Qualcomm s Nuvia-based advanced ARM chip for PC to rival Apple by 2023. Where is qualcomm based

Snapdragon chips can be found not only in expensive flagship smartphones. There is a whole portfolio of processors designed for phones in various price ranges. Performance and features vary somewhat between these models, so let’s figure out how to compare the company’s latest SoCs and what capabilities to expect.

Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3; First 5nm Chip for Windows-Based Arm Laptops

Qualcomm and Microsoft made several unsuccessful attempts to integrate ARM processors in Windows laptops, but the concept never developed until Apple was fed up with Intel’s incompetence and developed M1 ARM-based silicon for its laptops. However, Qualcomm is not over yet. The mobile chip maker has just announced the latest Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 computing platform. It is the first ARM-based chipset for Windows laptops to be manufactured using 5nm lithography.

The original Snapdragon 8cx and the subsequent Gen 2 variant were 7nm parts, making the latest Gen 3 update theoretically more energy efficient than its predecessors. This is an important distinction in the class of devices for which it is intended – Always On, Always Connected Computers. These devices combine the power and functionality of full-fledged laptops with the portability, connectivity, energy efficiency and battery life of smartphones.

Node Shrink Promises Vastly Improved Performance

Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is a premium product in Qualcomm’s repertoire, designed for always active, always connected devices. The new SoC is advertised as delivering a whopping 85 percent increase in multi-core performance over its Gen 2 predecessor, which is not surprising given the energy efficiency gains associated with such a reduction in the production node. It is also advertised that the GPU provides a 60 percent improvement.

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Higher energy efficiency after node reduction can be used to extend battery life and simplify cooling or increase efficiency to achieve the same thermal and power constraints as before. Qualcomm has clearly chosen the latter given the huge (alleged) increase in performance. Not surprisingly, the increased performance margins per watt now allow the chip to target 120fps gameplay in Full HD resolution. These performance predictions are to be achieved on the same fanless PC configurations.

no laptop manufacturer announced specific devices at the launch of the 8cx Gen 3, but Acer, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft appeared at launch to pinpoint products on the way, and Samsung and Asus logos appeared on the Qualcomm partnership celebration slide.

What you need to know

• Qualcomm expects the next-gen ARM processor to rival Apple’s M-series, ready in 2022 and shipped in 2023.
• Qualcomm bought Nuvia, whose members lead Apple’s chip development, in January 2021.
• The message comes from the Qualcomm Investor’s Day event.

Earlier this year, Qualcomm cut $ 400.4 billion to purchase Nuvia, which designed ARM-based mobile processors. What made the acquisition so significant is the fact that the founders of Nuvia are the same people who led the development of Apple’s famous A processors leading to the mighty M1 for laptops.

Now Qualcomm is starting to sag a bit at an investor event where the company advertised that it was well on its way to releasing its “next-gen shoulder-compatible processor designed by the Nuvia team,” according to PCMag.

source: PCMag

The newly designed chips are expected to hit hardware customers (i.e. PC OEMs) in 2022 (nine months to be precise) to prepare them for commercial launch in 2023 on new Windows computers. Qualcomm notes that these chips are “designed to set the benchmark in performance for Windows PCs” and will be “a competitive M Series solution for PCs.”

This is not the first time Qualcomm has touted Nuvia’s talent. The company boasted in July that it could beat the M1 chip from Apple.

The Nuvia-designed Qualcomm chip will depart from the Arm-licensed architectures currently used in the Snapdragon series. However, Qualcomm also has the best of both worlds. As noted in Reuters, if Arm Ltd designs an even better chip, Qualcomm can still license it (as it has in the past) and go this route as well.

While the current Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 is a decent offering for the Windows world, it pales in comparison to Apple’s M1 in terms of power and performance. Qualcomm, however, seems ready to take it to the next level with real devices in the hands of consumers by 2023, assuming there will be no delays.

Qualcomm is expected to have newer processors arriving on Windows PCs in 2022, meanwhile the company is gearing up for the annual December Snapdragon Summer event. However, it is not clear whether these will be minor refreshes or a transition to the more powerful Cortex-A78c.

