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Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon 850 Platform Targeted For Windows 10 PCs (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-improved dept.

MojoKid writes: Qualcomm's Always-Connected Windows 10 PC initiative with Microsoft kicks into another gear this morning with the announcement of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 Mobile Platform for Windows 10 PCs. Based on what looks to be an optimized version of the Snapdragon 845 specifically tuned for laptops and 2-in-1 convertibles, the Snapdragon 850 promises a 30 percent boost in system-wide performance versus the previous generation Snapdragon 835 platform, while its integrated Snapdragon X20 LTE modem promises peak speeds of 1.2Gbps. When it comes to battery life, Qualcomm says that PCs running the Snapdragon 850 will be able to top 25 hours of runtime. Qualcomm also notes it will have many more OEM partners and a lot more device options to choose from (hopefully at lower price points) this time around. Couple that with Microsoft's new support for the ARM64 SDK in Windows 10, and things could get interesting for this new class of machine. No word on availability just yet, beyond the note that devices will be available in market later this year.

59 comments

  1. Re:Arm64 by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Informative

    As a matter of fact, they currently do.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  2. This doesn’t interest me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe for a road warrior the benefits of battery life outweigh the performance and other issues. I already think my KabyLake core i5 is not what I had hoped for in performance. My next notebook will have a HQ cpu and quad core for sure. I’m tired of expensive battery sipping netbook like performance.

    1. Re:This doesn’t interest me by r_naked · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It may not interest you, and if all they run is Windows, it doesn't interest me, but I would LOVE to have an SD845 (something that is available now) laptop that runs Linux. An SD850 would just be a bonus...

      I don't do graphics editing on my laptop, or compiling, or (insert computationally intensive task here). I want a laptop that can run for 20 hours.

      Hopefully someone like System76 will make a laptop out of one of these.

      --
      -- http://anonet.org -- The internet the way it was meant to be. Check it out, you may be surprised.
    2. Re:This doesn’t interest me by GerryGilmore · · Score: 4, Informative

      You beat me to it. The fact that it is Windows 10 only is an automatic deal-breaker for me.
      While I certainly understand some corp dudes/dudettes are stuck, but I will NEVER run any Windows later than 7, and that only for a specific DAW software solution.
      I want an OS, not a continually soul-sucking, ever-shifting, "cloud-based" system for my personal use. Apps like gmail, sure. Base OS? Nah.

    3. Re:This doesn’t interest me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Two questions. What makes this device Windows 10 only, and are you aware that Microsoft backported a significant amount of the evil into Windows 7?

    4. Re:This doesn’t interest me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I already think my KabyLake core i5 is not what I had hoped for in performance.

      Is not what you hoped compared to what, a desktop? I found out my i3 Kaby desktop is faster than some i5 notebooks. Wanna a iece of advice? Take notebooks for what they really are: a compromise.

    5. Re:This doesn’t interest me by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Prior to Coffee Lake, the mobile i5 was just a mobile i3 with turbo boost. i.e. A faster clocked i3. That's it. In no way was the obscene markups for an i5 laptop over an i3 laptop justified. The fact that Macbooks were available with an i5 but not an i3 should've been a huge tip-off that there was an obscene profit margin for little performance gain there. Intel really milked that cash cow for roughly a decade. (It was probably driven by people wrongly assuming that what they knew about desktop processors also held for mobile processors. The desktop i5 was a quad core vs. the desktop i3 being a dual core, so was a worthy upgrade. But both the mobile i3 and i5 were dual cores.)

      With Coffee Lake and the Kaby Lake refresh (i5-8xxx), most of the mobile i5s are now quad cores. So they're now a worthwhile upgrade over a mobile i3.

    6. Re:This doesn’t interest me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I came across this recently...

      https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707

    7. Re:This doesn’t interest me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They can't backport if windows update is turned off. You can't let a frankly evil company like Microsoft just have its way with your computer. If you sup with the devil you should have a long spoon. Anyway the important thing is that some windows updates are malicious and you can't download those. Even some non-malicious ones like Spectre fixes that slow down your computer I don't want.

