Update October 17: Qualcomm has cancelled the Snapdragon Dev Kit. They're not going to support it any longer, have stopped production, and will be refunding all those who ordered on Arrow.com (maybe even me, even though I got one...). I have a blog post with the details here: www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/qualcomm-cancels-snapdragon-dev-kit-refunds-all-orders
I wonder if Microsoft already jumped off the arm windows bandwagon and that is why they cancel the dev kit. Lets see if Microsoft comes out with no arm support.
that's why I said it was a big red flag (search for my comment here). Total waste of time... that's why people buy Raspberry, it's cheap and they even tell you when they are going to stop manufacturing it... (2036 for the Raspberry pi 5*) *before 2036, we might see a Raspberry Pi 5 model B with some changes... like a refresh... and they will extend it's end-of-life.
@@tsalVlog I feel like Microsoft's problem is they never fully commit on any of their projects to weather the storm. It's always "Hmm, doesn't look like it's immediately profitable? Pivot!". So stuff either doesn't get the focus and funding required, or gets scrapped entirely.
@@Jmcinally94I feel like this is a common problem. The shareholders notice a slight drop in immediate profits and freak out even if future profits would potentially be good. CEOs need to do what the shareholders say so they don't get replaced. That's just my theory but the behaviour of many big companies seems to match.
To be fair, Microsoft did its share of squandering too. The absolute amateur state of the Recall feature for one. Some of the software support issues are also MS’s fault. But yeah, QC could have done more.
He may be an absolute ghoul, but Steve Balmer knows it's all about developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers,
Heh, the sad thing is that was back in the 240p days of the Internet, so we don't have the full glory of him in his sweaty shirt bouncing around on stage saying that for like 60 seconds!
@@msromike123 his mobile strategy was a complete failure from day 1 (not just Nokia and Windows Phone, but going back to Pocket PC), Microsoft could have won mobile and they have zero penetration there today because of him. I think that while Windows 8 was a failure, eventually they got there - Windows works quite well on desktop, laptop, and tablet today, they're the only folks to have figured it out - so that vision was a good one. He just really fumbled on mobile, and that was a $Trillions mistake.
Our winui3 app only using the official MS SDK compiled for arm64 approved on the ms store does not run on copilot+ pc but does run on normal windows arm and we d ont know why
Wow... what a big red flag for devs when: -The priority of a Windows dev kit is sending it way after the official product. -There is no "pro" license... just why? Even if a software or driver doesn't work, it should not matter... in the old days they would just send dev kits with everything enable and let you work your ass through stuff that everyone knew wasn't ready yet! -You cannot open it... again... why? whenever there is some problem, like for example the performance while doing something that would use a lot of performance, I would just remove the hardware and test it in another computer... I found many bad cables, MicroSD, connections, RAM and disks by doing this.... that's how you find bad stuff and report it. A dev kit, and taking in account that this is an Windows one, is a kit for people that are willing to work basically FOR FREE to improve your product so you let them do whatever they want with it... BIG loss for the ARM industry, I hope they change the way they are doing things... NOT going to buy the first gen, not worth my time. BTW, giving credit where credit is due, wise choice to add a 2.5 Gb Ethernet port and good cooling.
this is how embedded devboards work. Oh you so want to use our hardware to make your embedded device? time to SUFFER suc ker That's why everybody that could has migrated to Raspberry, because they don't seem to utterly despise their corporate customers
@@marcogenovesi8570Raspberry has the best documentation. It is not about performance, it is about having something that works well enough and that you can easily fix errors. It doesn't matter if any other board computer is cheaper for more or the same power. Raspberry Pi's are worth the price because of the documentation and support.
Though you don't need this for developing Arm64 Windows app. I've had my Samsung Book for years now, it has Arm and Windows and I can compile apps for it on my x64 PC and test them on real hardware. It isn't as powerful so something like game development might have been challenging, but not sure who would make a game for such a small market.
@@AllanSavolainen 100% true, because this device is not really a devkit, it's just a mini PC with ARM processor. So it does not really offer that much of a dev platform. The point of a devkit is to allow porting bigger applications, and it should have additional debugging hardware/software to aid in development. See for example the older console devkits.
@@modrribaz1691I guess because there are 3x USB 4 Ports, so that would add up to 45W so nearly the halft of 100W. But they weren't used so 100W is without using all 45W over the USB-Ports.
@@CameronVanNatta my assumption: because on the internet you can only do things wrong: Somehow some people get into really 'heated up' arguments 😉 about the right/wrong ways to apply thermal paste. Usually *their* way is the *correct* way of course. Instead of keeping it to themselves and being happy, they spam the comment section. Ooor maybe it's all just a little joke ;)
It seems truly bizarre that the cost(?) of not putting the most limited Windows edition on these would even be an point of discussion considering what this piece of hardware is supposed to be, not only for Qualcomm but for Microsoft as well.
