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Qualcomm’s M1-class laptop chips will be ready for PCs in “late 2023”

75 points by paulpan 4y ago

Shadonototra 4y ago
and of course microsoft haven't built the foundation to encourage an ecosystem that supports both x86/arm (universal binaries) that's in part what makes this plan plan completely useless, and Apple got it right from the beginning back from when they announced Mac Catalyst + their decade old Rosetta tech microsoft is such a joke, glad i am no longer dependent on windows
- bdcravens 4y ago
  Is anyone shipping Universal Binaries for Mac? I thought most are shipping 2 versions, or just letting Rosetta handle things. Additionally, I don't think this iteration of Rosetta is a "decade old", but rather, is a new product with the same name.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I see lots of "Universal Binaries" listed and I suspect few of them are PowerPC: /Applications/1Password 7.app/Contents/MacOS/1Password 7: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64 - Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64] /Applications/1Password 7.app/Contents/MacOS/1Password 7 (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64 /Applications/1Password 7.app/Contents/MacOS/1Password 7 (for architecture arm64): Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64
  - cwizou 4y ago
    I think the breakdown is with native/non-native apps and specific build systems. Pretty much all the native apps that get updated for M1 are universal binaries. Xcode is (all things being relative) pretty good at making this work semi-transparently. The only instances where I see separate builds for x86/M1 is with non native apps, a good example that I saw just yesterday being Postman. I would guess either their build system is the culprit, or some libraries that they rely on. It's not systematic though so this is particular to those vendors, it could also be that they chose to do separate builds for other reasons, though it's not what Apple suggests developers do. Teams and Discord both have universal builds and are non-native, as counter examples to Postman. Another good example is that while VS Code [1] is universal, VS Codium [2] makes separate builds (those seem to have been posted in the last 12 hours, yay !), and this is mostly due to their build system [3]. This site is also a good resource that tells you what has native M1 support, and what still runs under Rosetta : https://isapplesiliconready.com/ https://isapplesiliconready.com/ [1]: https://code.visualstudio.com/Download https://code.visualstudio.com/Download [2]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases [3]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/597#issuecomment-1112877775 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/597#issuecomment...
  - msbarnett 4y ago
    The _vast_ majority of 3rd party apps on my M1 Mac are Universal? Ableton, Alfred, Affinity Photo, 1password, Backblaze, Capture One, CLion, FastRawViewer, Firefox, Irident, Postico, SublimeText/Merge. The only notable non-Universal binaries are: Calibre (Intel-only) and Podman Desktop (Apple Silicon specific build)
- xiphias2 4y ago
  Microsoft targets slower moving enterprises, where breaking old software has a much higher cost. The problem here for Microsoft is that now finally remote work is getting embraced by knowledge workers, and they don't accept non-remote always-in-office jobs anymore. And for remote / mobile work hardware efficiency and long battery life matters much more than for in office work.
  - usrn 4y ago
    You should tell that to corp IT where I work. My macbook fans have been running non-stop all week with the machine doing God only knows what while all I have open is webex, outlook, and a few VTE windows.
    - Tagbert 4y ago
      That sounds like what happens whenever I run WebEx
- moondev 4y ago
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on...
- pavlov 4y ago
  IMO Microsoft has put much more effort into a thoughtful x86 -> ARM transition than Apple did. For one thing, a lot of code on Windows uses the .Net runtime and is JIT-compiled to the target platform. Those programs in general don't need to be ported at all. For transitioning native x86 programs — and there are a lot of those on Windows, of course — Microsoft created a new ABI that lets you mix ARM and emulated x86 code seamlessly: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/06/28/announcing-arm64ec-building-native-and-interoperable-apps-for-windows-11-on-arm/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/06/28/announ... This is great for something like an audio or video app that uses a lot of third party plugins. The host app can be ported to ARM, but it can still load those x86 plugin binaries. Apple has no solution for this: their Rosetta works on a process level. If you have a Final Cut Pro plugin that hasn't been ported by the developer to ARM, your only option is to run all of FCP in Rosetta emulation.
  - my123 4y ago
    > your only option is to run all of FCP in Rosetta emulation. Apple has out of process plugins nowadays for that use case, through the XPC infrastructure. It's more 3rd-party SW that doesn't use XPC out of process plugins that are affected.
