Qualcomm CEO confirms Snapdragon desktops are planned

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Cheap ARM desktop PCs for business makes sense. A significant number of users in businesses only use Microsoft Office software and browser based software. I could see cheap, fast and quite systems for these applications being a good fit.

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conquer69@reddit

But that's something x86 mini pcs already do. The only tangible advantage qualcomm has is battery life which they can't leverage with the desktop market.

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DerpSenpai@reddit

A QC chip costs half of Meteor Lake chips while having much higher CPU performance. Low End x86 does the job but ARM will do it just much better

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

It doesn't matter what the chip costs, because end users aren't buying chips. They are buying desktops.

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DerpSenpai@reddit

cheaper chips, cheper end products

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Given than the Elite X laptops seem to be the same price as x86, the chips don't seem to be cheaper then.

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DerpSenpai@reddit

Dell Mega leaks showed that X Elite is 50% the price of an Intel chip. If they are priced the same it's the OEM pocketing the difference

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a60v@reddit

I think that the argument would be that businesses that need both laptops and desktops running Windows can support both with a single architecture (ARM) and not have to maintain Windows on multiple architectures. I could see this working if battery life on laptops is particularly important to that business and if they have no need for powerful desktops. It wouldn't give a cost or performance advantage over Intel/AMD, but it would make a complete transition to ARM possible.

No business will want to support Windows on two or more architectures, and a laptop-only architecture would be DOA as a result.

That said, I fully expect these to be severely crippled as desktops, with soldered RAM, no PCIe, no discrete GPU, etc., so this may not work out as well as Qualcomm hopes.

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Vb_33@reddit

Power consumption over volume could save businesses money.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Power consumption of QC is on the same ballpark as current Intel/AMD/Apple SKUs for that segment.

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StarbeamII@reddit

Every place I've worked at had people set their computers to never sleep and to never turn the display off. If they cared they would mandate sleep.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Every place i worked at had group policy forced sleep after X amount of time.

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Quatro_Leches@reddit

these qualcomm chips dont really use any less power plugged in, infact amd's chips are more efficient.

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hackenclaw@reddit

May be it would make sense if they make cheap USB-computer-sticks.

If I can plug a cheap-usb stick and make that monitor a desktop computer, then we are talking.

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conquer69@reddit

I mean, isn't that phone territory? AMD mini pcs are pretty small, cheap and quite capable. I don't see qualcomm selling these in the $200-300 range which AMD and Intel dominate right now.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Since Qualcomm doesn't sell consumer products directly, most of the blurbs by their CEO are either for the OEMs or mainly shareholders.

The why is that Qualcomm is about to lose their iPhone modem contract in the near future, because it seems Apple is having success bringing up their own 5G IP. Losing that revenue is not the end of the world for Qualcomm, but it is enough for investors to get worried (Because some investors tend to overestimate the Apple effect).

So Qualcomm for the past couple years, especially, has tried to make as much noise as possible in order to let investors know they are diversifying away from Apple revenue streams. This is where WoA and/or auto come into play.

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pianobench007@reddit

They are at smartphone saturation. Both Apple and Qualcomm and Samsung plus MediaTek are nearly saturated. Apple have their own and so do Samsung. Despite what many Samsung users attest to (Snapdragon better than Samsung Exynos) the results are clear. Exynos gets better and better each year. So the differences between Snapdragon versus Exynos is getting smaller and smaller.

MediaTek has a much closer alignment with Asia phone brands and they have a competitive product versus Snapdragon. But Snapdragon has a much larger marketshare in mobile phones in the America/western markets.

All to say they need to expand or die. Android tablets aren't a major mover compared to iPad.

So the only logical step is to invade the 240 to 280 million device sale per year. That market is the PC market. Mobile phone market is around 1.3 billion a year in sales.

Intel is hoping to win sales in that market and Qualcomm is looking to eat away at X86 market.

If qualcomm does not, Apple Silicon will eat Qualcomm. Apple has mobile and a monopoly on the type of chips it uses in its own products. So qualcomm has no choice but to enter the messy PC world.

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Intelligent-Gift4519@reddit

I get why PCs, but I don't get why desktops. Snapdragon's advantages are good capability at long battery life. I have a SL7 and love it. It's really great!

But desktops ... they draw hundreds of watts of power, use socketed CPUs, slots for RAM sticks, third party motherboards, discrete GPUs, size doesn't really matter ... it would be just a completely different way of doing business than Qualcomm is doing even with laptops. I just don't get "why Snapdragon" in a desktop as opposed to a laptop.

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pianobench007@reddit

Then you don't get why.

The market is just PC and Mobile that is larger than 100 million in sale a year.

If you goto console or other devices those are like 30 million to 50 million in sales a year.