    8. Re:This doesn’t interest me by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 1

      So... when you perform the initial OS settings configuration, you choose what you want to sent to Microsoft. You can choose "Send nothing" or you can choose to give them enough information to allow Cortana to adapt to your behavior like Google does. Will Microsoft sell your data? I suppose there's a chance. I think it's far more likely that the revenue it would generate would be nothing in comparison to the issues it would stir up with their cloud business which is their real money maker these days.

      Also, if you understand the concept of Microsoft Graph, you understand why the data is being send to the cloud. It actually makes perfect sense technically. The issue is that it's Microsoft getting the data. Linux will never have something as cool and useful as Graph because it would require collecting the data somewhere to make it work.

      Windows 10 as a platform is actually very nice. I have to admit it's had some ups and downs, but overall it's still nowhere near as bad as MacOS with regards to usability. Also it has Linux built into it as a first class citizen. It's actually absolutely lovely. As soon as Microsoft sorts out compatibility between Linux and Windows graphics, it will be a thing of beauty. I'm hoping Microsoft cuts a deal with Ubuntu or someone else to run Windows on Linux as nicely as Linux runs on Windows.

      If you're not a power user and have no need for wide-spread cloud integration of your stuff... that's fine. Do what you need to do. I see you use gmail, I might recommend Pine as a good alternative. There are some of us who use a computer for more than just surfing the web and watching Naruto.

    9. Re:This doesn’t interest me by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 2

      I'm using the latest Surface Book with an i7, GTX 1060, 16GB, etc... I can highly recommend this machine as being well suited for performance and battery life. As a matter of fact, the battery life and performance often improves as Windows update brings in the BIOS/firmware updates as well.

      I'm also considering one of these laptops for a hobby project. I do a lot of ARM development for Raspberry Pi. And I mean a lot. I had planned on building a 2000-3000 device cloud using Raspberry Pi clusters with a Cisco 3560 switch to tie them together in groups of 3-4 units. Yesterday, I managed to replace the Cisco switch with a Banana Pi router platform running fd.io, frr. That was a massive cost savings and it got me Cisco DMVPN support from the Banana Pi as well.

      Another major change we made is to add another 20-50,000 Orange Pi Zeros to the cloud we're building. I suspect by the time we're done, I'll have a 500,000 device cloud. These will all be running on Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi and Orange Pi. Though at this quantity we may just work with the guys at Banana Pi to build what we want specifically.

      So that said, it would be really nice to have a laptop which I can use to develop code on and test performance. Visual Studio Code and .NET Core work REALLY well on these laptops.

      I have to agree with you though... every time I touch the long battery life laptops that sacrifice performance for battery life it's like being on an old Nokia telephone. Sure the battery last 4 days, but if you're surfing the web, you'll need that long to get the page to download because Nokia swore that unlike Windows Phone, they don't need a real processor, enough RAM or an MMU on the phone... oh... and I was one of the idiots writing the web browser for the Nokia phones. Every other one of our customers were like "We want to build the ultimate mobile experience. We'll give you the RAM you need and the performance you need to make the web work" and Nokia's like "If you use ARM and Symbian you don't need RAM or CPU performance because everyone in the whole world will make an entirely separate web page just for our phones".

    10. Re:This doesn’t interest me by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I would be surprised if it didn't support Linux, because they will surely want to support Android.

      Of course, the drivers will probably be binary blobs.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    11. Re:This doesn’t interest me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, considering the PINE A64 Single Board Computer performance is horrid, I think this notebook is absolutely useless. Alas, anything that uses Allwinner SoCs will suck performance-wise. Thankfully Qualcomm Snapdragon 8xx SoCs are in another league.
       

    12. Re:This doesn’t interest me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's win10-only because Qualcomm won't release open drivers/specs, that probably won't change because of the embedded LTE modem. And I'm guessing there's no BIOS/UEFI on the thing, which I expect does not make installing something else impossible, but it certainly does not make it easy.