It's thinking like the huge megalomaniac company of era X that thinks it cannot be beaten. I recall it being AT&T / Ma Bell at one point, DEC at a second, and IBM at a third. Time for the largest to fall, again.
Maybe the 'pro' features of Windows are broken on this platform? So they just removed them. Similar to removing the HDMI port even though the converter IC is still in the system.
how so? The driver is proprietary and the OS is also proprietary. Maybe Quacomm didn't want to pay the HDMI foundation racket, but that's a different thing
HDMI is meant to be used for playback of DRM content which is why they are so strict. What I don't understand if they had a display port to HDMI converter build it, why couldn't they just put a display port in there ? And instead ended up with USB-C. I guess they want to have HDMI for those who need to build and test some kind of DRM content stuff.
The fact that Qualcomm, the number 1 soc maker for Android, doesn't support Linux on their new SoC, is astounding. Mainline Linux already supports plenty of Qualcomm boards and Android kernel can be used to boot Linux pretty much as is with minimal config changes.
Not so much surprising, Android is actually dragging Qualcomm down, their software is tailored for it, so much that porting their drivers to Windows or even desktop Linux is problematic. And yeah, it's probably the same issue with Mediatek.
Android is not linux. It was a variation of Linux when it started sure but now the kernel is completely different to the point it's not even linux at this point 😂
I mean to be fair if I had a nickle for every out of tree kernel modules and patches typical Android phone comes with I wouldn't be living in my parents' basement
Booting Linux is already an absolute nightmare on ARM because of the scattered, disorganized mess that is booting on different ARM devices. The future of loading your own OS looks grim if ARM becomes a major PC chip
Not delivering is a stretch, but they promised too much compared to what we got. Still though, my surface laptop 7 somehow have way better software support than my mac, so I consider it an upgrade nonethless.
As a solely Linux user.. and a Mediatek fan (I like the bang for buck underdogs lol) .... I think Mediatek could do the funniest thing right here. Go all in on ARM Linux and drop their best SoCs for it. Remember Valve is even hinting at slowly but surely getting Steam OS to arm as well. You could be the first in the market that actually seems like it has life, rather than Qualcomm who have seemingly flubbed their chance at getting into an established market.
A Mediatek and Valve collaboration would be amazing and will line up with their recent experiments on ARM. It's frustrating to see companies still target Windows for ARM when it has always been a half-baked mess. If application support is already a problem then why not use Linux where it's objectively better?
Mediatek on Linux? And what kind of GPU are they going to include? Mali? PowerVR? According to MesaMatrix Vulkan drivers of those are in a tragic state. Maybe Broadcom, but it's still missing a couple extensions, making it limited to Vulkan 1.0. Bundle their own drivers as a binary blob? They'd be setting themselves up for failure without the weight that e.g. Nvidia has, to basically force distros to adapt to them. Realistically speaking, Qualcomm (despite the incompetence their representative has shown at this year's LPC, at the Android MC) and Apple (despite their complete lack of involvement) shape to be the better options for Linux on consumer-grade ARM hardware. For one: Apple actually ships quality hardware in high volumes and it's being worked on _a lot_ by Asahi, and Tuxedo plans to bring a Linux-first Qualcomm laptop to the market before the end of the year.
It seems like the ECB could be the Embedded Controller Board - this is a class of products that ITE does make (I posted this comment before with a link but it's not showing up, not sure if a moderation tool blocked it so trying again without the link). Embedded Controllers are essentially "BMC (Board Management Controller) but slightly less so" in that they're smaller and lower power than the BMCs used on servers, and typically don't have their own networking or graphics. They're responsible for power sequencing / power state management, fan management, UART breakout (for debugging), etc. Generally I would have expected this to be soldered to the mainboard, but if this was development hardware, maybe they wanted to validate different vendors (ITE, Nuvoton, Microchip, etc) and put it on an add-in card instead. BMCs being on add-in cards is also becoming more standard in the server space so maybe they were just taking a page from that.
That makes sense; I wonder why it is on the board where it is, though... maybe just convenience, but it's especially weird the connector's right next to the SIM card slot. Maybe they have a version that could be remotely managed over 4G/5G?
@@JeffGeerling I'm not the most up-to-date on laptop architectures but it's also possible that the SIM card just needs to go to the EC to begin with, even for normal operation. Given this is Qualcomm I'm assuming they'd have some variant with WWAN built into the core SoC, and wouldn't need an external modem (so it's not like the SIM card would be running to that other modem). Said core SoCs don't tend to have a lot of higher-voltage I/O (they're on more modern process nodes with lower voltages), so they tend to use the EC as an I/O expander, which could include the SIM card. ECs then generally have options to present peripherals memory-mapped to the core SoC over a bus called eSPI.
By the way, it's a known thing that including links in TH-cam comments will make them disappear rapidly. I presume it is to keep people from having easy exits from YT.