Windows 11 product satisfaction is highest of all Windows, says Microsoft

According to Microsoft, Windows 11 is rolling out twice as fast as Windows 10 via upgrade offers. In addition, the Windows 11 upgrade offer is entering the final stage of availability, which Microsoft did not anticipate until mid-2022.

The Adreno GPU has also been overhauled, achieving 60% better performance than last year. With support for 120Hz displays, it can even run games at up to 120fps, and Qualcomm says it can hit those frames per second as long as you stick to Full HD – though it’s unclear in which games managed to achieve this.

Snapdragon 700 series — Bridging the gap

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 700 series is not quite as simple as its flagship 800 series. This is due to the sheer numbers of them, as well as the lower chips going to the 600 series. The Snapdragon 700 series is essentially a family of high-end CPUs, and the Snapdragon 780G is the most efficient and the most recent of them.

Released in early 2021, the 780G shares the same 5nm design as the Snapdragon 888, supports both 5G in mmWave and below 6GHz as well as a triple CPU design. You’re looking at one Cortex-A78 CPU clocked at 2.4 GHz, three Cortex-A78 CPUs clocked at 2.2 GHz, and four Cortex-A55 CPU cores. In other words, you have enough processor power to move it to flagship processors from competing companies such as Huawei’s Kirin 9000 and MediaTek’s Dimensity 1200.

Snapdragon 780G also provides the Adreno 642 graphics processor, which is to provide performance comparable to slightly older flagships. In fact, Anandtech reports that better graphics performance than the Snapdragon 855 phones can be expected, although it lags behind the 2020 Snapdragon 865 devices. This is still a big step forward for Qualcomm’s mid-range processors, which usually lag far behind even the company’s older flagship chipsets in this area.

Qualcomm has followed suit by introducing the Snapdragon 778G and 778G Plus, which appear to have slightly inferior specs compared to the 780G. This series features the same CPU cores, Adreno 642L GPU, and 6nm production design (compared to the 780G 5nm design). The company also informed us at the time of the 778G’s launch that it was using a different foundry to manufacture these chips, possibly to work around the industry-wide chip shortage.

Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 765, 750G and 768G series in 2020 as the first mid-range 5G processors. All of these chipsets offer versatile 5G capabilities, 7nm or 8nm designs, a 1 + 1 + 6 processor chip, and decent graphic design. In fact, the 750G has newer CPU cores, which in theory should give it a slight increase on paper compared to its stable counterparts. But it comes at the expense of graphics performance, machine learning power, and camera capabilities compared to the 765 and 768G chips.

in 2020, some manufacturers used the Snapdragon 765G chipset for their flagship chipsets such as the Google Pixel 5 and LG Velvet. This shows how efficient these processors are today. However, the trend largely halted in 2021 as Qualcomm offered cheaper Snapdragon 800 series processors instead, and Google decided to debut with its own silicon chips for the Pixel 6 series.

There are still a few processors in the Snapdragon 700 series with 4G support, such as the Snapdragon 730, Snapdragon 732G, and Snapdragon 720G. This is all next to the totem in terms of power and capability. We have octa-core processors with two powerful Cortex-A76 processors and six Cortex-A55 cores, and powerful Spectra image signal processors for high-definition imaging.

All the chipsets mentioned above support 192MP snapshots, although they provide a much lower resolution for multi-frame processing (eg HDR, night mode). You won’t get 8K here either, but 4K at 30fps is basically guaranteed at this level.

Snapdragon 600 series — Value for money

Where the Snapdragon 700 series tries to bridge the gap between mid-range and flagship models, the Snapdragon 600 series mainly focuses on the segment around $ 300 and below. We say “mostly” because the Snapdragon 695 looks like it can beat it with some 700 series Snapdragon processors.

This processor offers a relatively powerful octa-core processor (2x Cortex-A77 and 6x Cortex-A55) and the Adreno 619 GPU seen in last year’s Snapdragon 750G. We also get 4K HDR video recording, support for a 13MP triple camera, support for a single 108MP camera, a dedicated machine learning chip, and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity.

The Snapdragon 695 is the successor to last year’s Snapdragon 690. This new chip is quite similar to the 690, but has a slightly less powerful Adreno 619 GPU, newer CPU cores, and still doesn’t support three cameras. Nevertheless, Qualcomm says the new chip enjoys 15% CPU acceleration and 30% GPU acceleration over its predecessor.