      In win7 you can still choose not to install any given update, all the spyware updates and win10-forced-upgrade updates are in my WSUS blacklist, for example.

    13. Re:This doesn’t interest me by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Of course, the drivers will probably be binary blobs.

      Are there any ARM vendors actually providing full driver sources? nVidia made noises about Tegra GPU sources (outright stating that Tegra was not encumbered like GeForce was, and they were capable of such a release) but... ah yes, thank you google. Wow, nVidia released Tegra driver sources in February. Alas, all Tegra SoCs are allegedly vulnerable to both MELTDOWN and SPECTRE... all three variants, too. Whee! nVidia has put out a bulletin about these vulnerabilities, but note that there is not a whisper about Tegra anywhere in that document.

      Is it presumptive to assume that their attempt to pretend Tegra doesn't exist effectively means that Tegra no longer exists? RIP my TF201.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    14. Re:This doesn’t interest me by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The Raspberry Pi is probably as close as you can get to a fully open source device. The boot ROM is still proprietary but I think pretty much everything else can be used with open source drivers now.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by rsilvergun · · Score: 0

    and if not, why buy this instead of a Chromebook?

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    1. Re: Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It will.

    2. Re:Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and if not, why buy this instead of a Chromebook?

      And here we have another guy that's been asleep for the past year...

      Yes dumb ass, it runs your windows apps. And going forward, they can be built against arm64 as well.

    3. Re:Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      10 to 1 that those "native" apps are windows store crap which absolutely nobody cares about.

    4. Re:Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      There are already some Windows 10 ARM laptops out there. x86 software is run via emulation. From the tests I've seen, it's rather slow though, so you can't realistically run heavy tasks on them. Unfortunately, these ARM laptops are rather expensive. They do have good battery life, though.

    5. Re:Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Easy to bet like this when you are an AC. I guess Qualcomm would be smarter that that, wouldn't they?

    6. Re: Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Smart enough to take MS payola for going along?

    7. Re:Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by hackertourist · · Score: 2

      Windows 10 is a huge resource hog. On a new (supposedly fast) HP laptop, I see CPU usage spike to 25% with no user applications running. It also needs 3 GB of RAM for the OS alone (while offering no advantage that I can see over Windows 7).

      W10 on a machine that has to emulate x86 is going to stink.

    8. Re: Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The main point with the store is that there is no payola. It's rather the opposite; Microsoft has been very clear about it's store and the purpose of it being that they get a cut (something like 30% or so IIRC) a la Apple and Valve of the profits from any software people buy from it.

      They might make an exception for a time to try to lure people in, but in the long run, the writing is on the wall. The store is all about closing the platform and padding Microsoft's profits. There is nothing there for anyone else. Hence no developer with two braincells will touch it with the proverbial 10 foot pole.

    9. Re:Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Windows will have JIT translation of x86 and x64 binaries, and eventually VC++ and Windows will support fat binaries.

    10. Re:Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by swb · · Score: 1

      It will suffer from the same "range anxiety" that electric cars do.

      Objectively, range anxiety is kind of bogus for 85% of the driving people do but because some small number of trips don't factor into the car's range, people say electric cars aren't good enough.

      Substitute "performance" for "range" and you have the ARM laptop problem. For a lot of people it would be fine but because some people will need to run x86 apps and they will run slow, many people will assume its not as useful and stick with x86 laptops.

      In the main, developers seem unable/unwilling to provide parallel support for cross-architecture applications and unless the market decides to shift to ARM you wind up with this fallback to x86.

    11. Re: Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft just dropped their cut to only 5% of the price of the app in the store. So I doubt they are padding the bottom line.

    12. Re:Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, 7-zip runs. A free, downloadable directly from the Internet binary, works. Install and runs like a normal App.

      Hows that for you? You just lost your bet.

    13. Re: Yeah but will it run native windows apps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For how long? Anything that can be done, can be undone, as has just been proved. Actually it sounds just like stated above "they might make an exception for a time to try to lure people in," Your beliefs are no doubt misguided. Were you born yesterday?