@@JeffGeerling Wouldn't the daughter card most likely be the "baseband processor"? Cell phones run multiple operating systems simultaneously and one of them handles all the communication to the cell towers. They are usually designed as "blackboxes" which one can communicate using Hayes-style AT commands.
@@BenInSeattle PERHAPS they could have just used the single ITE chip on the motherboard, for all system functionality, but that ITE chip has optional features to be tied in into a nearby microcontroller (clearly it is), which would be where they run all their custom proprietary crap. They would have put signed certs/keys & modem baseband stuff into this adjacent micro. Then encrypt the whole thing with more Qualcomm signed encryption keys, the whole thing is very black box-like, and Qualcomm is known for this.
“Mac Mini Killer” lol the EXTERNAL power supply alone is about the same size as a Mac Mini. Even if this thing had great performance (which it absolutely doesn’t) it still wouldn’t be a Mac Mini killer - it would just be a cool ARM mini PC.
I though the mac mini also had a rather large power brick? Either way though it could be the foil to the Mac mini for those that don't like Apple's software/hardware walled garden approach even with a big power brick - there isn't a total system volume including all external cables, powersupply and peripheral requirement, just a practical and similarly small desk footprint experience.
If they had spent a bit more engineering effort on it, they could have designed a better enclosure that dissipated the heat better so the fan didn't scream - and they could have put the power supply inside. But they didn't, and it's a hunk of e-waste as a result.
I genuinely planned on buying a snapdragon laptop to run Linux on. But that was back when we were told Linux support would be a thing Qualcomm was doing. Here we are months after launch and half the products don't work.
When it launched, I think Qualcomm said it would be at least another 6 months before everything is ready. There are already patches in the latest kernel releases, but also still issues and not everything works just yet.
I’ve been following the saga on Twitter and was super excited to see the video. Thanks for sharing your experience! I would LOVE an X elite laptop. I’m currently eyeing Asahi but haven’t pulled the trigger because of lack of support for all hardware
1:20 Obviously B. Microsoft is _notorious_ for their absolutely draconian launch requirements. Windows Phone flopped for similar reasons: $99/year (even if you didn't have plans to publish _any_ apps) + having to register each device with Microsoft + meeting minimum PC requirements just to use the emulator, which required bleeding edge hardware at the time. No one could afford it and library devs (i.e. NOT app devs) didn't want to go through the hassle and expense just so they could port their libraries to Windows Phone. The result? No apps in the Windows Phone app store and ultimately Microsoft cancelled the entire platform because they actively chose to ignore reality.
Windows Phone was a $30 flat fee by the time WP 7.5 was out. The emulator also did not require bleeding edge hardware. I wrote my first app with it when I was 16 on my dad's super old and out of date laptop.
@@GoogleDoesEvilI wrote my first text based adventure game in Quick Basic when i was 12 on "my" 486DX 66mhz that was bleeding edge. Also it was really easy to overclock it just by setting jumpers. Them Windows 95 came and i had to get a Voodoo video card, it worked in DOS games too.
Microsoft was throwing around tons of money at established developers to do Windows Phone versions of their apps, and even provided contract developers to do the initial porting work. The problem was more that users never showed up after the initial app releases. Over time the Windows Phone versions stagnated as devs focused on adding new features/updates to the platforms that actually brought in revenue.
So submitting to the Apple AppStore is free now? Good to know... I also developed professionally for Windows Phone and there was *no* fees, *no* registration, nothing - I could develop on a mediocre PC and ship directly to B2B customers without any store requirements or device registrations. I honestly have no idea what the complaint is.
I have the lenovo yoga sli snapdragon with 32gb. The programs I need have been ported to arm. I use it for video and photo editing and it works fine. Im not doing Hollywood level production interms of size and effects but it has replaced my lenovo I7 quite well. I purchased it because it was light, small and powerful for my needs, because I work on the road. Im sure it will get better. For higher level work I have a powerful desktop for projects I get when Im home. But I hope that the developers get more programs working especially games.'
You said the quiet part out loud, and the thing I was pining for hard before giving up and investing in modern Intel with P and E cores for my homelab expansion. ARM systems that bridge the gulf between massive Ampere monsters and SBC computers would be a massive shift towards viability for ARM as a competing platform to X86 for everyone, including Windows ARM for personal computing IMO. It really makes me curious where the breakdowns are in managing this project on the whole.
If you want Snapdragon X for Linux: Tuxedo is making a Snapdragon X laptop that is Linux first. I assume they are mostly waiting for software to get finished at this point.
I love the pixelation during the thermal paste application. Better to do that than have the comments flooded with the skreeching about how you're doing it "wrong". Also, it was a little creepy when you mentioned Asahi Linux just as I was loading their Github page.
Thee instructions said in no uncertain terms that you are not to open it, and as a natural reaction, Jeff opens it immediately without even turning the thing on first. I appreciate his dedication to the EEVBlog way.