    - pavlov 4y ago
      Yes, good point. Let's replace FCP with After Effects, which is a popular plugin host and doesn't use XPC (AFAIK). Rearchitecting native plugins to run out of process is a lot of work, and isn't something Adobe can quickly mandate on their developers.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    > IMO Microsoft has put much more effort into a thoughtful x86 -> ARM transition than Apple did. Given that the Surface Pro X didn't support 64 bit x86 Windows applications at all, I'm not sure how you can think so. Even after developer channel support was added, it was unlikely to work. >How did Microsoft screw this up? - Surface Pro X (SQ2) vs M1 Macbook Air https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA
smoldesu 4y ago
It's funny, I honestly doubt Qualcomm can compete at this point. Intel intends to be on the same node as Apple by EOY 23, so honestly Qualcomm would have to make a pretty competitive chip to have a chance at playing in the big leagues. Look at it this way: Qualcomm needs to have CPU performance that can beat Intel and iGPU performance that can compete with Ryzen chips, that's the entry-level requirement to start convincing people that ARM is the future on PC. Of course, this is not going to happen, especially if they're on some podunk 7nm Samsung lithography or something of that vain. I can see this unfolding one of two ways, neither of which are good for Qualcomm: 1. Intel takes back the performance crown and recoups their efficiency losses over the next 2 or 3 generations. They double or triple their density, start aggressively buying up TSCM silicon to supplement their own fabs, and go back to being the de-facto PC CPU manufacturer. 2. AMD pushes hard on their efficiency, 3D cache and iGPU technologies, muscling Intel out of the competition and making an indisputable case for their dominance in the mobile/laptop category. Everyone except long-time Intel contractors switch their main products for Ryzen chips, and eventually they get the leverage they need to take over the professional/business sector too. Notice how nowhere I said "Qualcomm, a company with little to no history in the field of PC manufacturing, designs a chip that will likely be slower than it's x86 counterparts, has no means of emulating the x86 software people buy Windows machines for, and magically finds it's way into hundreds of consumer machines." That's because it's a pipe dream, and with the nature of PC computing, you simply can't transition architectures in the same way Apple did. I reckon x86 is going to stay relevant for at least another 5-10 years on the Windows/Linux side of things, and by the time people are sick and tired of it, I think we'll be eyeing RISC-V chips by then. ARM is starting to get long in the tooth, and it's advantages as an architecture have pretty substantially diminished over the last 20 years. It also still hasn't solved big problems like SIMD execution or ISA modularity yet; there's a real chance for another architecture to eat it's lunch in the distant future.
- aDfbrtVt 4y ago
  Why would Qualcomm design their silicon for an 8nm Samsung process? They have a working relationship with TSMC and definitely have enough volume to access risk production nodes.
- singhrac 4y ago
jasoneckert 4y ago
With the Microsoft-Qualcomm ARM exclusivity deal ending very soon, Microsoft could make Windows 11 available for Apple Silicon platforms. This would benefit both Apple and Microsoft at the expense of Qualcomm (who would need to compete directly with Apple's pace of ARM development).
- garaetjjte 4y ago
  Why would they port Windows to their competitor platform?
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Apple and Microsoft have cooperated for years to bring Bootcamp on the x86 platform. Apple, no matter the OS, still makes a ton of margin on the hardware.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - dwaite 4y ago
    On Microsoft's homepage (e.g. for a primary consumer focus), they list Windows behind Office 365 and behind the Xbox and Surface. For corporate use, they are pushing seats for O365 and other hosted services as well as selling Azure-based hosting. The loss of the mobile phone market and hits to the low end by Chrome OS means that pursuing a platform lock-in strategy is no longer viable.
    - garaetjjte 4y ago
      >On Microsoft's homepage (e.g. for a primary consumer focus), they list Windows behind Office 365 and behind the Xbox and Surface. Windows consumer revenue comes from preinstalled licenses, they don't need to advertise it directly. M1 Windows port would be admitting defeat and kill Surface. For Office, they already have MacOS version of it.
superkuh 4y ago
M1 class? Does that mean it'll be proprietary without the ability to upgrade parts or assume compatibility with common hardware standards in order to squeeze out every bit of performance possible?
- nicoburns 4y ago
  > Does that mean it'll be proprietary without the ability to upgrade parts or assume compatibility with common hardware standards My understanding is that existing Qualcomm chips are like this already (except with fairly mediocre performance), so presumably yes.
