Discussion Qualcomm Snapdragon Thread

FlameTail · Thursday at 12:16 PM

The Hardcard said:
There are some rumorists who claim Nvidia is going to double dip, regular consumer laptops with Mediatek CPUs but then a bigger AI SOC with with their own CPU IP. While there are no details, I wonder if the latter will be for heavy AI work, competing with Strix Halo and M4 Max/Ultra.

I think consumer WoA will exist, but be forced to occupy the budget category. And at that just have some marketshare but never be a huge player. Qualcomm wants to be a top first choice device maker, but I think they were too late.

Above 30 percent single threaded performance, above 40 percent more battery life could have shaken the market. But, here in 2024, they are just even in performance and maybe 10 to 15 percent better battery that forces buyers to trade away significant GPU performance.

So the GPU gets better in 2025, but you still have an SOC that is only slightly better in some areas. There won’t be any standout metric that makes Qualcomm a “gotta have it.” So, to maintain momentum they are going to have to low ball on price. I see WoA as a group being below 25 percent of the market selling laptops at prices mostly above Chromebooks but below x86.

I think you are underestimating Windows-on-ARM's potential.

A lot of apps have already been ported to Windows-on-ARM, other apps are in the process of being ported and improvements are being made to the emulation layer. The disadvantage of app compatibility diminishes with every passing day, which levels the playing field against x86.

It is clear that battery life shouldn't be the sole selling point for WoA devices. They'll have to sell based on the differing merit of their silicon; For Qualcomm it might be better CPU performance/efficiency and for Nvidia it will be their GPU/CUDA.

MarkizSchnitzel · Thursday at 12:41 PM

Lunar Lake is a one-off, and AMD seems to be all in on servers.
I'd say if they improve battery life and GPU a little, they can capture mainstream no problem.
Regular people pay build quality and nice screen and thin/light to be able to work in Chrome.

adroc_thurston · Thursday at 1:14 PM

MarkizSchnitzel said:
they can capture mainstream no problem.

a) they're not interested
b) QC platform just isn't made for mainstream. Very premium handset-brained

trivik12 · Thursday at 1:58 PM

adroc_thurston said:
a) they're not interested
b) QC platform just isn't made for mainstream. Very premium handset-brained

You can buy QC laptops for very low price. Best Buy is selling one for $550 with 16/512GB and 3K OLED screen. If that is not mainstream, I dont know what is.

adroc_thurston · Thursday at 1:59 PM

trivik12 said:
You can buy QC laptops for very low price. Best Buy is selling one for $550 with 16/512GB and 3K OLED screen. If that is not mainstream, I dont know what is.

That's not the SRP, big dawg.
Mainstream means very specific things in the laptop game.

gdansk · Thursday at 2:17 PM

adroc_thurston said:
That's not the SRP, big dawg.
Mainstream means very specific things in the laptop game.

Hamoa is Phoenix-sized but competes with Strix Point in CPU performance.
Purwa is Phoenix 2 sized but competes with Phoenix in CPU performance.

I think they're doing OK preserving their margin and still being able to undercut AMD. Not that it matters, Intel still runs the laptop market despite having the worst parts available out of the bunch (except LNL).

DZero · Thursday at 4:28 PM

adroc_thurston said:
a) they're not interested
b) QC platform just isn't made for mainstream. Very premium handset-brained

And why Qualcomm has the Plus line for lower price then?

MS_AT · Thursday at 5:26 PM

FlameTail said:
According to Microsoft telemetry data, 90% of the time by an average user of a Snapdragon laptop is spent on ARM native apps, running at full performance without emulation loss.

To be expected. The nice thing would be to show demographics of average user of Snapdragon laptop

DZero said:
And why Qualcomm has the Plus line for lower price then?

And they are still expensive?

Actually it's a pity they will not release 8 Elite for WoA laptops, it would do better there in bigger form factors as currently it's sustained performance is good enough to run Geekbench and nothing else. At least from the first few devices that have come out already.

The Hardcard · Thursday at 7:18 PM

FlameTail said:
I think you are underestimating Windows-on-ARM's potential.