Qualcomm should have shipped a cheaper 16 gig of RAM configuration of this, Polish this up and have a vendor sell it as a Mac mini competitor. With the current mini being M2 they could have had a brief window to launch this with 16 gigs of RAM while being cheaper and faster than the current m2. Of course this will change soon but I still think it would have been a compelling mini computer.
Hey, you finally got it! Glad you didn't have to borrow my laptop! I'm also trying to sell that laptop - trying to live every day with ARM is *not* my cup of tea, I just got a normal x86 laptop to replace it.
This DevKit debacle aside, I'm actually having a good experience running Windows on ARM (SL7, 15"). Battery lasts for ages and i only use one x86 app. I hope both Qualcomm and Microsoft stay the course on this.
If they do, especially if Microsoft keeps investing heavily, I think it could be viable in a year or two for more people - need to get more apps arm-native!
I love the form factor of mini-pc's like this. I'd love a mini-pc that has a VESA mount so you can mount one behind a monitor for like a computer lab or something. 2:48 Thanks for the segue back to Jeff, Linus. ;) :P (Nice edit :P)
(a) The magnuson-moss act says they can't void the warranty. (b) The FCC doesn't "license for resale", they certified devices as legal for import and sale. The fact that you bought it means you can sell it. (legally: first sale doctrine.) The license for any software on it may not be transferable, but that's debatable. (The lack of FCC, UL, CE, etc. certifications could mean the thing isn't even legal at all, but that's a question for Customs.)
And more importantly, _supported_. I wouldn't buy a laptop with Snapdragon X until Qualcomm actually gets behind Linux running on it... don't want to have a hackintosh-like maintenance burden for my daily driver!
@@JeffGeerling While I agree that would be good company support isn't required for a good experience - history suggests if the community is behind it sufficiently it will just work well enough to be useable, but probably a little lacking in performance by comparison. Though to get that community love this time around I think this thing would need to be way more energy efficient, performant or perhaps more compact with the 5g modem maybe even on the same silicon for the ultimately compact but desktop flexible computing device or something. Just something to make it actually worth putting in the effort.
Device Trees are a non-starter. ACPI and UEFI have problems but you cannot treat a laptop like a phone. It would need SystemReady LS certification ideally. With Device Trees, every single laptop would need its own, like phones. That will not fly if Microsoft has anything to do with it.
It's a shame, for a moment there it seemed like ARM will finally bring a change in Windows world, but soon after release it went completely silent. I actually forgot about it until I saw this video.
1:18 that was not what happened initially (iirc). Apple tried to shaft the developers by offering them just 200 dollars in store credit upon returning their DTK and a 4 month expiry for it. It was after quite a bit of backlash from the devs that they agreed to increase the compensation to 500 dollars and the expiry to 2021.
I was excited about this chip. This is a mess. I hope the situation can improve. I was excited about Windows on ARM, but I also want a good Linux on ARM option. Thanks for covering this.
I went with Surface Laptop 7 and maxed out the memory and did the 1 TB storage option. As for power it's a tiny power brick but I power though the Thunderbolt 4 dock with two external mointors. Also when running on battery I can get days out of a full charge unlike my work laptop where running on battery barely gets though 5 hours. As much as Jeff hates Windows and Microsoft the release products are solid. I have WSL loaded along with my native development tools. Best laptop I have owned.
Very subtle Action Retro shoutouts. I've been waiting on support for Linux on these ARM processors. It'll be interesting getting my third ARM desktop. The originals dating back to the late 80s.
Been running a surface laptop 7 with Snapdragon for about a month now and it's been a breeze so far. I expected it to be way more buggy because of the mixed reviews but I'm really impressed. Performance is awesome, battery is wonderful it's only missing Linux support.
If I were running Qualcomm, I would be throwing everything I could at this, including making it as easy as possible for porting of windows applications/drivers and offering MS free dev resource to ensure Windows for Arm is a well-polished. After all, if this were done right, it could well hand Qualcomm the Windows laptop market and push out x86! It makes me wonder how much of this who fiasco is Qualcomm being messed around by MS.....
the ECB likely stands for Embedded Controller (EC) board. And due to the ITE chip and its functions, controls all the low level system pin control, voltage, fans, keyboard, LEDS, and sensor management. And its all tied in to a second microcontroller running proprietary code. This is the single point of control over the motherboard, sort of like a low level management engine. protected by encrypted qualcomm keys. a lot of computers do this but we need to know about it.
Qualcomm and Microsoft are missing the point, they are trying to be Apple instead of being a world leader and making this affordable for the masses, that's where the big bugs are. Unfortunately most people will still buy intel at a much better price point.
Great video Jeff. Windows ARM has forced Intel to finally make an efficient x86 chip. This will kill Snapdragon and windows on ARM instantly, because it’s good enough and everything works. Devs won’t invest time in porting until there is a big market, and the market won’t buy ARM boxes until the native software is available. Sad, but they can’t drive the transition the way Apple could.