Qualcomm also introduced the Snapdragon 680 at the same time as the 695, and this chip stands out from the entries above as there is a SoC of only 4G. It appears to derive from the older mid-range Snapdragon 665 SoC, sharing features such as old CPU cores (four Cortex-A73 and four Cortex-A53), an Adreno 610 GPU, Hexagon 686 DSP, and Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging. There are a few improvements, however, namely the much smaller 6nm manufacturing process (meaning better performance) and Bluetooth 5.1 support.

Coming down the ladder, we have the Snapdragon 675 only running on 4G and the Snapdragon 670, which dates back to 2018/2019 and therefore not used much anymore. These two SoCs have a lot in common with the first processors of the Snapdragon 700 series (eg Snapdragon 710). The Snapdragon 670 and 675 offer respectively efficient Cortex-A75 and A76 cores in combination with the energy-saving Cortex-A55 cores. You can also expect aging but decent GPUs (albeit inferior to the 700 series), Bluetooth 5 support, and Quick Charge 4+ features. The 670 and 675 also support 700 family features such as 4K recording, 192MP snapshots, and 48MP photos with multi-frame processing.

Notable phones from the Snapdragon 600 series

Keeping up with all the advances Intel has made in notebook computing can be difficult. Without much prior knowledge, it can be difficult to choose between a Qualcomm 8cx laptop or a Core i5.

All you need to know about Qualcomm’s $219 dev kit for ARM-based apps on Windows

Story by

Ivan Mehta

Story by

Ivan Mehta

Ivan covers Big Tech, India, rules, artificial intelligence, security, platforms and applications for TNW. It’s a bloody mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh”. Ivan covers Big Tech, India, rules, artificial intelligence, security, platforms and applications for TNW. It’s a bloody mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.”

Apple is slowly shifting its mass of computing systems towards ARM-based processors – the latest M1X-based MacBook Pros are the latest.

On the other hand, only a few Windows laptops and desktops use ARM-based processors. One of the keys to having more of these systems would be a robust application ecosystem.

Last year, Apple introduced the ARM-based Mac Mini so developers could start porting their applications. If you are an application developer for Windows, there is also a reference machine with Qualcomm.

We talked to 4 successful entrepreneurs

This is what they would like to know before starting

In May, at Microsoft’s Build Developer Summit, Qualcomm announced the developer kit without revealing too many details. Now we have more information on this device and the price is $ 219.

The device, named ECS LIVA Mini Box QC710 Desktop, has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c (gen 1) octa-core processor clocked up to 2.4 GHz.

You can check the full specification below:

Specifications

• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Compute SC7180
• RAM: 4 GB
• Internal memory: 64 GB
• External memory: MicroSD slot
• wireless connectivity: Wi-Fi 5; Bluetooth
• Ports: 1 x USB Type-C (PD Charging); 1 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type A, 1 x USB 2.0 Type A; 1x HDMI; 1 LAN
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home; Free upgrade to Windows 11

The development kit comes with Windows 10 Home, but is free to upgrade to Windows 11. It also allows you to run an x64 emulator to evaluate application performance.

Some frequently used applications such as Zoom, Adobe Photoshop, and Firefox have already released ARM-based versions for Windows.

Typically, it took almost 400,000 to get ARM-based Windows and start developing your applications. But you can save tons of money with this new Qualcomm development kit.

Find out more about the Qualcomm ECS LIVA Mini Box QC710 here. Additionally, you can check out Windows development documents on Snapdragon here.

Are you looking for the best Qualcomm processor for smartphones? It will be the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which will power many high-end phones in 2022. It’s actually part of the Snapdragon 800 series, which is Qualcomm’s most powerful family of smartphone chipsets.

When will Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 laptops be released?

Qualcomm revealed the 8cx Gen 3 at the Tech Summit on December 1, but it will be a while before we see the first hardware using the new laptop chip.

The company has only promised that the first laptops will be launched in the first half of 2022, although senior director of product management Miguel Nunes told technical advisor that manufacturers should start announcing devices “soon” and “likely” at CES 2022 in January.