A lot of apps have already been ported to Windows-on-ARM, other apps are in the process of being ported and improvements are being made to the emulation layer. The disadvantage of app compatibility diminishes with every passing day, which levels the playing field against x86.

It is clear that battery life shouldn't be the sole selling point for WoA devices. They'll have to sell based on the differing merit of their silicon; For Qualcomm it might be better CPU performance/efficiency and for Nvidia it will be their GPU/CUDA.

To take significant premium laptop marketshare you have do more than just not have disadvantages. You need for people to have excitement, satisfaction, and lust for some aspect of your product that they believe they can’t get elsewhere.

All day battery when others are at 4 to 6 hours is exciting. When everyone offers all day a laptop that is at 30 percent when its time for bed versus 12 percent is not as big a “gotta get that one” proposition.

All new laptop SOCs are snappy, being 15 percent snappier isn’t enough to to get brand commitment.

I just don’t see what the lust factor of X Elite is. Without the lust factor, all people are going to ask is, “how cheap can I buy it?” Which makes a premium chassis, top notch components, and glorious display a difficult sale. With all that people want the SOC to make them say “Wow!” for at least one reason, if not several.

trivik12 said:
You can buy QC laptops for very low price. Best Buy is selling one for $550 with 16/512GB and 3K OLED screen. If that is not mainstream, I dont know what is.

Is that mainstream or a “few people are buying this” discount? Is selling good quality laptops with 3k OLED displays for $550 sustainable?

DavidC1 · Thursday at 7:22 PM

The Hardcard said:
To take significant premium laptop marketshare you have do more than just not have disadvantages. You need for people to have excitement, satisfaction, and lust for some aspect of your product that they believe they can’t get elsewhere.

All day battery when others are at 4 to 6 hours is exciting. When everyone offers all day a laptop that is at 30 percent when its time for bed versus 12 percent is not as big a “gotta get that one” proposition.

All new laptop SOCs are snappy, being 15 percent snappier isn’t enough to to get brand commitment.

Agree, agree, and agree. Premium means you expect everything to be good. "Oh, it can run these applications, though there are a few that can't" or the "GPU performance is a bit low", isn't gonna cut it. If it does, then it'll be sent to the bargain bin, period.

And it is up to AMD/Intel to stop WoA from getting more marketshare. I hope Pantherlake is not big of a decline in battery life from Lunarlake. 15% battery life difference from Lunarlake maximum coupled with big improvements in CPU and GPU will do that.

gdansk · Thursday at 8:52 PM

The Hardcard said:
Is that mainstream or a “few people are buying this” discount? Is selling good quality laptops with 3k OLED displays for $550 sustainable?

I think it is sustainable but low margin. Multiple vendors have been doing it on and off for some time. I'm typing this from an $600 HP AMD laptop with an even larger chip (Phoenix) and a 3K 120Hz OLED display that I got about a year ago.

FlameTail · Thursday at 9:45 PM

adroc_thurston said:
b) QC platform just isn't made for mainstream. Very premium handset-brained

You were saying?

adroc_thurston · Thursday at 11:42 PM

gdansk said:
Hamoa is Phoenix-sized but competes with Strix Point in CPU performance.
Purwa is Phoenix 2 sized but competes with Phoenix in CPU performance.

That's not the issue.

DZero said:
And why Qualcomm has the Plus line for lower price then?

Gotta throw garbage bins somewhere.

FlameTail said:
You were saying?

Yeah.

FlameTail · Friday at 6:02 AM

The Hardcard said:
To take significant premium laptop marketshare you have do more than just not have disadvantages. You need for people to have excitement, satisfaction, and lust for some aspect of your product that they believe they can’t get elsewhere.

All day battery when others are at 4 to 6 hours is exciting. When everyone offers all day a laptop that is at 30 percent when its time for bed versus 12 percent is not as big a “gotta get that one” proposition.

All new laptop SOCs are snappy, being 15 percent snappier isn’t enough to to get brand commitment.

I just don’t see what the lust factor of X Elite is. Without the lust factor, all people are going to ask is, “how cheap can I buy it?” Which makes a premium chassis, top notch components, and glorious display a difficult sale. With all that people want the SOC to make them say “Wow!” for at least one reason, if not several.