U nailed the main reasons why X-Elite/Plus failed to capture projected market share and much needed interest of the classic x86 PC users. Once again M$ & Qualcomm didn't get what is necessary and mandatory for the smooth CPU architecture transition even after Apple showed and pawed the way years ago with the M1. It's simply unacceptable that these HUGE tech giants cannot execute something so important - especially after 2 failed attempts of the previous Arm based chips for Windows. Honestly, after seeing their incompetence I give even more thumbs up to Apple for doing it right, enjoying their leading position and all the benefits which come with it. Qualcomm and M$ even got ex Apple engineers from Nuvia to help them to nail it (what else u can ask for?!) and they screwed it anyway... what a losers! What could be a true market disruptor ended up as another industry failure, what a shame! And don't even get me started about Linux. Qualcomm deserves a slap on their over confident face starting with their CEO about not targeting Linux which Apple is officially staying away from (being closed source), but at least there's reverse engineered Asahi Linux! X-Elite/Plus has nothing so far from the Linux community and Linux devs r not that exciting about it as they were once with Apple's M1 transition. Overall, both Qualcomm with M$ have proved once again their execution together as partners is trash! They should either give to somebody who can do it right or drop it completely or "RECALL" it indefinitely. Not even advanced Copilot Azure A.I. can help M$ to change Windows to what it should be and even if it will, they most likely won't execute correctly ending up as slow, bloated "Swiss knife" which will never catch up with Apple. M$ is so much deep in their enterprise Azure cloud + A.I. datacenter "sweet hole", they forgot about PC Windows users and what they were always asking for. On the other hand, only if Apple could open their closed doors more towards Linux and beside that also by making their iPads more like a real MacOS computers, than just a kids toys.
8:38 "no hyper-v support" doesn't mean hyper-v doesn't work because there's a way to make WSL2 work on windows 11 home and WSL2 hard depends on hyper-v, it just means that the *user settings* for hyper-v are deleted and locked down with no way to change them outside of installing and uninstalling WSL2 and that's it, which severely restricts what you can do with WSL2 and prevents tweaking WSL2's low-level settings. windows is full of dark patterns like this where it supports linux apps, but only kicking and screaming and shanking everyone every step of the way.
12:41 Microsoft will go hard on supporting ARM soon, but only once Microsoft has an actually bad quarterly profit report.. which might be a bit of a wait... I thought everyone knew that.
I recognize this behavior from Qualcomm when they bought the CSR series of Bluetooth chips, they immediately locked all development software behind layers of company registration.
Thanks for the video. I was looking at buying a new laptop a couple of months ago. At about the same time the copilot arm laptops launched I found the base model M3 MBA on sale for $850 and picked one up. MS isn't providing a decent x86 to arm translation layer to make it worth the risk of buying a Windows on arm computer.
Dear Jeff, would you be so kind and spin Ollama on it and test tokens per second with some new models? Like llama 3.1, llama 3.2. Also, if you could show the impact on gpu and tpu and memory usage.
No surprise sales are short of expectations. Instead of providing developers with necessary tools months ahead of release Qualcomm decided it was better to pour some money into extra marketing campaigns. What's the point of it if the most common software does not work? I really wish we had good Windows ARM PCs, but I highly doubt it is feasible in the next few years EDIT: Fixed some typos
Seems like anyone who was serious about developing for these chips probably already went out and bought a machine that had the chip in it. Definitely a dropped ball.
Ooh, spicy Jeff, I like it. I really want these things to be good, entirely for power efficiency (the rest of copilotshit can do one until there's something useful there), but Qualcomm and Microsoft are doing a really good job of ruining everything.
Thank you for convincing me not to buy this, at least yet. Windows 11 Home was the deal breaker for me. I have been happy with my Volterra, although I mostly use it for Microsoft Word, via Remote Desktop on my M3 MacBook Pro. Sadly, Word does not run as well on Mac OS. Amazingly, Steam runs my old games really well on the Volterra, where Steam on Mac OS will not.
It's very frustrating how Qualcomm is messing up ARM on Windows AGAIN. Like have they seriously not learned anything? Are we just throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks I mean what good is a copilot or arm pc in 2024? Theres literally no reason to buy one especially over the new Intel Lunar Lake and AMD APUs. The saving grace of these might be Steams Proton if they actually are making ARM games compatible with x86 as rumors suggest.
Guaranteed all the delays are because of both software and hardware licensing issues. Software because of implementing very new libraries and hardware because of inexperience building an entire system as SDK platform. That's why you partner with a hardware partner Snapdragon. They have systems and people in place that already know how to deal with it. You shouldn't take your foray into selling complete systems with a product you're trying to rush. Especially if that's an SDK you could have released as a module months ago and you entire business process relies on.
Plus side they absolutely fixed the overheating problem my 2023 dev kit has. Run the CPU and GPU hard at the same time and it'll just crash. It should at least work for games, although performance will be really weird and it's not much less power hungry than my x86 desktop.