  4. Re:Arm64 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Unless they are going to emulate x86 on arm64, this thing is DOA

    You just woke up from a one year sleep or something?

  5. linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Linux is the future. Proprietary OSs are crap, apple just confirmed it.

  6. Always Connected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Always connected LTE, for more data exfiltration and targeting.

  7. Great Potential by amiga3D · · Score: 2

    This has so many interesting possibilities. But when they say Windows 10 they kill all of them.

  8. Ok, well, it's a different architecture by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    so are they doing x86 emulation? If so what's the performance going to be like? I run VMs on an i5 7400 and it's a bit laggy.

    Also instant on isn't a big deal to me. I've got a decent SSD and I'm at a desk top in 5 seconds. That leaves battery life. I'll confess I run a desktop. Battery life isn't an issue for me. OTOH this article says no x64 apps and weak performance in x86 apps. And the laptops aren't cheap. They're $500-$700 a pop

    I'm just questioning who these are for. OTOH this might be the OEMs & Microsoft sending Intel a message.

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    1. Re: Ok, well, it's a different architecture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're for people who will mainly use apps that have been ported to native Arm.

      Me, personally, if I have access to the MS Office apps on a laptop with a 30 hour battery life, I'd be over the moon. I'll do video editing and other heavy duty stuff on my desktop.

  9. Thanks by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    It looks like somebody modded you down and I don't know why. The linked article didn't exactly make it clear emulation was used to run x86 code. I had to track down an article from PCworld to find that out. I kind of figured on the performance.

    --
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  10. Re:Arm64 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Unless they are going to emulate x86 on arm64, this thing is DOA

    You just woke up from a one year sleep or something?

    Make that a 31 year sleep, x86 emulators have been available for ARM since 1987.

    1988 review

    Manual for v. 1.7 (1991)

  11. Thats it - I am going back to DOS ARJ by Bentbob · · Score: 1

    DOS era ARJ is still my most favourite archive program - though it is not the most versatile in today's win7/10 environment.

    1. Re:Thats it - I am going back to DOS ARJ by Bentbob · · Score: 1

      doh - posted to the wrong /. page

  12. This is for Microsoft, not for you by Solandri · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Microsoft realizes they're not beholden to Intel. Intel needs Microsoft more than Microsoft needs Intel. While it's been a profitable relationship for nearly 40 years, Intel is facing serious competition at the lower end from ARM ever since computers became "fast enough" that most people can get most of their computing needs done with a low-end computer. Microsoft is making sure they have a finger in every pie. If the Intel ship sinks, they don't want it to take Windows down with it. So they're doing what they can to make sure Windows and its API is hardware-agnostic and can run on both Intel/AMD and ARM.

    Whether Windows 10 for the Snapdragon 850 sells well or not is immaterial to Microsoft. They are simply hedging their bets to insure their Windows cash cow survives regardless of whether the winner of the processor war ends up being Intel, AMD, or ARM.

    1. Re:This is for Microsoft, not for you by jezwel · · Score: 2

      and in the process tests and refines running Windows on ARM architecture - which powers a pretty large chunk of the mobile world. Don't think that just because Windows Mobile / Phone OS is dead, that Windows OS on mobile devices is also dead.

    2. Re:This is for Microsoft, not for you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah because there is a long history of successful Windows-on-Arm platforms. Windows Phone, windows RT, and all the other WoA products we know and love today.

      Oh wait, they were all spectacular money losing failures.

      And this one probably will be to.

      I know what the consumers are scrambling for! A middling device running a port of a general purpose operating system on a processor designed for cell phones! It's like a slow laptop that does less, running none of the software on the market out of the box!

      Surely consumers will be tripping over themselves for a device that's the worst of the Tablet and Laptop worlds!

      This is a desperate play from Qualcomm and it shows.

    3. Re:This is for Microsoft, not for you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A middling device running a port of a general purpose operating system on a processor designed for cell phones! It's like a slow laptop that does less, running none of the software on the market out of the box!