Improved battery life isn't the only benefit brought by an efficient SoC;
- Excellent standby
- Lower device temperature
- Lower fan noise/fanless designs
- Minimal performance loss when unplugged

Snapdragon laptops also have;
- Great webcam quality
- Instant Awake

What other vendor offers this combination of
features (except Apple)?

Intel comes the closest with their Lunar Lake. There are several reasons for it;

1. SoC architecture focused on low power, with aggressive power gating, more power rails, new display controllers and media engines, etc...
2. On-package memory.
3. PMICs.
4. Cluster of 4 LPE cores.
5. CPU, GPU and NPU in one tile.
6. TSMC 3nm process node

But Lunar Lake is a one-off design. It's successor Panther Lake will drop several of the above features, and differ in others.

We know the X Elite wasn't Qualcomm's best showing. It had several problems, some of which are;
1. High CPU power consumption
2. Unstable yields (High Frequency SKUs are rare, and some SKUs don't have boost at all).
3. Lack of small/efficient cores

Snapdragon 8 Elite with it's 2nd generation Oryon CPU fixes the 3 issues issues. It brings a 2x uplift in performance-per-watt, introduces the new Oryon-M core and millions of 8 Elite units are being shipped with stable 4.3 GHz clock speed.

With Oryon Gen 2, Qualcomm already has the necessary technology to blow the doors off Lunar Lake (and their own 1st gen X Elite chip).

But X Elite Gen 2 is confirmed to use Oryon Gen 3, which will have even better performance and performance-per-watt.

Meteor Late · Friday at 6:16 AM

The Hardcard said:
Is that mainstream or a “few people are buying this” discount? Is selling good quality laptops with 3k OLED displays for $550 sustainable?

You would be surprised, these screens are getting cheaper and cheaper to manufacture, I saw a 1335u with a similar display for the same price the other day. OLED in laptops is not like 3 years ago where they were expensive displays.

MS_AT · Friday at 7:28 AM

FlameTail said:
stable 4.3 GHz clock speed.

I would be glad to see actual device shipping with 8 Elite that doesn't throttle without air cooling. Devices released so far are throttling based on available reviews, unless you qualify Geekbench run as stable, then we have different expectations

FlameTail said:
X Elite Gen 2 is confirmed to use Oryon Gen 3

Then they could have waited a year to make better impression given the marketing hype that was taking place before the release. Especially seeing that 8 Elite was released not so long after and seems like a better chip for 13/14 inch laptop, on which you would like to game from time to time. Actually I would say it's better suited to this role than phone SoC...

soresu · Friday at 7:38 AM

FlameTail said:
Snapdragon laptops also have;
- Great webcam quality

Don't see what that has to do with the SoC.

FlameTail · Friday at 9:24 AM

soresu said:
Don't see what that has to do with the SoC.

The Snapdragon X Elite/Plus feature a Spectra ISP, which is built on the years of expertise Qualcomm has with computational photography on smartphones.

Almost all reviewers have noted that the webcam quality on Snapdragon laptops is generally better than Intel/AMD laptops.

MS_AT said:
I would be glad to see actual device shipping with 8 Elite that doesn't throttle without air cooling. Devices released so far are throttling based on available reviews, unless you qualify Geekbench

That is thermal throttling. I was using the word "stable" with regards to binning/yields.

FlameTail said:
Hamoa SKUs Boost clock Base clock
X1E-00-1DE 4.3 GHz 3.8 GHz
X1E-84-100 4.2 GHz 3.8 GHz
X1E-80-100 4.0 GHz 3.4 GHz
X1E-78-100 - 3.4 GHz
X1P-66-100 4.0 GHz 3.4 GHz
X1P-64-100 - 3.4 GHz

As I have said previously, it is ridiculous how much frequency variation there is between the Snapdragon X1 SKUs.

And with Snapdragon X Elite, the higher SKUs are also rare. The only device with the 4.3 GHz SKU was cancelled (Dev Kit), there is only one device with the 4.2 GHz SKU (Galaxy Book Edge 16) and only a few devices have the 4.0 GHz SKU.

Now it seems Qualcomm has 'fixed' Oryon with the 2nd gen Oryon cores in Snapdragon 8 Elite. They are shipping millions of 8 Elite chips with a clock speed of 4.32 GHz.