Interesting video. To think this is almost the same spec as Tesla Hardware 3 for Full self driving. Does that mean this is powerful to be able to do that, or scary that driving is being done on such a low power system. Hmmm
It's quite maddening that out of the box it does not have an open UEFI and the acpi support that it should have. The challenge is still that when you speak to Qualcomm server folks, they are all in, but on the consumer / workstation they are not motivated. And, some of the best and brightest UEFI/ACPI OSS devs now work for qualcomm.
I feel like this was a little overblown. I haven’t had many of these issues on my slim by 7x (it’s cool, quiet, efficient, powerful for its form factor), and I’m not sure this dev kit is comparable to the apple ARM transition devkit. Windows ARM devices have been around for years, including from Qualcomm. There’s nothing too unique about these chips that you need a dev platform just for them. They definitely squandered the launch of this dev kit, no words there, but it’s not as dire as it seems.
oh really? what software did you run on that ARM device? Because most games don't run. A lot of productivity software and VPN clients are only for x86 still. If all you need is a browser and Office you are probably fine on ARM
@@marcogenovesi8570 not really the part I'm disputing, but a surprisingly high amount of x86 software just works out of the box. I didn't even realize some of the apps I was running were x86. It's basically as good as Rosetta 2 was on the Mac. Most people aren't playing video games locally on sub 3 pound laptops, so I can't see it being an issue for most people. I do light web dev stuff and spend a lot of time ssh'd into a remote Linux box, using WSL on Ubuntu, using containers, etc. not perfect but no chip transition ever was going to be. I'm mainly quibbling with the overhyping of the importance and significance of this dev kit and treating it as reflective of the snapdragon X devices out there. It's just not. Aside from being a completely different form factor, it just seems rushed and unoptimized in a way that doesn't hold true for the Qualcomm laptops out there. The fan noise was the strongest one for me--i didn't even remember I had a fan until doing a firmware flash. There's a lot of good here, and afaict they're all getting fairly good customer reviews from normal folks.
It's an initial release of a new architecture and platform. Give them time to get their things together. Such a release is much harder for Qualcomm than it was for Apple, because: 1) unlike Apple, Qualcomm doesn't control the software stack, 2) Qualcomm isn't in the business of building end-user products, 3) due to all legal stuff that has been going on before the release, the current chip is probably at least a year old design which reflects in performance, however taking the delay into consideration, the performance of this chip is actually really good.
Literally a few days ago I wrote post on Reddit r/SBCs saying I was looking for something right inbetween the RK3588 and Ampere. The fact you almost ended up saying what I wrote had me wheezing. But it's so true. At some point, you want to grow beyond an SBC - but Ampere is gonna eat your wallet whole! So right now, there is this big hollow spot in the gap between 300 - 800 market - i'd guess. Sure, there are outliers, but you get the point o.o Bah, can't Ampere just make a 16core, sell it for 500 and call it a day? x.x
Exactly! I've been asking Ampere to make a desktop/small workstation form factor thing, so far they focus on servers + higher-end workstations. But at least their 32-core CPUs are coming more available now... after years on the market :(
Hi Jeff, I noticed you are doing power monitoring with HA and captioned for the test you were using a 3rdReality plug to do it. Is that how all of the other devices at 9:31 are power monitored? Love the videos and hope the new nipper and wife are doing well.
Yes! I have 12 of those Thirdreality plugs around the studio, monitoring devices I want to get a good idea of over time (or just a few devices I want remote on/off capability for).
Great video and thank you for all the effort. How hard would it be for RaspberryPI to release a Mac mini type device based on the compute module 5. Doesn't seem like that far a leap from where they are now. Yes, performance won't be mind blowing, but RPi5 is not too bad if you have NVMe storage and a proper graphics card with that supports acceleration in Linux.
I think a couple 3rd party companies will build some decent mini PCs with the CM5 once it's here. Would love to see Raspberry Pi at least build it into a Pi 500 at some point!
Windows on ARM is a BIG disappointment. I had so many hopes after the announcement of the X ELite chips. I also thought Microsoft and Qualcomm would really move forward and constantly deliver new updates to improve performance. Wrong! Even after 3 months, I still had the same problems as at the beginning. In the end, I sold my Surface Laptop 7 with X Elite and ordered a notebook with Intel LunarLake.
"Running ECB" is likely the "embedded controller" board, not sure why it's on a daughterboard though? ECs are used in laptops and desktops to run LEDs, fans and other basic system functions. (backlights, power LEDs, RGB nonsense, etc.)
I bought a snapdragon x elite laptop and was able to fresh install windows! I had to split the image so it fits in a FAT32 drive. I made a little program for it.
Individuals can sell this without problems, the FCC thing only limits companies. And the fan really isn't issue as this isn't a enduser product but devkit where they just put some random radial fan that is powerful enough to keep 100W cool. I am sure there will be mods with more silent cooling options, wouldn't mind this as my next Linux box if it works.
