Arm is incoming
Qualcomm reckons games “just work” on its new Arm CPU
YOU’VE HEARD IT all before about Arm assimilating the PC at the expense of traditional x86 CPUs, but this time it might actually be happening. We’re just months away from the first laptop PCs with the new Snapdragon X Elite chip, and Qualcomm is ramping up its marketing efforts.
Qualcomm reckons the chip has the measure of the best Intel and AMD CPUs for thin and light notebooks when it comes to both performance and efficiency. Even by Qualcomm’s own numbers, Apple’s latest M3 chip probably has the edge, but the performance and efficiency proposition looks promising.
The catch will be software support. Here, Qualcomm is again making big claims about the near-native performance of legacy x86 software running in emulation on Windows for Arm and the new Snapdragon X Elite processor.
The ability to run old x86 apps smoothly will be critical for Arm and the Snapdragon X Elite. Of all app types, it’s games that are the most challenging to run with regards to emulation, but even there, Qualcomm reckons most games will “just run”.
If it’s true, then the final barrier to widespread Arm adoption on the PC will have fallen—almost. The Snapdragon X Elite’s integrated GPU is claimed to be quicker than Intel’s new Meteor Lake laptop chip, but it’s no gaming powerhouse.
What will be required is pairing an Arm CPU with a proper graphics card. It’s easy to imagine Nvidia supporting their GPUs on the Qualcomm Arm platform. On the other hand, will AMD want to encourage PC buyers to ditch x86 CPUs for Arm by providing full support for Radeon GPUs?
Whatever happens, we won’t have long to find out whether Qualcomm really can
deliver on its claims for the Snapdragon X Elite, as the first laptops go on sale in June. I’m pretty sure they’ll blow away Intel and AMD laptops for efficiency and battery life. How they’ll compare for performance and how well they’ll cope with legacy x86 apps will be the really interesting bit.