Qualcomm Allegedly Preparing a Rival to Apple M SoC, Codenamed Hamoa

[bug]

I just wanted to make the pun on "Snapdragon", in reality I don't want anything with an Arm CPU in it. If I can't run Visual Studio on it (and VS for Mac doesn't count, nor does VS Code) then I'm not interested.

So basically you have nothing against ARM, besides personal dislike. VS is C# and C++, both of which compile for ARM just fine. If ARM CPUs start making headroom in laptops or desktops, I'm sure MS will make VS available for that, too.

 

[watzupken]

Vertical monopolies are amazing arn't they?

Without apple's software support the M1 would suck hard. We saw it with non M1 optimized apps when it launched, anything apple didnt tweak performed very poorly. Which no duh, you can hyper optimize anything for a specific chip/arch and get better performance, see also how game consoles worked for over 20 years. Any PC based chip is going to be handicapped by needing to support a wide band of software, on a wide band of systems, with multiple manufacturers and an OS that was built around x86.

This is the benefit of x86, it is a very flexible arch, and the cthulu - tier labyrinth of instructions can support a lot of varied operations to overcome the lack of vertical integration in the PC space. ARM, not so much.

Apple's advantage has always been the software and hardware integration. Thus, the great success with the M1 chip. Even for unoptimized apps, emulation via Rosetta still delivers very good performance, considering the SOC are just sipping power, as compared to power hungry x86 chips.

So while I am interested to see what Qualcomm can deliver to compete with Apple's M class SOCs, I am not hopeful that they will perform well simply because Microsoft is going to be the bottleneck.

 

[Jermelescu]

Even if they make a SoC as good or even better than what Apple will have at that time, Microsoft has A LOT of work to do regarding OS efficiency and software optimization to take advantage of it.
For Apple it was fairly easy, since they control both hardware and software, but the fragmentation of how Windows runs is incredibly hard to manage/improve.
edit: Not saying it's impossible, but I'd be fairly surprised if they manage to offer a proper ARM version of Windows machines. I'd love to have an ARM Windows laptop on which I could do development without issues and with a long battery life, like them M1/M2 MacBooks.

 

[fibre]

The main pain point with these laptops is they are locked. I don't want to use Windows all the time (dualboot with Linux) and the requirement to use Microsoft Store is riddiculous. I rather buy x86 with proper BIOS and ability to run whatever I want.

 

[qoonik]

And to do what exactly ? Run Windows or android tablet on ARM ?

Apple succeed first and foremost because of their OS and APIs, the Unix kernels supported ARM since forever and it was easy for most pro apps to migrate to M1 (nodejs, java, visual studio code, docker etc.) and for those who did not/could not, Rosetta stone 2 is an amazing API tbh, have 0 issues on my professional macbook, I waited until the 14" released for the softwares to catch up and frankly never looked back. For productivity a macbook M1/M2 is really a solid choice.

Snapdragon Hamoa may be an interesting ARM SoC, it will be severely restricted by the OS layer

Microsoft is working on windows ARM version. As you know Microsoft created hardware ARM developer platform called Volterra.
It hopes more developer will test and create optimized software for ARM ....

There are also some dedicated android handheld devices for games like Razer Edge
And yes maybe Samsung will use this in tablets on Android ..

Not everybody have to use Apple products
Specially when Apple will cost you ridiculous prices for RAM/Storage upgrade

 

[Scrizz]

Not everybody have to use Apple products

sadly EVERYONE has to use Apple products

 

[AusWolf]

sadly EVERYONE has to use Apple products

Care to elaborate? I don't own a single thing from that company, with the exception of the Shazam app, which isn't Apple, but is owned by Apple Music.

 

[bug]

Care to elaborate? I don't own a single thing from that company, with the exception of the Shazam app, which isn't Apple, but is owned by Apple Music.

And you don't own it
But yeah, same here.

 

[sephiroth117]

Microsoft is working on windows ARM version. As you know Microsoft created hardware ARM developer platform called Volterra.
It hopes more developer will test and create optimized software for ARM ....

There are also some dedicated android handheld devices for games like Razer Edge
And yes maybe Samsung will use this in tablets on Android ..

Not everybody have to use Apple products
Specially when Apple will cost you ridiculous prices for RAM/Storage upgrade

When windows ARM application support will be on par with macOs + rosetta, and when Android will stop neglecting tablet support I may be interested, for now it's laughable with some major apps even having to run in portrait mode...

it's not really concrete for now, I hope it will of course, nothing worse than a monopoly.