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Snapdragon 8cx Gives Windows Its Most Extreme Arm Chip Yet (slashgear.com)

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform, a new flagship "Extreme" chipset for Windows on Arm notebooks, tablets, and 2-in-1s that promises more connectivity, more power, and battery life in excess of 25 hours. From a report: The new platform also debuts Qualcomm's new nomenclature for that ecosystem of devices, borrowing technologies from Snapdragon for smartphones but shaping them for ultraportable computing. It comes twelve months after Qualcomm announced its first Windows on Arm products. At last year's Snapdragon Summit, partners ASUS and HP revealed a Windows 10 notebook and 2-in-1, respectively, each running Microsoft's software on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835.

The Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform won't replace the 850 -- or, indeed, be called the Snapdragon 1000 or Snapdragon 8180 as the rumors suggested -- but instead sit above it in the Windows on Arm ecosystem. Described as "a new tier of premium computing" by Qualcomm's Miguel Nunes, senior director of product management, ahead of the Snapdragon Summit 2018 at which SlashGear is Qualcomm's guest, it was also developed from the ground up with computing in mind. Its predecessors were, of course, mobile chipsets coopted into laptop use.

38 comments

  1. Its Most Extreme Arm Chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    >> Gives Windows Its Most Extreme Arm Chip Yet

    That old Obama era retort still applies:

    You can put lipstick on a man in a wig, but it's still a man in a wig.

    1. Re: Its Most Extreme Arm Chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I seem to remember a similar remark by Sarah palin about hockey moms

    2. Re:Its Most Extreme Arm Chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have this tattooed on your tramp stamp area no doubt, right under your photo-realistic tattoo of a naked Trump manspreading in his tennis diapers. Say hi to Roger Stone for me when you see him.

    3. Re:Its Most Extreme Arm Chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's rude to say about Obummer's wife. If "Michelle" wants to identify as a woman, let "her" do so without being hassled.

    4. Re:Its Most Extreme Arm Chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He was referring to his "wife".

    5. Re:Its Most Extreme Arm Chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Already made that joke above you. Way to be original.

    6. Re: Its Most Extreme Arm Chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck you you copied me. Get out of my replies while I wait for the mods.

    7. Re: Its Most Extreme Arm Chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Chortle my balls, Capitan.

  2. And Patel sez: by the_skywise · · Score: 4, Funny

    That ARM PC sank into the swamp
    So we built another one and that also sank into the swamp
    So I built Windows 10 RT and that caught fire than sank into the swamp
    But the snapdragon... the snapdragon Windows 10 ARM PC will stay! Maybe even become a phone!

    1. Re:And Patel sez: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they laugh at you, then they laugh at you, then you win!

    2. Re:And Patel sez: by luther349 · · Score: 1

      they know mobile will at some point lead to desktops going away, its why there trying so hard only to fail epic every time.

  3. ARM and Windows not a perfect match by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I get ARM has made some great strides, Apple's own ARM A CPU's are closing in on Mac CPU's from Intel. Its not a performance issue so much as a compatibility issue and I remember the switch from Power PC's to Intel when Apple did it for Mac's. It was a mess for some time and a lot of old Power PC software ran horribly. So will people endure some of that with Windows and ARM PC's in order to get benefits like battery life, always connected, and possibly better security.

    1. Re:ARM and Windows not a perfect match by Kjella · · Score: 1

      So will people endure some of that with Windows and ARM PC's in order to get benefits like battery life, always connected, and possibly better security.

      Hasn't the market answered this already with Win RT? If you want a PC to run Windows software you don't get the ARM version and if you would be happy with the ARM version there's better alternatives in Mac / Linux / Chromebooks / tablets. I think the only one who could pull it off is Apple. Not because of the x86 Macs, but because they have the iPhone/iPad base of ARM software. Like for example Adobe is now porting Photoshop to the iPad. If they've made it for the iPad (ARM based) but have the Mac GUI (x86 based) it should be really easy to give you an ARM version with a desktop GUI, it's just taking two halves you already got and splicing them together.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:ARM and Windows not a perfect match by Oh+really+now · · Score: 0

      Apple is much better suited to making this work now than with the PPC to x86 migration. iOS is in many ways OS X on ARM.