Qualcomm revealed the 8cx Gen 3 along with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip and a new gaming platform called Snapdragon G3x Gen 1. It also introduced a new less powerful chip for 7c + Gen 3 laptops that can make Windows 11 PCs with CPU ARMs will be more affordable.

What laptops will use the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3?

no laptop manufacturer announced specific devices at the launch of the 8cx Gen 3, but Acer, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft appeared at launch to pinpoint products on the way, and Samsung and Asus logos appeared on the Qualcomm partnership celebration slide.

All of these brands have been making Snapdragon laptops before, so it’s no surprise that they are going back to the fold.

The Acer’s Spin 7 was announced with the 8cx Gen 2 in September, while the Samsung Galaxy Book S is one of the most famous Snapdragon computers. The Lenovo Yoga 5G was the first 5G laptop thanks to the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, while Microsoft’s Surface Pro X used a custom ARM-based processor in two generations of 2 in 1.

We’d expect these six manufacturers to work on using the next Qualcomm chipset in some capacity, although there could be many more as Windows’ popularity on Snapdragon continues to grow.

The company only promised that the first laptops should be launched in the first half of 2022, although senior director of product management Miguel Nunes told Tech adviser that manufacturers should begin announcing devices “soon” and “likely” at CES 2022 in January.

Areas Linaro can help

Linaro Developer Services has extensive experience helping companies that use Qualcomm’s platforms to build their products:

• To upgrade Qualcomm Technologies legacy Linux kernel BSP to current Linux versions and Long Term Support (LTS)
• Development and provision of optimized drivers for hardware platforms based on Qualcomm Technologies processors
• Migrate clients from blocked binary blob drivers to open source solutions (GPU, Compute, Connectivity…).

Significant experience and proven leadership in the Linux community

• Linaro Developer Services has extensive experience and a proven leadership position in the Linux community, with over 2,500 Qualcomm Technologies contributions to the kernel.org releases for Linux.
• Linaro Developer Services engineers maintain many of Qualcomm’s key subsystems and drivers such as Qualcomm Platform Drivers and Device Tree, Remoteproc / rpmsg, Audio (Including Slimbus, Soundwire and Compressed Audio), Ethernet, Modem IPA, Modem Host Interface (MHI), Management temperature.
• Linaro Developer Services provides and maintains reference BSPs for Linux and Android for DragonBoardTM 410c and DragonBoardTM 820c, Qualcomm® Robotics RB3 and Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platforms

Linaro is a member of the Yocto project and provides expertise in developing and optimizing Linux products based on the Yocto project. In addition, Linaro Developer Services can help with a wide range of Linux operating systems such as Debian and Android.

Contact us to learn more about the services Qualcomm offers and how we can help develop, maintain and optimize your product using Qualcomm technology.

Another comparison worth making concerns the Microsoft Surface Pro X SQ1 chip, which is a modified Snapdragon 8cx. In some reviews, this processor lags behind the Intel Core i5 and i7 processors in the Surface Pro 7 and Surface Laptop 3, which further underlines the good but insufficient performance of 8cx.

Cost and efficiency

The biggest advantages of the existing Always Connected product line are efficiency and connectivity. Qualcomm mentioned a performance boost for the Snapdragon 8cx, suggesting it could even provide several days of battery life on some products. That would be an improvement, even after the long battery life seen in solid entries like the HP Envy x2 and Surface Book 2.

The Lenovo Flex 5G lived up to that promise in our tests, breaking all our battery performance records and enduring an impressive 28 hours in our video loop test on a single charge. The web test showed that the Flex 5G supports 17 hours continuously, almost two hours more than the Surface Book 2.

battery life is where the Flex 5G really shines. While 8cx isn’t perfect in all areas, it’s one job in many that does well.

8cx intrigue can’t trump pedigree and performance

Intel

Keeping up with all the advances Intel has made in notebook computing can be difficult. Without much prior knowledge, it can be difficult to choose between a Qualcomm 8cx laptop or a Core i5.

The Qualcomm 8cx has excellent battery life and fantastic graphics, but there is room for improvement. While it has great application support, some users find CPU and GPU capabilities and performance disappointing.

qualcomm’s 8cx has a lot of potential and the 8cx Plus is already promising to deliver more. With that in mind, Intel’s latest Core i5 processors are the best option on the market right now.