The PC market is 280 million but it is dwarfed by mobile.

PC and MC are nearly identical to the end user. I'll rephrase this. Personal computing and mobile computing are essentially the same to the end user consumer. I bank on my desktop, send some money and then I do the exact same thing on my mobile phone. Pay my CC bill at lunch.

When the PC and MC are the same/similar, guess what you can change the MC a little bit and now it's a PC. DEX is a thing on Samsung ecosystem. Rosetta for Apple. To convert x86 apps to Apple silicon. Why go through all that trouble?

They want to grow and when they made a new market, they changed the terms of agreement. We used to be able to download software for free. But the cloud means we use someone else's computer to download.

Now Google and Apple charge a 30% fee on each paid thing. No matter download or not. They are gatekeeping.

A new market allows for new rules. Boil it down. Money.

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ntwrkmntr@reddit

No thanks, I want PCs with upgradable ram and storage.

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DerpSenpai@reddit

you can upgrade RAM and Storage on X Elite motherboards. they just need to support LPCAMM and no laptop with the X Elite has soldered storage

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

You can't upgrade RAM on X Elite.

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DerpSenpai@reddit

you can with LPCAMM, Lunar Lake is the one where you can't

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Which Elite X system supports LPCAMM?

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

Galaxy Book 4 Edge: exists

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DarkGhostHunter@reddit

(The CEO corrected himself and said “mini desktops”)

I really think they will have to come with a very value proposition to break even. You can’t charge Mac Mini price whatever the specs, and you have the saturated MiniPC market from reputable and not-so-reputable brands but with an x86 chip.

You will be either buying cheap stuff or a Mac Mini, not an ARM Windows PC that does the same than an iPad… unless the value proposition is really, really good.

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fresh-beginnings@reddit

You're right.

There is a place for their products in the market but potentially not one that makes sense financially. They've positioned the laptops as premium products but they fall short of Apple Silicon competition unless you need Windows.

Frankly I'm annoyed they're making mini desktops for consumers and not even motherboards with a BGA chip. Not even as like a devkit.

You're not disrupting Macs, you're not disrupting Intel Celeron or other low power chips, and you're certainly not disrupting the low-cost miniPCs using those chips.

You're establishing the market. You cannot expect them to run away with things from day one.

But it's hard to establish a market when you have no good value proposition.

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DarkGhostHunter@reddit

Same with Qualcomm laptops. “Why I should buy one of these, when an iPad Air + Keyboard costs less and does the same?”. Plus, HX 370 is the champion now.

I can bet their second generation is going to be better overall, but hindered by the weird hardware and compatibility issues.

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WearHeadphonesPlease@reddit

Plus, HX 370 is the champion now.

Tell me you haven't used a Snapdragon laptop without telling me you haven't used a Snapdragon laptop.

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Exist50@reddit

Why I should buy one of these, when an iPad Air + Keyboard costs less and does the same?

Because an iPad makes for a poor laptop. And if you think Windows ARM is crippled, iPad OS is arguably worse.

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DarkGhostHunter@reddit

Guess you haven't used an iPad to say that.

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Exist50@reddit

I have an iPad Pro. Lack of decent file management alone makes it useless to me as a laptop replacement.

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reddit_equals_censor@reddit

how do you use a device like that without decent file management at all?

how do you move your pictures into a different folder easily with bookmarks for folders, etc...

how do you change configs for programs or the os?

does crapple even let you have root access to "your" device somehow to access those files?

it just sounds insane to me to sell a 2000 euro + device without decent file management

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Exist50@reddit

I got it primarily for note taking and content consumption. Does that reasonably well, but a Macbook it is not.

how do you move your pictures into a different folder easily with bookmarks for folders, etc...

They did eventually add a Files app, but moving stuff around is very awkward, often requiring use of the share menu.

how do you change configs for programs or the os?

You don't, basically.

does crapple even let you have root access to "your" device somehow to access those files?

Nope.

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gunfell@reddit

i am sorry but no

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fresh-beginnings@reddit

M1 or M2 Macbook Air instead then

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DerpSenpai@reddit

arguably? People are overestimating how bad compability is here. Qualcomm running emulated apps still has Tiger Lake performance

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

So far Qualcomm has failed at providing a good value proposition on the laptop side of things, where it was an easier ask (given the power constraints of those platforms).

I am not hopeful that Qualcomm is getting their compute act together on the desktop either.

Unless they are remarkably cheaper. I don't know what the actual story of Windows on Arm really is, as it doesn't seem to offer anything better than the Intel/AMD skus.

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reddit_equals_censor@reddit

while i don't like that shit, they could sell mini desktops with soldered in memory (horrible and insulting) and soldered in cpus (unacceptable) for extremely cheap.

no keyboard, no screen? cheap apus? cheap memory...

so a dystopian nightmare value can be had with decent profits still.

