NON-X86 WINDOWS 10
Intel is feeling the squeeze from its ARM rivals, says Matt Hanson
Qualcomm is battling for the future of your OS
For perhaps too long, Intel dominated the CPU market for Windows laptops and PCs. If you were buying or building a new computer, you’d almost certainly be slotting an Intel chip into the motherboard. But one company having such dominance isn’t a good thing. It restricts choice for consumers, and the market leader can get complacent.
Things are changing, however. A resurgent AMD is bringing the heat back to Intel with its Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs, and we’re also seeing the rise of non-x86 ARM processors. Usually found in mobile and embedded devices, a new generation of ARM processors is now powering laptops, lead by Qualcomm. With the likes of Microsoft and Lenovo supporting this new breed of laptop, it looks like the way we use those devices could change forever, and Intel needs to adapt—or die.
Qualcomm is a US company that used to be best known for creating telecommunication equipment. Its Snapdragon System on Chip (SoC) platform powered some of the most popular smartphones in the world. Part of the appeal of Snapdragonpowered smartphones was that, thanks to Qualcomm’s hardware, these devices could handle many tasks that we used to use computers for. Suddenly, we were checking emails, browsing the web, and posting cat pictures on social media using our smartphones. Laptops began to fall out of vogue.
For the past 40 years, laptops have pretty much kept the same form factor. Sure, 2-in-1 laptops with 360-degree hinges and removable keyboards (such as Lenovo’s Yoga series or Microsoft’s Surface Laptop respectively), offered slightly different spins on the tried-andtested laptop design, but on the whole, laptops hadn’t changed much. You got a screen and keyboard in a clamshell design, and they were usually powered by Intel processors and integrated graphics. They became safe and boring, especially compared to high-end smartphones, and the laptop market declined accordingly.
However, at Computex 2017, Qualcomm and Microsoft announced a new breed of laptop, powered by the Snapdragon platform. Instead of smartphones taking features from laptops, we saw laptops from manufacturers such as HP, Lenovo, and Asus taking inspiration from smartphones.
This first wave of Windows on Snapdragon (WoS) devices were built on the octa-core Snapdragon 835 SoC. Originally designed for flagship smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S8, the Snapdragon 835 was a 64bit ARM processor that used Qualcomm’s in-house Kryo 280 cores, and was built using Samsung’s 10nm FinFET processor.
These ARM-based laptops brought features we’d come to take for granted on smartphones, such as almost instant boot times, always-on cellular data connection, and battery lives far in excess of anything an Intel-based x86 laptop was capable of, with claimed battery lives of over 20 hours.
The Snapdragon 835 SoC also ran a lot cooler than x86 hardware, which meant manufacturers could forgo fans—leading to thinner, lighter, and quieter laptops.
The HP Envy x2 and Asus NovaGo were two of the first Snapdragon-powered laptops, and they certainly delivered on some promises—battery lives lasted around 20 hours, and the always-on 4G cellular data connection meant you could instantly get online almost anywhere without having to find and log into Wi-Fi networks (good for the securityconscious, as it meant you could avoid potentially compromised Wi-Fi hotspots).
However, they were far from perfect. When it came to performance, these non-x86 laptops couldn’t keep up with Intel and AMD-powered machines. While Microsoft worked hard to make a version
of Windows 10 that worked on non-x86 gear, it struggled with even simple tasks.
Worse, these laptops were incredibly expensive, considering the level of performance you got. While they should have been priced around the same as a low-end Chromebook, they ended up costing closer to $1,000—and for that money you could buy a high-end Intel laptop that would blow the Snapdragonpowered device out of the water.
Still, they were doing something new, and they hinted at the possibilities of non-x86 Windows laptops.
Qualcomm continued to refine its Snapdragon platform for laptops and smartphones. The octa-core Snapdragon 845 came out in December 2017, and brought with it both performance and battery improvements.
In 2019, Qualcomm produced its best Snapdragon SoC yet with the Snapdragon 850 platform. It brought a 30 percent increase in performance compared to the previous generation, and offered 25 hours of battery life. It also came with an improved modem for faster 4G LTE speeds, thanks to the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem, which offers peak downloads of 1.2 gigabits; it’s also better at performing in areas of weak signal.
The boost in performance also brought support for 10-bit HDR video content and surround sound. While these are things we’ve come to take for granted in modern laptops, previous WoS notebooks lacked the oomph to deliver a decent experience.
So, although earlier Snapdragonpowered laptops didn’t do anything to challenge the dominance of x86 hardware, the improvements promised by Snapdragon 850 could give the likes of Intel and AMD reason to worry.
What’s really exciting is that in our experience, the Snapdragon 850 really does deliver on those improvements. We’ve been playing with the Lenovo Yoga C630, and the improvements over the HP Envy x2, which runs on the Snapdragon 835, are very impressive.
In Geekbench 4, the HP Envy x2 scored 770 (single-core) and 3,116 (multicore), while the Yoga C630 easily surpasses it with a single-core score of 2,291 and a multicore score of 7,101. In our day-to-day experience using both laptops, we were seriously disappointed with the Envy x2, but the Yoga C630 managed what previous Windows 10 on ARM laptops failed to do, combining smartphone-like connectivity and battery life with performance that’s not too far off x86 laptops.
This leap in performance for the Snapdragon platform should get Intel worried. But what comes after it could really make Team Blue sweat.
THE FUTURE OF SNAPDRAGON
While the Snapdragon 850 represented a big leap in making non-x86 laptops a more viable alternative, it was still held back by one major compromise: The 850 SoC was first and foremost a chipset for smartphones and tablets that is also used for laptops. However, in 2019, Qualcomm
announced the Snapdragon 8cx, which will be the first chip it’s produced that is designed specifically for laptops and computers. Without the constraint of it being a smartphone chip retrofitted for laptops, the 8cx has the potential to really make non-x86 laptops mainstream.