- amelius 4y ago
  "M1 class" simply means 5nm technology node. Those with early access to a new node will always have the wow-factor, but they are not necessarily better than the rest.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    "M1 class" means the performance class. There is a lot more to performance than just the node generation as has been proven time and time again, just look at Bulldozer vs Sandy Bridge as both were 32 nm. It'd also make no sense to acquire Nuvia if all they needed was 5nm production as Nuvia is not a fab.
- kergonath 4y ago
  > Does that mean it'll be proprietary without the ability to upgrade parts Upgrading parts of a CPU hasn’t been a thing for quite a while now. When was the last time one could add a module of cache or a FPU? We’re talking about SoCs here, not devices. > or assume compatibility with common hardware standards There is basically no hardware standard in ARM-land > in order to squeeze out every bit of performance possible? Since when is it a bad thing?
hmmmhmmmhmmm 4y ago
Don’t forget that Qualcomm purchased Nuvia (ex Apple chip designers) last year. Will they be playing catch-up with apple’s CPUs? Maybe. But maybe there’s a connectivity/ communications and Qualcomm can play to its strengths - e.g. laptops with 5G? Laptops running android? I don’t know. https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/03/16/qualcomm-completes-acquisition-nuvia https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/03/16/qualcomm-c...
- cft 4y ago
  Good point. Why doesn't every Apple M1 laptop have an eSIM and a 5G transiever?
  - egsmi0 4y ago
    I have no idea why Apple laptops don’t have cellular but whatever the reason is, I’m pretty sure it’s not because of the BOM cost of the components.
  - mfer 4y ago
    Where is there market demand for that functionality in a laptop?
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Commercial customers in the field. But this is also a market segment with basically zero Mac users. And small enough of a market that it's way off Apple's radar.
      - ChadNauseam 4y ago
        As someone with a spotty internet connection and who likes to work at coffee shops with annoying login prompts, I'd really appreciate a product like that. I can get a data-only sim from Google Fi for free so it'd be an easy purchase for me. (I have no idea why my internet connection is so bad. I pay for 20Mb/s, and half the time it's like 200Mb/s and the other half I don't have internet at all.)
amelius 4y ago
When will RISC V become "M1 class"?
- wmf 4y ago
  It's just now getting close to RPi class, so maybe 5 years at the earliest.
  - marcodiego 4y ago
    That sounds like and optimistic time frame. Hope you're right.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    I suspect realistically, more like 30 years. Because I doubt anyone with the capability will even be trying any time soon.
    - wmf 4y ago
      As somebody mentioned, Rivos.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        Do you think they have the resources to take on the big established companies? It seems like recent startups that have tried this like PA Semi and Nuvia have only found success through acquisition...
        jbverschoor 4y ago
        It’s easier when you steal 400GB of M1 design files
    - snvzz 4y ago
      What sort of capability are you talking about?
kergonath 4y ago
On one hand that’s a bit late (hopefully Apple will have something better than the M1 by then). On the other hand it’ll take them a couple of iterations and not all of them will be stellar, as mistakes are made and the architecture is adjusted. I am afraid their next couple of designs will be disappointing. It took Apple a decade and a couple of near-perfect iterations to go where they are, building on the people from Intrinsity and PA-Semi (amongst many other smaller acquisitions). Surely, Qualcomm can benefit from some of that experience through Nuvia, but that won’t be everything.
lynguist 4y ago
It’s another proof that Apple’s lead in hardware technology over everyone else is at the minimum 3 years.
g42gregory 4y ago
For me, anything that runs Linux is a yes. Anything that does not run Linux, is a no. I won’t use anything non-Linux for computational purposes. If it’s better hardware-wise, it won’t matter to me.
- sto_hristo 4y ago
  You're a niche. But if linux fixes the 10^10^10^10 different distros problem and gets an awesome desktop environment that large companies can confidently program against knowing that all linux users will be covered, then everything else will pretty much disappear overnight.
  - g42gregory 4y ago
    I ran Ubuntu desktop as a server with NVIDIA GPUs, that sits next to my desk. I access it with my MacBook Pro, mostly through PyCharm or CLion remote runtimes, so nothing runs on my Mac. The latency is single ms, so you don’t feel it at all. I get the benefits of nice Mac UI and standard Linux server runtimes for both Python and C++.
  - philistine 4y ago
    Valve might end up becoming the biggest impact on desktop Linux and putting it over the edge if Windows keeps on refusing to remove. its. old. UI.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    Speaking about 'niches', I'm wondering about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepin and how many real users they may have?