I agree, the whole Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows 2024 / Co-Pilot PC launch was very poorly managed by Qualcomm and Microsoft. I gave up trying to purchase this dev kit as Arrow makes it impossible to order it in the UK unless you are a VAT registered business. I will use the money I saved to purchase a M4 Mac Mini instead! I like Windows 11 arm and had a lot of using it on my Windows Dev Kit 2023. The Snapdragon X family of processors are a significant improvement over the 8cx Gen3 / SQ3 processor in the Windows Dev Kit, but there are too many X Elite and X Plus skus, making it very confusing for the consumer. Coupled with the lack lustre GPU performance, this still isn't a great advert for Windows 11 arm. All X Elite skus should have come with the 4.6 TFLOPs GPU and the X Plus with the 3.8 TFLOPs GPU. There is only one commercial Snapdragon X Elite laptop with the top tier X Elite sku and 4.6 TFLOPs GPU and that's the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge 16-inch 1 TB model. Why no Microsoft Surface devices with this top end sku?
Update October 17: Qualcomm has cancelled the Snapdragon Dev Kit.
They're not going to support it any longer, have stopped production, and will be refunding all those who ordered on Arrow.com (maybe even me, even though I got one...).
I have a blog post with the details here: www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/qualcomm-cancels-snapdragon-dev-kit-refunds-all-orders
Will you keep it even if it's DOA
I wonder if Microsoft already jumped off the arm windows bandwagon and that is why they cancel the dev kit. Lets see if Microsoft comes out with no arm support.
@@AndrewTSqscary, sad, but likely.
that's why I said it was a big red flag (search for my comment here).
Total waste of time... that's why people buy Raspberry, it's cheap and they even tell you when they are going to stop manufacturing it... (2036 for the Raspberry pi 5*)
*before 2036, we might see a Raspberry Pi 5 model B with some changes... like a refresh... and they will extend it's end-of-life.
@@burhanbudak6041 Yeah; it'll be an interesting part of the history of the Microsoft/Qualcomm relationship.
Microsoft gave Qualcomm a several month head start with the Copilot+ PCs, and they squandered it. What a shame.
Apple still makes a better ARM product, and will continue do so until MS gets serious about supporting SoCs.
@@tsalVlog I feel like Microsoft's problem is they never fully commit on any of their projects to weather the storm. It's always "Hmm, doesn't look like it's immediately profitable? Pivot!". So stuff either doesn't get the focus and funding required, or gets scrapped entirely.
@@Jmcinally94I feel like this is a common problem. The shareholders notice a slight drop in immediate profits and freak out even if future profits would potentially be good.
CEOs need to do what the shareholders say so they don't get replaced.
That's just my theory but the behaviour of many big companies seems to match.
@@ThePiprian That's why an overhaul on shareholder regulations (or rather the *lack* thereof) is much needed.
To be fair, Microsoft did its share of squandering too. The absolute amateur state of the Recall feature for one. Some of the software support issues are also MS’s fault. But yeah, QC could have done more.
I love how Linus did a segue to Jeff. nice touch
I love men
This is who I am
@@BBWahoo so? i love pizza
but you don't see me be weird about it
@@BBWahoo Me too, but wtf does that got to do with this review of the Qualcomm devkit?
For once a actually usefull segue
@@azexy21
Pizza as in CP?
BRUH 💀💀
He may be an absolute ghoul, but Steve Balmer knows it's all about developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers,
Nah, he is not a ghoul, lol. Other than the Nokia thing, he did pretty damn well at Microsoft.
Heh, the sad thing is that was back in the 240p days of the Internet, so we don't have the full glory of him in his sweaty shirt bouncing around on stage saying that for like 60 seconds!
@@msromike123 (laughing in WIndows 8)
@@msromike123 his mobile strategy was a complete failure from day 1 (not just Nokia and Windows Phone, but going back to Pocket PC), Microsoft could have won mobile and they have zero penetration there today because of him. I think that while Windows 8 was a failure, eventually they got there - Windows works quite well on desktop, laptop, and tablet today, they're the only folks to have figured it out - so that vision was a good one. He just really fumbled on mobile, and that was a $Trillions mistake.
Our winui3 app only using the official MS SDK compiled for arm64 approved on the ms store does not run on copilot+ pc but does run on normal windows arm and we d ont know why
Thanks for the shoutout. I’m still waiting and totally jealous 😅
You'll get yours by 2025. Maybe :D
Wow... what a big red flag for devs when:
-The priority of a Windows dev kit is sending it way after the official product.
-There is no "pro" license... just why?
Even if a software or driver doesn't work, it should not matter... in the old days they would just send dev kits with everything enable and let you work your ass through stuff that everyone knew wasn't ready yet!