So I expect there won't be such frequency variation with the Snapdragon X2 SKUs.

Even AMD has hardly any frequency variation in their latest laptop SKUs;
View attachment 111359

The Hardcard · Friday at 10:08 AM

MS_AT said:
I would be glad to see actual device shipping with 8 Elite that doesn't throttle without air cooling. Devices released so far are throttling based on available reviews, unless you qualify Geekbench run as stable, then we have different expectations

Then they could have waited a year to make better impression given the marketing hype that was taking place before the release. Especially seeing that 8 Elite was released not so long after and seems like a better chip for 13/14 inch laptop, on which you would like to game from time to time. Actually I would say it's better suited to this role than phone SoC...

They couldn’t have waited a year. I think even rushing they were still too late. They need to get as many people still using short hour laptops as they can. Everyone who buys an all day AMD/Intel laptop will be far less likely to ever consider Qualcomm. From an appeal to consumers standpoint, they really needed these laptops out in 2022.

I agree with all of Flametail’s points on how X Elite will be better, but still it’s all a little bit or somewhat better. In 2022, there would have been some head turning advantages. Heads aren’t turning in 2024. And I still see Oryon 3’s advantages as minor versus Panther and Medusa. The superior core design will allow them to continue to be a player. That is a tremendous achievement. But, they have yet to show anything that would allow dominance.

The only thing Intel is giving up by not reiterating Lunar Lake is the memory on package power savings. All the PMIC plus other SOC and platform power work can be applied to future mobile products.

I sill think they should do a 6 + 8 ( + 2?) memory on package version, but obviously not my call.

Meteor Late · Friday at 11:01 AM

The Hardcard said:
They couldn’t have waited a year. I think even rushing they were still too late. They need to get as many people still using short hour laptops as they can. Everyone who buys an all day AMD/Intel laptop will be far less likely to ever consider Qualcomm. From an appeal to consumers standpoint, they really needed these laptops out in 2022.

I agree with all of Flametail’s points on how X Elite will be better, but still it’s all a little bit or somewhat better. In 2022, there would have been some head turning advantages. Heads aren’t turning in 2024. And I still see Oryon 3’s advantages as minor versus Panther and Medusa. The superior core design will allow them to continue to be a player. That is a tremendous achievement. But, they have yet to show anything that would allow dominance.

The only thing Intel is giving up by not reiterating Lunar Lake is the memory on package power savings. All the PMIC plus other SOC and platform power work can be applied to future mobile products.

I sill think they should do a 6 + 8 ( + 2?) memory on package version, but obviously not my call.

Medusa is like a year later, though.

Meteor Late · Friday at 11:10 AM

One thing I haven't seen discussed much is, the difference in IPC and performance between Oryon 1st gen and Oryon 2nd gen. For example, Oryon 1st gen, at 4.3GHz (X1E84100) is between 2900 and 3000 points in Geekbench 6 from what I've seen. But, that is on Windows. Scores on MacOS, Linux and Android are usually like 5% faster at least. So it would seem there is almost no IPC improvement in 2nd gen? or am I missing something?

gdansk · Friday at 11:35 AM

Meteor Late said:
So it would seem there is almost no IPC improvement in 2nd gen? or am I missing something?

No, that seems about right. Slightly higher clocks and the old Linux buff.

FlameTail · Friday at 12:37 PM

I compared the die areas of the sub-systems in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Snapdragon X Elite. This comparison makes sense, because;
1. They are made on the same node (N4P)
2. They were both unveiled at 2023 Snapdragon Summit
3. They have similar IP in the NPU, GPU, ISPz etc...

The objective of this comparion was to find out what components in X Elite result in it's larger die area.

Die shots by Kurnal.

