The x86 architecture has dominated PCs and notebooks for decades and has yet to be replaced. The inertia here is very high and the competition has only recently come up with processors that could make a difference if the software side is up to it. So Apple started switching to the ARM architecture a few years ago and only recently completed the transition. Sufficiently high performance, low consumption and, in many cases, a lower price proved to be a definite advantage. Competing processors have so far taken rather low-end solutions, but this could start to change a lot this year. Microsoft’s exclusivity with Qualcomm is ending, so new processors on ARM are to be prepared by both AMD and Nvidia. Even Qualcomm itself comes with a significantly larger caliber than its 8cx processors.
Last October, he introduced the Snapdragon X Elite processors, which increased the number of cores from 8 to 12, depending on the version, frequencies can reach up to 4.3 GHz on two cores (3.8 GHz on the others). This is supposed to be an 80W variant of the processor, which doesn’t exactly sound like the high-efficiency processor we’d imagine an ARM chip to be. But we also learned that the variant boosting to a slightly lower 4.0 GHz consumes 23 W, and that is much more interesting. Qualcomm CEO, Cristiano Amon, has now let it be known that the X Elite will come in new laptops for this school season, which mainly means July.
But he also added another interesting piece of information. Together with the news, Microsoft should introduce a new version of the Windows operating system, which should use the AI capabilities of modern CPUs and Snapdragon in particular. While Meteor Lake has a total performance of 34 TOPS and its NPU delivers only 11 TOPS of this number, AMD achieves 39 TOPS with its new processors and in the case of X Elite only its NPU has a performance of 45 TOPS (the whole chip is even higher).
One possibility is the introduction of Windows 12, but this option is not highly likely. Most agree that it will probably be a big “AI Update” Windows 11 24H2. If this system is also available in a well-tuned variant for the ARM architecture and is capable of running most important applications, we can witness a little more success of the ARM architecture at the expense of x86 compared to how it has “done well” in this area so far.
2024-02-06 04:35:37
#ARMs #Snapdragon #Elite #arrive #summer #Windows