      NextStep!

    3. Re:ARM and Windows not a perfect match by Luthair · · Score: 2

      No it isn't. When they moved from PPC to x86 they were moving to a much more powerful architecture so some or all of the additional overhead of translating old programs weren't obvious. If they move from x86 to ARM they're moving to a much less powerful architecture which will compound the performance issues.

    4. Re:ARM and Windows not a perfect match by Oh+really+now · · Score: 2

      I don't think you understand, so let me make it simpler for you to grasp.

      Running PPC apps on the new x86 hardware involved emulation, because it was unreasonable to ask everyone to port everything to a new architecture. There was no unified set of libraries that targeted both PPC and x86. Now there is.

      x86 vs. ARM will not be a question of emulating one architecture or the other, it will be a much more straight forward (and seamless) ARM port. Think about it. If you write an iOS app in Xcode today, it builds automatically for four architectures: armv7, arm64, i386, and x86_64. The same will be done once ARM hardware starts running OS X.

  4. naive question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    would this OS work on older wondows rt machines?

    1. Re:naive question by Misagon · · Score: 1

      No. Window RT laptops were 32-bit ARM v7. Windows 10 requires 64-bit ARM v8, and runs only 64-bit programs.

      And even if the chip was capable of 64-bit ARM, you would have to jump through quite a few hoops to get it to run.

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    2. Re:naive question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nitpick, you can run 32-bit ARMv7 programs from RT on Windows 10 ARM, including ported desktop apps that formerly required jailbroken RT devices.

  5. Bonus culinary feature by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    You'll be able to use your tablet to boil water and heat stew.

  6. Is there machines which allow running Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will it run Linux natively? Honest question, as the previous interesting ARM devices were locked to Windows, thanks to their MS or Google neutered bootloader. I have no intention to replace my Intel laptops with ARM ones if I have to do similar fragile jailbreak hacks as with game consoles.

    1. Re:Is there machines which allow running Linux? by luther349 · · Score: 2

      its like owing a Chromebook.

    2. Re:Is there machines which allow running Linux? by Desler · · Score: 1

      Owing it what?

    3. Re:Is there machines which allow running Linux? by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      You're saying there's a developer mode that allows you to install whatever operating system you want?

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  7. ARM Windows? Will That Ever Be A Thing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Windows on ARM seems as interesting as Raspbian on a Dell PowerEdge R730. That is to say, not of any interest whatsoever, to me.

    Is anyone besides Microsoft actually interested in Windows on ARM?

    1. Re:ARM Windows? Will That Ever Be A Thing? by Desler · · Score: 1

      No. That's why RT failed spectacularly.

    2. Re:ARM Windows? Will That Ever Be A Thing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you RTFA, Chrome and Firefox were in the announcement.
      VLC, even. Random stuff like dosbox and GIMP may be ported or have unofficial builds, as an example.

      Ironically or unironically, this may be a better day to day machine than Windows 10 S on x86-64.

      So many years have passed, too. Today if a consumer's computer blows up, is lost in a flood or is stolen, what are they gonna do? Buy a new one and start over, and in some case it may be an iPad or linux or anyway a Windows 10 laptop. Their old boxed software will rarely carry on. It's a diminishing issue, however sad. Like we let go Amiga/Atari ST, DOS and Windows 3.1 software.
      For software of the 90s and early 00s, there still is i686 emulation built-in so there's a better situation than RT on ARM and 10 S on x86 again.
      Emulation is slow? it should work still, and the new computer even if a fanless laptop has better specs than the older one (8GB RAM or even 16GB, NVMe storage and other fast/new stuff. Your old Thinkpad may have 16GB but the average person doesn't have an old Thinkpad with 16GB)