Qualcomm also beat AMD and Intel to the punch, because the 8cx contains the first 7nm processor for laptops and Windows devices: the Kryo 495. Meanwhile, Intel is still working on its 10nm architecture.
That’s a pretty big PR blow Qualcomm has landed on its competitors, but not only does the smaller architecture look good on paper, but it should bring some real performance benefits as well.
It’s based on ARM’s big.LITTLE compute system, which combines slower processor cores with faster and more power-hungry cores, and switches between them, depending on the workload, to help maximize battery life without impacting performance, and will support up to 16GB of DDR4 memory, NVme SSDs, and Gen 2 USB-C 3.1.
For owners of Intel-powered laptops, that kind of feature list might simply elicit a small shrug—after all, x86 laptops have had those features for a while now. However, it’s another step toward Snapdragon and other ARMpowered laptops challenging the current dominance of Intel-based hardware.
The 8cx’s Adreno 680 graphics card also offers a decent leap in performance— including DirectX 12 support—so we could even see Snapdragon laptops that are capable of a little light gaming as well. It can also apparently power two connected 4K HDR monitors, too.
However, arguably the Snapdragon 8cx’s most important feature is its support for 5G mobile Internet. The speeds and low latency afforded by the emerging cellular data technology could have huge implications for how we use our computers. For instance, it could mean that we would be able to use our 5G laptops to stream games from services such as Nvidia GeForce Now or Google’s upcoming Stadia service—so the lack of a powerful GPU wouldn’t even be an issue. The idea that Snapdragon 8cx-powered laptops could become lightweight gaming machines that can play games at full graphical settings—and also have battery lives of over 20 hours—is an incredibly exciting one.
At Computex 2019, Qualcomm and Lenovo announced that they were working on “Project Limitless,” which will be the first ever 5G laptop—and it will run on the Snapdragon 8cx platform.
According to Johnson Jia, senior vice president of Lenovo’s PC Business Group, “Lenovo 5G PCs built on the Snapdragon 8cx 5G compute platform will feature ultra-low latency, remarkable performance, battery life, and 5G connectivity that will revolutionize the way we work and play.”
That’s a big promise, and while we don’t know much more about Lenovo’s Project Limitless, we should hopefully find out more later this year.
IS THE TIDE TURNING?
What the latest Snapdragon platform (and the future 8cx) demonstrates is that ARM-based laptops are finally viable propositions. They are no longer over
priced and under-performing curios, but laptops that offer genuine alternatives to x86 machines.
Could that lead to more laptop manufacturers looking at leaving Intel and AMD, and using ARM hardware in their products instead? Perhaps. Intel hasn’t been doing a fantastic job of keeping manufacturers onside, due to a number of high-profile security flaws in its chips. Meltdown and Spectre made the headlines last year, and ZombieLoad was recently discovered, leading to many manufacturers and software developers having to scramble to provide patches to mitigate against the vulnerabilities.
Not only do these flaws annoy manufacturers, who feel they have to work to fix Intel’s problems, but most of the fixes involve disabling HyperThreading, a feature that generates virtualized processor cores for improved multitasking, and that has led to some drastic performance impacts after the patches are applied.
For example, Apple revealed that, with the ZombieLoad patch installed, there could be performance drops of up to 40 percent—which would particularly impact Macs with multicore processors.
Not only will this annoy customers, who are seeing their expensive devices perform worse, but it’s not a good look for the manufacturers, either. If your Mac suddenly starts running slow, you’re likely to blame Apple before you blame Intel.
Speaking of Apple, rumors have continued to grow that the company is looking to part ways with Intel and produce its own custom ARM-based chips in 2020. Apple is a company that likes to keep control over all parts of its hardware, so we think this is an increasingly likely possibility. Not only will the company have been nonplussed about having to throttle the performance of its Macs due to ZombieLoad (which does not affect AMD and ARM processors), but it also recently suggested that the drop in Mac sales was due to “processor constraints in the March quarter, leading to a 5 percent revenue decline compared to last year.” The fact that Tim Cook himself was all but calling out Intel doesn’t bode well for the relationship between the two companies.
If a company as big as Apple ditches Intel for ARM, we could easily see other companies following suit.
Another laptop manufacturer that is set to move from Intel to its own processors for its laptops (but for very different reasons) is Huawei. You’ve probably seen the news about the US government’s blacklisting of the Chinese company over espionage fears, and it has resulted in most US (and UK) companies ceasing business with it. This means that Intel will no longer be supplying processors for Huawei’s MateBook range of laptops. This has forced the company to look into creating its own processors, which we think will likely be non-x86. Earlier this year, Huawei showed off its Kunpeng 920 CPU, which is an ARMbased CPU that it claims is the highest-performance ARM CPU in existence.
We would think that Huawei migrating to ARM for its laptop processors would be a no-brainer in light of its recent troubles. The only problem is that ARM has also said that it will stop working with Huawei. This could have huge implications for both companies— though especially Huawei, which will need to look at building its own RISC-based CPU from the ground up.
So, the future of non-x86 Windows (and Mac) laptops certainly looks bright. While we don’t expect Intel-based machines to suddenly disappear from the laptop landscape altogether, the fact that we’re going to be given more choice is certainly welcome. The fact that these ARM-based alternatives are bringing some genuinely innovative new features to the rather staid laptop form factor is also to be celebrated—and with Intel’s once unassailable dominance now under threat, we’re looking forward to seeing how the chipmaker responds. All of a sudden, laptops are exciting again.