rektide 4y ago
Im shocked Qualcomm has done basically nothing with their existing "laptop class" chip, like the 7c and 8c, announced end of 2018, based off the a76 announced that spring. I was skeptical & the initial chips landed at my low expecation level, but I at least thought they'd get better. Tacking on another hundred mhz to nearly the same chip every now and then... thay is not what i expected. From thr outside perspective this looks like baffling non-delivery, utter unwillingness to try to compete. Three years latter & the offering is effectively unchanged. By compare, MediaTek started slow, but was cheap, and they've gotten faster & faster. Respectable bottom up disruption.
- zitterbewegung 4y ago
  They had a Windows emulation exclusivity contract and squandered it for so long that now it’s expired other tech companies like Apple could emulate Windows on their devices.
- wmf 4y ago
  The 8cx gen 3 is finally not garbage but it's probably still too expensive. I am also surprised by Qualcomm's self-own here; if they had so little faith in the laptop market they could have just not entered it.
marcodiego 4y ago
And although linux has been running comfortably with a lot of software on ARM for more than a decade while windows lacked long behind, it looks like another opportunity to increase its popularity will be lost.
- wmf 4y ago
  If you consider Chrome OS to be Linux, ARM is making some inroads there.
  - marcodiego 4y ago
    Yes, like does android, servers, routers, smart tv's... many of these devices are running linux inside. And it does benefit from time to time like gaining mind share, fixing some bugs in the kernel or system tools, implementing drivers... but for any ground being gained on the desktop the benefits have been very small and slow.
camillomiller 4y ago
I tested Qualcomm’s first Windows on Arm computer (a HP Envy 2) in June 2018: it was very underwhelming but seemed promising. Yet here we are 4 years later… Qualcomm and Microsoft have been working on this at least as long as Apple, I would say. The difference in outcomes is insane, and I think it speaks broadly not about how bad Qualcomm and Microsoft are at this (they’re not) but rather how insanely good Apple’s Silicon team is. And of course it speaks volumes about the power of hardware-software integration under the same roof. I also came to the conclusion that Qualcomm, Microsoft, and all their OEM partners have broadly underestimated what Apple would be capable of off the bat with its first and second gen silicon.
- yakak 4y ago
  I think a lot of it is about commitment. Apple has a lot to lose whenever it changes the CPU architecture for Mac, especially if it gets stuck with two for longer than expected. For Qualcomm and similar, a foray in Notebooks is just something interesting. For Microsoft such a foray is always limited by its x86 ecosystem losses.
  - karmakaze 4y ago
    Microsoft has been known to do things half-heartily on both h/w and s/w: phone OS, Windows RT, UWP, app store, etc. Even the Internet Explorer to Edge transition was long overdue, but not too late. The way MS works is very much like Google where they have their cash cows and everything else seems like a diversion until they miss the boat on a new thing and it's too late. Remember that Windows NT originally supported x86, MIPS, Alpha but haven't taken it further. They also make entire toolchains that could make building for multi-targets as seamless as they choose save final validation.
logicalmonster 4y ago
Perhaps a dumb question about the competitiveness of the industry from somebody who doesn't follow it too closely. Is Apple's large pile of cash a factor in how things play out here? It seems like they'll be able to perpetually afford to get first in line for advances in technology and smaller and smaller chips. How much of an impact does this have?
- wmf 4y ago
  Having infinite money helps but it isn't an unassailable moat. There have been plenty of cases over the years where the best fab doesn't always win.
ytch 4y ago
M1 (or MacOS) has x64 translation at day one. I'm wondering why it takes so long for MS and QCOM to design an x64 emulator at windows on ARM. If they have a fast/stable emulator, it would catch up with M1 more quickly.
- philistine 4y ago
  Apple is ruthless with backward compatibility to help with future endeavours. For example, [they cut off 32-bit apps in 2018](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208436 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208436). I think they deprecated OpenGL because they didn't want to port it to ARM; it ended up making the jump nonetheless. Windows just got rid of 32-bit versions with Windows 11, and there must be so many difficult edge cases to emulate in Windows. MacOS is much cleaner; it went through a transition already, its sibling iOS has been on ARM for very long, and they even implemented behaviours in the M1 family to help with emulation. Apple is holding a better hand at the game of emulation.
  - ytch 4y ago
    It makes sense, thanks for explanation
    - philistine 4y ago
      Geez, thanks. I'm gonna blush.