      The #1 "legacy" program? Office, and it's there (didn't save RT because RT ran ONLY Office, without plugins). #2 is probably Acrobat Reader, I doubt Adobe would fail to release it.
      This could easily be the sort of stuff that is dismissed on ./ but can get successful (list of failures predicted by slashdot : iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. or probably comments about who would be dumb enough to run a browser made by google or post pictures of their home on social media)
      By bundling shit like NVMe, 8GB RAM minimum, LTE and 802.11x the platform does address Windows shortcomings - storage and memory hog that downloads gigabytes of crap.

      I hate to be shilling for microsoft though.

  8. Is there someone else up there we can talk to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Try to get your quotes a little more polished.
    http://quotegeek.com/quotes-from-movies/monty-python-and-the-holy-grai/2266/

  9. Re: No snapdragons in FEDERAL PRISON by Order_66 · · Score: 1

    Agreed, they can come up with a chip that blows the owner and lasts 9000 hours on one charge and it would still be a pile of shit because of windows 10.

  10. I don't remember it being much of a mess by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember the switch from Power PC's to Intel when Apple did it for Mac's. It was a mess for some time

    I lived through that switch (in that I had both Motorola and Intel Macs over the years), it didn't seem like much of a mess at all, at least compared to what it could have been. I thought it worked pretty well except for maybe a handful of companies that couldn't make the transition - but Apple really did most everything it could to make the switch go much better than I would have thought... In fact probably OS9 to OSX was more painful I would say.

    Honestly they are in even better shape now since they have had so long with Xcode supporting both Arm and x86 architectures and fat binaries (and even bitcode deployment for later compilation!) for some time. For most modern Mac developers supporting ARM probably would not take a ton of work.

    I have to admit some part of me wishes Apple would switch to AMD for a while, but I can see how they feel they would really be under their own control if they go all in on ARM.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  11. Meanwhile in lin-sux land by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Total chaos, incompetent SJW developers infighting and uselessness all around. Good bye lin-sux on arm, no one will realy miss you.

    1. Re:Meanwhile in lin-sux land by luther349 · · Score: 1

      only reason anyone bothers with linux arm is for the rasberry pi.

    2. Re: Meanwhile in lin-sux land by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not even true. I had an Odroid xu4 that I used as a desktop but needed more ram and upgraded to a NanoPC-T4. Both running Ubuntu Mate. Every single program I had been using on my Dell Optiplex (Gimp, Openshot, Chromium, GQRX, etc) run on the ARM based machines. Are ARM desktops widespread? No. Are they gaining traction? Yes. Every couple of months there is something newer and better coming out in the slightly over 100 dollars and sub 100 dollar price range.

    3. Re:Meanwhile in lin-sux land by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > only reason anyone bothers with linux arm is for the rasberry pi. ... and for the several billion phones out there. These may be Linux/Android rather than Linux/GNU but they are "linux arm" and it seems that many people do "bother with" them.

  12. Chromebook by hackus · · Score: 1

    Why not just avoid the Windows hassle and buy a Chromebook?

    Besides it will probably run better and give a better experience.

    Just my opinion.

    --
    Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
  13. Appalling! by xxxLCxxx · · Score: 2

    I’m somewhat appalled to see the press “hyping” a processor, which has been clearly optimized for benchmarks.

    The Snapdragon 855 features eight cores (standard), with only one of them delivering full performance:

    1x 2.84GHz (Cortex A76)
    3x 2.42GHz (Cortex A76)
    4x 1.8GHz (Cortex-A55)

    This is a 1+3+4 design, as opposed to the traditional 4+4.

    There’s 512kb L2 cache on the big core, while there’s “only” 256kb on each of the three middle cores, and 128kb for each of the four small cores.

    On Android, most applications run multiple threads. In other words: This is going to suck and every other chip manufacturer could easily pull the same stunt (which I hope, they won’t).

    Boo!