8 Gen 3

X Elite

Metric	8 Gen 3	X Elite	Difference
SoC	137 mm²	172 mm²	+35 mm²
CPU	21.8 mm²	50.9 mm²	+29.1 mm²
GPU	27.8 mm²	25.9 mm²	-1.9 mm²
NPU	12.1 mm²	15.0 mm²	+2.9 mm²
ISP	15.1 mm²	8.9 mm²	-6.2 mm²
VPU	7.6 mm²	5.6 mm²	-2 mm²
DPU	4.5 mm²	7.5 mm²?	+3 mm²
Memory Controller	3.6 mm²	7.9 mm²	+4.3 mm²
Modem	14.7 mm²		-14.7 mm²
Sum			+14.5 mm²

X Elite is 35 mm² bigger than 8 Gen 3. But if we look at the above table (where I have measured all the major components), X Elite should only be 14.5 mm² larger than 8 Gen 3.

It is true that I didn't measure some minor components such as the USB controllers, PCIe PHYs etc.... I'd guess those are about 10 mm² worth of silicon.

So X Elite is 35 mm² larger than 8 Gen 3. 25 mm² (14.5 + 10) of that is accounted for by the components. Where is the rest of the 10 mm²? Dead/Empty silicon?

Magio · Friday at 2:34 PM

MS_AT said:
Then they could have waited a year to make better impression given the marketing hype that was taking place before the release.

I actually think getting X Elite Gen 1 out the door as soon as possible was a good idea regardless of whether it made for a compelling device for the average user at that point or now. For one because Oryon had already been pushed back a few times so it was high time to deliver something, anything, that features it but also because the sooner the process of getting the Windows on ARM ecosystem starts, the better for all current and future ARM SoCs aimed at that market.

Can you imagine if they held their cards close to their chest until they had a super winner, a chip which goes toe to toe with or even outperforms M5... Only for it to be hampered by a still not ready OS with significant growing pains that put off users.

Now, they have one year and a lot of devices out in the wild to work out the kinks and get Windows on ARM in better shape so that if X Elite Gen 2 is a genuine winner there won't be anything holding it back. Hey, if we're lucky maybe they'll even use that year to make the situation less of a shitshow on the Linux side as well !

MS_AT · Friday at 3:17 PM

Magio said:
I actually think getting X Elite Gen 1 out the door as soon as possible was a good idea regardless of whether it made for a compelling device for the average user at that point or now. For one because Oryon had already been pushed back a few times so it was high time to deliver something, anything, that features it but also because the sooner the process of getting the Windows on ARM ecosystem starts, the better for all current and future ARM SoCs aimed at that market.

Can you imagine if they held their cards close to their chest until they had a super winner, a chip which goes toe to toe with or even outperforms M5... Only for it to be hampered by a still not ready OS with significant growing pains that put off users.

Now, they have one year and a lot of devices out in the wild to work out the kinks and get Windows on ARM in better shape so that if X Elite Gen 2 is a genuine winner there won't be anything holding it back. Hey, if we're lucky maybe they'll even use that year to make the situation less of a shitshow on the Linux side as well !

Pushing devices out does not equal hyping them as premium Apple M3 competitors. They could have started targeting <1000$ devices, marketing them as ideal all day long laptops for browsing and basic needs. They could have made the devkits available sooner at reasonable price, using Plus SKUs. And process of WoA transformation is ongoing for 7 years already, when partnership between Qualcomm and M$ was announced. First Snapdragon 8cx released in 2019 and was year behind the mobile SoC when it comes to technology used iirc. Then we had 8cx Gen2 and Gen3 which were also priced as if they were Apple M chips reincarnated, instead of making them budget devices to get devs on board. Truth be told, after 5 years with devices on the market, there should be no software kinks. And yet Chrome released ARM native build days before X Elite was released if I am not mistaken, so great was Qualcomm success until this far.

Oh, also doesn't 8 Elite have better GPU than X Elite SKUs? Once again laptops get what looks like inferior cheap...

Don't get me wrong, I really wanted them to succeed, but I see 0 reasons to buy X Elite, and while I am eyeing 8 Elite phone the current reviews are somewhat cooling down my optimism.

Hamoa SKUs	Boost clock	Base clock
X1E-00-1DE	4.3 GHz	3.8 GHz
X1E-84-100	4.2 GHz	3.8 GHz
X1E-80-100	4.0 GHz	3.4 GHz
X1E-78-100	-	3.4 GHz
X1P-66-100	4.0 GHz	3.4 GHz
X1P-64-100	-	3.4 GHz

Discussion Qualcomm Snapdragon Thread

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