna game on the plane, lots of legitimate use cases for “24hr” battery life

I think most normal people liked the M1 because of the battery life. A lot of people are lazy with charging in general, so its a huge benefit to just open the lid and it's working.

... and who knows why Qualcomm canceled their Snapdragon X Elite dev kit? Very suspicious. Can they not get enough yield for the highest spec Snapdragon CPU?

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