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DarkGhostHunter@reddit

You may don't like it, but the Macbook is testament of the market accepting soldered RAM & CPU & Storage and selling like hotcakes.

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dern_the_hermit@reddit

Aren't the new chips nice and efficient but not especially performant in the grand scheme of things? Sounds like their best feature would be mostly wasted on a desktop, mini or no.

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DerpSenpai@reddit

it's more performant than current Intel laptops on the market and way more efficient. It's just bad at gaming cause emulation and drivers. It's not made for gaming yet, but it's something QC will attack later down the line because it's part of their strategy

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dern_the_hermit@reddit

it's more performant than current Intel laptops (Meteor Lake) on the market and way more efficient. It's just bad at gaming cause emulation and drivers.

"It's more performant except where it's not" is kinda what I was getting at tho

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

They are really performant at running ARM versions of web browsers and Office.

As windows laptops they make great chromebooks.

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-WingsForLife-@reddit

Lunar Lake is kind of here and will probably be better while having none of the compatibilty issues. AMD's HX stuff is also incredible.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Yeah, Qualcomm clearly missed their window. At this point, it is hard to figure out what the value proposition of Elite X is. Pity, it would have been interesting what would have happened if it had been released when it was intended in the 2023 frame.

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FilteringAccount123@reddit

There's definitely a consumer/hobbyist market for desktop devices that prioritize efficiency (both energy and space) rather than pure performance. The problem is that the market is already saturated, particularly with the Intel Celeron/N-series processors.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

And the size of that market may not be large enough to recoup the investment in making these SKUs.

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DarkGhostHunter@reddit

Probably they will want to appear in more markets to appeal investors, and see what it sticks. What's better than throwing the chips to OEM so they make their own ARM desktop spins.

May be that's why they didn't do one for themselves in the first place.

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Nearby_Thought_2383@reddit

My friend's company is currently buying thinkpads to develop on-device AI applications. The NPU performance is really good. If they release 'mini-desktops' with x-plus 8 core which has the same NPU, this can be a good market.

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theQuandary@reddit

The big competition for me is going to be Strix Halo. In any case, Qualcomm needs to pair their SoC with something like a 7600m to compete with modern Intel/AMD designs because their current GPU is terrible.

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the_dude_that_faps@reddit

Strix Halo will not be an efficient part. This and that will not target the same market.

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theQuandary@reddit

The big competition for me is going to be Strix Halo.

Strix Halo will not be an efficient part. This and that will not target the same market.

Top-end TDP for X Elite is 80w which is certainly not too far from Strix Halo. CPU performance between the two should be similar as well. The big difference (and one that matters to me) is GPU performance in a tiny package.

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DerpSenpai@reddit

That's on the dev kit, no laptop has gone to 80W, they usually use the same power at the top end as other chips from Intel and AMD

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theQuandary@reddit

No laptop has gone to 80w because that doesn't make very much sense in a laptop. When you have more cooling capability and no battery, that 80w limit isn't such a big deal.

Strix Halo may be better at multicore (assuming those terrible latencies don't hit it too hard), but probably falls behind on the CPU side of things. X Elite with a 7700S is probably in the same gaming ballpark though as 7700S has 8 fewer CU, but will probably be able to clock higher.

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Jedibeeftrix@reddit

Will anyone want one?

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NerdProcrastinating@reddit

If the common Linux distributions install on it out of the box without mucking around, then it would definitely be interesting.

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Jedibeeftrix@reddit

i rather suspect that lots of software simply won't be there, not least of which is steam/heroic/bottles/proton support.

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mi7chy@reddit

Qualcomm had a window of opportunity to price it right to gain marketshare but it's pointless now with AMD and Intel options that are more cost effective and without compatibility issues.

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ClockworkBrained@reddit

I understand the ARM usefulness in power sensible situation, like portable devices or servers, but I don't in desktops or specially mini desktops (where there are low power x86-64 CPUs for cheap in the market to cover that need)

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a60v@reddit

It's not about power usage or heat, it is about compatibility with ARM laptops.

I have my doubts about the long-term viability of Windows-on-ARM, but they need a desktop implementation if they want anyone to buy the laptops. Their only selling point right now is battery life (which could also be improved by brute force, either with larger batteries or swappable batteries), and most people who really care about laptop battery life and aren't too worried about compatibility have already switched to Mac laptops, anyway.

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ClockworkBrained@reddit

they need a desktop implementation if they want anyone to buy the laptops

That's reasonable. Specially to developer who could want more 'muscle' than what they already have in laptops

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a60v@reddit

This, and it also makes it possible for a company to standardize on Windows-on-ARM for all Windows devices, rather than having to support it on multiple architectures. It would be a risky move, which is why I doubt that many organizations will make it, but it could be done, at least for companies that don't need high-powered desktops and discrete GPUs.