      No, you got that wrong. It's will be a cheaper, lighter device with great battery life. I see these as very good reasons to buy it instead of a Intel Celeron or i3.

      It's not for the i5/i7 buying crowd. Maybe some generations down the road it will be, considering how slow Intel is progressing in the performance front.

  13. Re:Arm64 by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 1

    And partial x64 support is coming soon, .

    --
    'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
  14. 30% Performance improvement by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    Comparing the Kryo 385 (Cortext A75 derived) at 2.95GHz to a Kryo 280 (Cortex A73 derived) at 2.9GHz

    Not compared to any competitors products.

  15. But... but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who wants Windows 10? Who wants Windows, anyway?

    C'm on, Microsoft, shrivel up & die already!

  16. It will surly Increase Performance by IamRahul · · Score: 1

    Qualcomm processor unquestionably gives more processing power at very less power consumption compared to Intel and the result is more control on the app and file execution, good multitasking ability and most important low power consumption great battery backup with less amount of heat.

  17. Cost per chip: $5 Sales price: $250 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I for one look forward to other manufacturers bringing out cheaper and comparably powerful ARM boards to run Windows (and Linux) on.

    Another thing to remember since Qualcomm is an American manufacturer, is that it will most likely have built-in back-doors in the way that Intel and AMD have in their current lineup of CPUs.

  18. Could care less about these CPU's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only perk these chips really seem to focus on is battery life and connectivity. Those are great if your only focus is checking your email or opening up a document on the road. Maybe watch a movie on a long flight, even when you forgot to charge your laptop. But otherwise they are not going to revolutionize the PC industry in any form other then yet another attempt at a netbook like device. Apple has chips today faster then this 850 and yet they are smart enough to know its no good in a Mac. Given that you will be stuck with Windows 10S or a castrated Win 10 Pro, why would you even bother?

  19. Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is why you are proclaiming 2018 to be the Year Of Linux On The Desktop!!!

  20. ChromeBook by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    So buy a ChromeBook then and install Linux.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  21. another ad-crunching chip by originalGMC · · Score: 1

    Great! Just another chip / os combo to process all these adverts, hopefully faster?

  22. Right for the Wrong Reasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everyone here seems to be on the track of "Linux Good, Windows Bad!" Thus they come to the (flawed) conclusion that this Snapdragon 850 is of no interest. That's right but for the wrong reason.

    The Snapdragon 850 is unlikely to make a PC breakthrough because of hardware, not the OS supported. Remember the Transmeta CPU? It failed (not technically, but operationally). Remember the CISC vs. RISC wars and how, for sure, Power or MIPS or SPARC was going to eat CISC's lunch? Never happened. Remember ARM servers, and how they were certainly the future? Kaput! Remember Windows RT and how those ARM tablets were absolute winners based upon battery life expectations? Then remember how none of that made a dent?

    You might argue one or two of these were the result of other factors (notably, the WinRT fiasco). However taken together, this makes it very, very difficult to argue that the world wants a Qualcomm chip in a PC, or a tablet. They are good for phones and maybe some embedded stuff. IoT, if it ever gets it's act together, might be a market opportunity. Note however that IoT won't touch a Snapdragon 850 because the power and thermals are totally wrong.

  23. Re:another ad-qualcomm-unveils-snapdragon-850 chip by ennis99 · · Score: 1

    Disons que si les applications ou les logiciels sont correctement codés sous ARM, ils prendront beaucoup moins d'espace dans le RAM et le stockage tout en permettant les mêmes fonctionnalités à une fréquence plus basse par rapport à x86 ... ^^ Mais à condition de ne pas s'appuyer sur Windows ou Microsoft en général ... ____________________________________________________ https://getappvalley.com/ https://tutuapp.win/ https://tweakbox.mobi/

  24. Re:another ad-qualcomm-unveils-snapdragon-850 chip by ennis99 · · Score: 1

    Let's say that if the apps or software are correctly coded under ARM they will take much less space in ram and storage while allowing the same features at lower frequency compared to x86 ... ^^ But that is on the condition that it is not based on Windows or Microsoft in general ...