75 points by paulpan 4y ago

and of course microsoft haven't built the foundation to encourage an ecosystem that supports both x86/arm (universal binaries) that's in part what makes this plan plan completely useless, and Apple got it right from the beginning back from when they announced Mac Catalyst + their decade old Rosetta tech microsoft is such a joke, glad i am no longer dependent on windows

bdcravens 4y ago
Is anyone shipping Universal Binaries for Mac? I thought most are shipping 2 versions, or just letting Rosetta handle things. Additionally, I don't think this iteration of Rosetta is a "decade old", but rather, is a new product with the same name.
- bombcar 4y ago
  I see lots of "Universal Binaries" listed and I suspect few of them are PowerPC: /Applications/1Password 7.app/Contents/MacOS/1Password 7: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64 - Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64] /Applications/1Password 7.app/Contents/MacOS/1Password 7 (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64 /Applications/1Password 7.app/Contents/MacOS/1Password 7 (for architecture arm64): Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64
- cwizou 4y ago
  I think the breakdown is with native/non-native apps and specific build systems. Pretty much all the native apps that get updated for M1 are universal binaries. Xcode is (all things being relative) pretty good at making this work semi-transparently. The only instances where I see separate builds for x86/M1 is with non native apps, a good example that I saw just yesterday being Postman. I would guess either their build system is the culprit, or some libraries that they rely on. It's not systematic though so this is particular to those vendors, it could also be that they chose to do separate builds for other reasons, though it's not what Apple suggests developers do. Teams and Discord both have universal builds and are non-native, as counter examples to Postman. Another good example is that while VS Code [1] is universal, VS Codium [2] makes separate builds (those seem to have been posted in the last 12 hours, yay !), and this is mostly due to their build system [3]. This site is also a good resource that tells you what has native M1 support, and what still runs under Rosetta : https://isapplesiliconready.com/ https://isapplesiliconready.com/ [1]: https://code.visualstudio.com/Download https://code.visualstudio.com/Download [2]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases [3]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/597#issuecomment-1112877775 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/597#issuecomment...
- msbarnett 4y ago
  The _vast_ majority of 3rd party apps on my M1 Mac are Universal? Ableton, Alfred, Affinity Photo, 1password, Backblaze, Capture One, CLion, FastRawViewer, Firefox, Irident, Postico, SublimeText/Merge. The only notable non-Universal binaries are: Calibre (Intel-only) and Podman Desktop (Apple Silicon specific build)
xiphias2 4y ago
Microsoft targets slower moving enterprises, where breaking old software has a much higher cost. The problem here for Microsoft is that now finally remote work is getting embraced by knowledge workers, and they don't accept non-remote always-in-office jobs anymore. And for remote / mobile work hardware efficiency and long battery life matters much more than for in office work.
- usrn 4y ago
  You should tell that to corp IT where I work. My macbook fans have been running non-stop all week with the machine doing God only knows what while all I have open is webex, outlook, and a few VTE windows.
  - Tagbert 4y ago
    That sounds like what happens whenever I run WebEx
moondev 4y ago
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on...
pavlov 4y ago
IMO Microsoft has put much more effort into a thoughtful x86 -> ARM transition than Apple did. For one thing, a lot of code on Windows uses the .Net runtime and is JIT-compiled to the target platform. Those programs in general don't need to be ported at all. For transitioning native x86 programs — and there are a lot of those on Windows, of course — Microsoft created a new ABI that lets you mix ARM and emulated x86 code seamlessly: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/06/28/announcing-arm64ec-building-native-and-interoperable-apps-for-windows-11-on-arm/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/06/28/announ... This is great for something like an audio or video app that uses a lot of third party plugins. The host app can be ported to ARM, but it can still load those x86 plugin binaries. Apple has no solution for this: their Rosetta works on a process level. If you have a Final Cut Pro plugin that hasn't been ported by the developer to ARM, your only option is to run all of FCP in Rosetta emulation.
- my123 4y ago
  > your only option is to run all of FCP in Rosetta emulation. Apple has out of process plugins nowadays for that use case, through the XPC infrastructure. It's more 3rd-party SW that doesn't use XPC out of process plugins that are affected.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    Yes, good point. Let's replace FCP with After Effects, which is a popular plugin host and doesn't use XPC (AFAIK). Rearchitecting native plugins to run out of process is a lot of work, and isn't something Adobe can quickly mandate on their developers.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  > IMO Microsoft has put much more effort into a thoughtful x86 -> ARM transition than Apple did. Given that the Surface Pro X didn't support 64 bit x86 Windows applications at all, I'm not sure how you can think so. Even after developer channel support was added, it was unlikely to work. >How did Microsoft screw this up? - Surface Pro X (SQ2) vs M1 Macbook Air https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA

smoldesu 4y ago

It's funny, I honestly doubt Qualcomm can compete at this point. Intel intends to be on the same node as Apple by EOY 23, so honestly Qualcomm would have to make a pretty competitive chip to have a chance at playing in the big leagues. Look at it this way: Qualcomm needs to have CPU performance that can beat Intel and iGPU performance that can compete with Ryzen chips, that's the entry-level requirement to start convincing people that ARM is the future on PC. Of course, this is not going to happen, especially if they're on some podunk 7nm Samsung lithography or something of that vain. I can see this unfolding one of two ways, neither of which are good for Qualcomm: 1. Intel takes back the performance crown and recoups their efficiency losses over the next 2 or 3 generations. They double or triple their density, start aggressively buying up TSCM silicon to supplement their own fabs, and go back to being the de-facto PC CPU manufacturer. 2. AMD pushes hard on their efficiency, 3D cache and iGPU technologies, muscling Intel out of the competition and making an indisputable case for their dominance in the mobile/laptop category. Everyone except long-time Intel contractors switch their main products for Ryzen chips, and eventually they get the leverage they need to take over the professional/business sector too. Notice how nowhere I said "Qualcomm, a company with little to no history in the field of PC manufacturing, designs a chip that will likely be slower than it's x86 counterparts, has no means of emulating the x86 software people buy Windows machines for, and magically finds it's way into hundreds of consumer machines." That's because it's a pipe dream, and with the nature of PC computing, you simply can't transition architectures in the same way Apple did. I reckon x86 is going to stay relevant for at least another 5-10 years on the Windows/Linux side of things, and by the time people are sick and tired of it, I think we'll be eyeing RISC-V chips by then. ARM is starting to get long in the tooth, and it's advantages as an architecture have pretty substantially diminished over the last 20 years. It also still hasn't solved big problems like SIMD execution or ISA modularity yet; there's a real chance for another architecture to eat it's lunch in the distant future.

aDfbrtVt 4y ago
Why would Qualcomm design their silicon for an 8nm Samsung process? They have a working relationship with TSMC and definitely have enough volume to access risk production nodes.
singhrac 4y ago

jasoneckert 4y ago

With the Microsoft-Qualcomm ARM exclusivity deal ending very soon, Microsoft could make Windows 11 available for Apple Silicon platforms. This would benefit both Apple and Microsoft at the expense of Qualcomm (who would need to compete directly with Apple's pace of ARM development).

garaetjjte 4y ago
Why would they port Windows to their competitor platform?
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Apple and Microsoft have cooperated for years to bring Bootcamp on the x86 platform. Apple, no matter the OS, still makes a ton of margin on the hardware.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- dwaite 4y ago
  On Microsoft's homepage (e.g. for a primary consumer focus), they list Windows behind Office 365 and behind the Xbox and Surface. For corporate use, they are pushing seats for O365 and other hosted services as well as selling Azure-based hosting. The loss of the mobile phone market and hits to the low end by Chrome OS means that pursuing a platform lock-in strategy is no longer viable.
  - garaetjjte 4y ago
    >On Microsoft's homepage (e.g. for a primary consumer focus), they list Windows behind Office 365 and behind the Xbox and Surface. Windows consumer revenue comes from preinstalled licenses, they don't need to advertise it directly. M1 Windows port would be admitting defeat and kill Surface. For Office, they already have MacOS version of it.

superkuh 4y ago

M1 class? Does that mean it'll be proprietary without the ability to upgrade parts or assume compatibility with common hardware standards in order to squeeze out every bit of performance possible?