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lusuroculadestec@reddit

ARM scales fine for desktops and workstations. You can already buy an ARM workstation with up to 128-cores, 768GB RAM, 64x PCIe lanes, etc.

Nothing on a technical level prevents a company from having a socketed ARM desktop CPU with a standard-looking ATX motherboard, standard desktop RAM, PCIe add-in GPUs, etc.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

I mean, the lack of an actual socketed ARM desktop CPU seems to be a major technical hurdle ;-)

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trololololo2137@reddit

Depends on your definition of desktop, Ampere is selling socketed ARM chips https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/ampere-altra-max-windows-gpus-and-gaming

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Ohhhhh, that's neat! Thanks.

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

https://x.com/IanCutress/status/1831360001539252308

Ah, the Qualcomm CEO misspoke! It's actually "mini-desktops".

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masterfultechgeek@reddit

This would actually be the use case I'd want though.

There's minimal point in a full fledged desktop part for these

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lightmatter501@reddit

Mini pcs are one option, there’s a lot for companies that would like a decently powerful passively cooled system to use to drive conference rooms, media systems, etc.

The other question is how far up these scale. This is based on server processor tech, so it’s possible that if you pump more power into them they scale up well. 400 watt ARM server CPUs are absolute beasts for raw CPU performance just due to sheer core count, so I could see a 64 core desktop that uses 100W as a viable option.

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conquer69@reddit

You are aware there is a huge mini-pc market already right?

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masterfultechgeek@reddit

Yes. And these chips have low idle power draw, which is great for a lot of home-lab type tasks.

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nokeldin42@reddit

There is no official support for Linux yet. Unless you want a windows based homelab?

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pigeieio@reddit

Home server

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reps_up@reddit

mini-desktops

Even better.

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DerpSenpai@reddit

Honestly there's a lot of new market trends and one of them is Occulink. New Mini PCs are being released with it meaning you can buy a MiniPC and still have 80% of a full fledged tower performance

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gnocchicotti@reddit

When Intel said that Meteor Lake was coming to desktop later, they never bothered to correct themselves. Good guy Qualcomm I guess.

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-protonsandneutrons-@reddit

That's fair. I imagine similar to the elusive Qualcomm Dev Box. Perhaps ASUS with their NUC pedigree?

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RealisticMost@reddit

They can not ship a dev kit. Maybe fix that first.

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ActiveCommittee8202@reddit

Machines to run ARM64 Linux not copilot garbage.

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croutherian@reddit

Where are the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Android Tablets?

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tamudude@reddit

Imagine the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra dual booting Windows and Android on an SD X Elite. I would buy it in a heartbeat!!!

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

Now that actually sounds neat. I believe Lenovo or some OEM made such a device, but they actually put two different chips into the tablets (a Qualcomm one and a Snapdragon one).

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Snapdragon is Qualcomm.

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LeotardoDeCrapio@reddit

Too expensive. The Android tablet market is tiny still.

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Exist50@reddit

They have other chips for those.

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TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)

Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will make for a better Android tablet chip than the power guzzling X Elite.

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antifocus@reddit

At the lower end you have those Intel N100 and N305 mini PCs, up a price bracket you have AMD that's super competitive. It'll be interesting to see how Qualcomm will compete where the low idle power draw advantage is minimized

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AejiGamez@reddit

And its not gonna catch on i think. I think putting them on the desktop now is very risky. If the compatibility is bad, they will just end up like AMD GPUs and not sell due to bad rep no matter how good the product is

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ABotelho23@reddit

I couldn't care less until the lack of ACPI is addressed.

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gatorbater5@reddit

seems like lacking ACPI isn't really an issue on something like a minipc. or at least there are bigger concerns running these chips than that problem. what am i missing?

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ABotelho23@reddit

Without ACPI the boards in a mini PC have to be explicitly added into the Linux kernel as a tree as far as I know. It means you have no implicit support for a new mini PC even if all the components of the board are in the kernel. This is going backwards.

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MDSExpro@reddit

Yeah. Wake me up once I can dump Proxmox on it for some low power server.

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fresh-beginnings@reddit

This is why I love this sub.

There's definitely weird takes from time to time but as a computer janitor, I learn a lot.

I've already gotten suggestions to brushing up on a Unix.

Any recommendations about learning CPU architecture or anything related to your skillset would be appreciated.

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ABotelho23@reddit

I just read a lot. Probably an unhealthy amount. Any little tickle can quickly become a rabbit hole of obsession in a topic. I'm certainly not an expert in any sense. I got my degree and have been digging ever since. Always open to being corrected or learning more.

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