nicoburns 4y ago
> Does that mean it'll be proprietary without the ability to upgrade parts or assume compatibility with common hardware standards My understanding is that existing Qualcomm chips are like this already (except with fairly mediocre performance), so presumably yes.
amelius 4y ago
"M1 class" simply means 5nm technology node. Those with early access to a new node will always have the wow-factor, but they are not necessarily better than the rest.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  "M1 class" means the performance class. There is a lot more to performance than just the node generation as has been proven time and time again, just look at Bulldozer vs Sandy Bridge as both were 32 nm. It'd also make no sense to acquire Nuvia if all they needed was 5nm production as Nuvia is not a fab.
kergonath 4y ago
> Does that mean it'll be proprietary without the ability to upgrade parts Upgrading parts of a CPU hasn’t been a thing for quite a while now. When was the last time one could add a module of cache or a FPU? We’re talking about SoCs here, not devices. > or assume compatibility with common hardware standards There is basically no hardware standard in ARM-land > in order to squeeze out every bit of performance possible? Since when is it a bad thing?

hmmmhmmmhmmm 4y ago

Don’t forget that Qualcomm purchased Nuvia (ex Apple chip designers) last year. Will they be playing catch-up with apple’s CPUs? Maybe. But maybe there’s a connectivity/ communications and Qualcomm can play to its strengths - e.g. laptops with 5G? Laptops running android? I don’t know. https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/03/16/qualcomm-completes-acquisition-nuvia https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/03/16/qualcomm-c...

cft 4y ago
Good point. Why doesn't every Apple M1 laptop have an eSIM and a 5G transiever?
- egsmi0 4y ago
  I have no idea why Apple laptops don’t have cellular but whatever the reason is, I’m pretty sure it’s not because of the BOM cost of the components.
- mfer 4y ago
  Where is there market demand for that functionality in a laptop?
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Commercial customers in the field. But this is also a market segment with basically zero Mac users. And small enough of a market that it's way off Apple's radar.
    - ChadNauseam 4y ago
      As someone with a spotty internet connection and who likes to work at coffee shops with annoying login prompts, I'd really appreciate a product like that. I can get a data-only sim from Google Fi for free so it'd be an easy purchase for me. (I have no idea why my internet connection is so bad. I pay for 20Mb/s, and half the time it's like 200Mb/s and the other half I don't have internet at all.)

amelius 4y ago

When will RISC V become "M1 class"?

wmf 4y ago
It's just now getting close to RPi class, so maybe 5 years at the earliest.
- marcodiego 4y ago
  That sounds like and optimistic time frame. Hope you're right.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I suspect realistically, more like 30 years. Because I doubt anyone with the capability will even be trying any time soon.
  - wmf 4y ago
    As somebody mentioned, Rivos.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      Do you think they have the resources to take on the big established companies? It seems like recent startups that have tried this like PA Semi and Nuvia have only found success through acquisition...
      - jbverschoor 4y ago
        It’s easier when you steal 400GB of M1 design files
  - snvzz 4y ago
    What sort of capability are you talking about?

kergonath 4y ago

On one hand that’s a bit late (hopefully Apple will have something better than the M1 by then). On the other hand it’ll take them a couple of iterations and not all of them will be stellar, as mistakes are made and the architecture is adjusted. I am afraid their next couple of designs will be disappointing. It took Apple a decade and a couple of near-perfect iterations to go where they are, building on the people from Intrinsity and PA-Semi (amongst many other smaller acquisitions). Surely, Qualcomm can benefit from some of that experience through Nuvia, but that won’t be everything.

lynguist 4y ago

It’s another proof that Apple’s lead in hardware technology over everyone else is at the minimum 3 years.

g42gregory 4y ago

For me, anything that runs Linux is a yes. Anything that does not run Linux, is a no. I won’t use anything non-Linux for computational purposes. If it’s better hardware-wise, it won’t matter to me.

sto_hristo 4y ago
You're a niche. But if linux fixes the 10^10^10^10 different distros problem and gets an awesome desktop environment that large companies can confidently program against knowing that all linux users will be covered, then everything else will pretty much disappear overnight.
- g42gregory 4y ago
  I ran Ubuntu desktop as a server with NVIDIA GPUs, that sits next to my desk. I access it with my MacBook Pro, mostly through PyCharm or CLion remote runtimes, so nothing runs on my Mac. The latency is single ms, so you don’t feel it at all. I get the benefits of nice Mac UI and standard Linux server runtimes for both Python and C++.
- philistine 4y ago
  Valve might end up becoming the biggest impact on desktop Linux and putting it over the edge if Windows keeps on refusing to remove. its. old. UI.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Speaking about 'niches', I'm wondering about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepin and how many real users they may have?

rektide 4y ago

Im shocked Qualcomm has done basically nothing with their existing "laptop class" chip, like the 7c and 8c, announced end of 2018, based off the a76 announced that spring. I was skeptical & the initial chips landed at my low expecation level, but I at least thought they'd get better. Tacking on another hundred mhz to nearly the same chip every now and then... thay is not what i expected. From thr outside perspective this looks like baffling non-delivery, utter unwillingness to try to compete. Three years latter & the offering is effectively unchanged. By compare, MediaTek started slow, but was cheap, and they've gotten faster & faster. Respectable bottom up disruption.

zitterbewegung 4y ago
They had a Windows emulation exclusivity contract and squandered it for so long that now it’s expired other tech companies like Apple could emulate Windows on their devices.
wmf 4y ago
The 8cx gen 3 is finally not garbage but it's probably still too expensive. I am also surprised by Qualcomm's self-own here; if they had so little faith in the laptop market they could have just not entered it.

marcodiego 4y ago

And although linux has been running comfortably with a lot of software on ARM for more than a decade while windows lacked long behind, it looks like another opportunity to increase its popularity will be lost.

wmf 4y ago
If you consider Chrome OS to be Linux, ARM is making some inroads there.
- marcodiego 4y ago
  Yes, like does android, servers, routers, smart tv's... many of these devices are running linux inside. And it does benefit from time to time like gaining mind share, fixing some bugs in the kernel or system tools, implementing drivers... but for any ground being gained on the desktop the benefits have been very small and slow.

camillomiller 4y ago

I tested Qualcomm’s first Windows on Arm computer (a HP Envy 2) in June 2018: it was very underwhelming but seemed promising. Yet here we are 4 years later… Qualcomm and Microsoft have been working on this at least as long as Apple, I would say. The difference in outcomes is insane, and I think it speaks broadly not about how bad Qualcomm and Microsoft are at this (they’re not) but rather how insanely good Apple’s Silicon team is. And of course it speaks volumes about the power of hardware-software integration under the same roof. I also came to the conclusion that Qualcomm, Microsoft, and all their OEM partners have broadly underestimated what Apple would be capable of off the bat with its first and second gen silicon.

yakak 4y ago
I think a lot of it is about commitment. Apple has a lot to lose whenever it changes the CPU architecture for Mac, especially if it gets stuck with two for longer than expected. For Qualcomm and similar, a foray in Notebooks is just something interesting. For Microsoft such a foray is always limited by its x86 ecosystem losses.
- karmakaze 4y ago
  Microsoft has been known to do things half-heartily on both h/w and s/w: phone OS, Windows RT, UWP, app store, etc. Even the Internet Explorer to Edge transition was long overdue, but not too late. The way MS works is very much like Google where they have their cash cows and everything else seems like a diversion until they miss the boat on a new thing and it's too late. Remember that Windows NT originally supported x86, MIPS, Alpha but haven't taken it further. They also make entire toolchains that could make building for multi-targets as seamless as they choose save final validation.

logicalmonster 4y ago

Perhaps a dumb question about the competitiveness of the industry from somebody who doesn't follow it too closely. Is Apple's large pile of cash a factor in how things play out here? It seems like they'll be able to perpetually afford to get first in line for advances in technology and smaller and smaller chips. How much of an impact does this have?

wmf 4y ago
Having infinite money helps but it isn't an unassailable moat. There have been plenty of cases over the years where the best fab doesn't always win.

ytch 4y ago

M1 (or MacOS) has x64 translation at day one. I'm wondering why it takes so long for MS and QCOM to design an x64 emulator at windows on ARM. If they have a fast/stable emulator, it would catch up with M1 more quickly.

philistine 4y ago
Apple is ruthless with backward compatibility to help with future endeavours. For example, [they cut off 32-bit apps in 2018](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208436 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208436). I think they deprecated OpenGL because they didn't want to port it to ARM; it ended up making the jump nonetheless. Windows just got rid of 32-bit versions with Windows 11, and there must be so many difficult edge cases to emulate in Windows. MacOS is much cleaner; it went through a transition already, its sibling iOS has been on ARM for very long, and they even implemented behaviours in the M1 family to help with emulation. Apple is holding a better hand at the game of emulation.
- ytch 4y ago
  It makes sense, thanks for explanation
  - philistine 4y ago
    Geez, thanks. I'm gonna blush.