-You cannot open it... again... why? whenever there is some problem, like for example the performance while doing something that would use a lot of performance, I would just remove the hardware and test it in another computer... I found many bad cables, MicroSD, connections, RAM and disks by doing this.... that's how you find bad stuff and report it.
A dev kit, and taking in account that this is an Windows one, is a kit for people that are willing to work basically FOR FREE to improve your product so you let them do whatever they want with it... BIG loss for the ARM industry, I hope they change the way they are doing things... NOT going to buy the first gen, not worth my time.
BTW, giving credit where credit is due, wise choice to add a 2.5 Gb Ethernet port and good cooling.
this is how embedded devboards work. Oh you so want to use our hardware to make your embedded device? time to SUFFER suc ker
That's why everybody that could has migrated to Raspberry, because they don't seem to utterly despise their corporate customers
@@marcogenovesi8570Raspberry has the best documentation. It is not about performance, it is about having something that works well enough and that you can easily fix errors. It doesn't matter if any other board computer is cheaper for more or the same power. Raspberry Pi's are worth the price because of the documentation and support.
@@marcogenovesi8570 > their corporate customers
now imagine the pain of the amateurs. We get jack shit. Even worse for some stuff like FPGAs or CPLDs
Though you don't need this for developing Arm64 Windows app. I've had my Samsung Book for years now, it has Arm and Windows and I can compile apps for it on my x64 PC and test them on real hardware. It isn't as powerful so something like game development might have been challenging, but not sure who would make a game for such a small market.
@@AllanSavolainen 100% true, because this device is not really a devkit, it's just a mini PC with ARM processor. So it does not really offer that much of a dev platform. The point of a devkit is to allow porting bigger applications, and it should have additional debugging hardware/software to aid in development. See for example the older console devkits.
100 watts from an architecture known to be efficient is some serious power consuption...
Did they just Overclock the snot out of some last gen silicon ? 😳 🔥💯🔥
Isn't 15W output a requirement for a USB4 port? Then that would take half of the 100W.
You're misunderstanding, it was 100W with a keyboard and monitor attached, no power hungry usb devices. Pretty much all SoC and RAM.
How does 15 watts take 50 watts?
@@modrribaz1691I guess because there are 3x USB 4 Ports, so that would add up to 45W so nearly the halft of 100W.
But they weren't used so 100W is without using all 45W over the USB-Ports.
Reminder that in the US it’s not lawful for a company to refuse warranty purely because of stickers being removed or damaged.
Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act
Note that they weren't dumb enough to print "warranty void if removed" on the stickers.
Reminder that it will probably be reverted the day a company cares enough to go to the Supreme Court
note corruption is at an all time high polymarket..
I love how you pixelated the application of thermal paste.
Heh, learned that trick from @Action Retro!
I knew it seemed familiar!
Gotta remove the naughty bits for YT 😄
@@JeffGeerling .... why did you remove that??
@@CameronVanNatta my assumption: because on the internet you can only do things wrong: Somehow some people get into really 'heated up' arguments 😉 about the right/wrong ways to apply thermal paste. Usually *their* way is the *correct* way of course. Instead of keeping it to themselves and being happy, they spam the comment section.
Ooor maybe it's all just a little joke ;)
It seems truly bizarre that the cost(?) of not putting the most limited Windows edition on these would even be an point of discussion considering what this piece of hardware is supposed to be, not only for Qualcomm but for Microsoft as well.
It's thinking like the huge megalomaniac company of era X that thinks it cannot be beaten. I recall it being AT&T / Ma Bell at one point, DEC at a second, and IBM at a third. Time for the largest to fall, again.
its a dev platform? the people who buy this and use it have someone to foot the bill
Maybe the 'pro' features of Windows are broken on this platform? So they just removed them. Similar to removing the HDMI port even though the converter IC is still in the system.
Part of me wants to believe that the HDMI foundation is to blame for the HDMI fiasco, given they gave AMD issues with HDMI drivers on Linux.
how so? The driver is proprietary and the OS is also proprietary. Maybe Quacomm didn't want to pay the HDMI foundation racket, but that's a different thing
HDMI sucks. They should just use display ports. People who don't really care will buy adaptors.
HDMI is meant to be used for playback of DRM content which is why they are so strict.
What I don't understand if they had a display port to HDMI converter build it, why couldn't they just put a display port in there ? And instead ended up with USB-C.
I guess they want to have HDMI for those who need to build and test some kind of DRM content stuff.
@@autohmae DisplayPort (and DVI for that matter) supports the same DRM protocol as HDMI.
@@marcogenovesi8570 they can tunnel HDMI I believe.
The fact that Qualcomm, the number 1 soc maker for Android, doesn't support Linux on their new SoC, is astounding.
Mainline Linux already supports plenty of Qualcomm boards and Android kernel can be used to boot Linux pretty much as is with minimal config changes.
Not so much surprising, Android is actually dragging Qualcomm down, their software is tailored for it, so much that porting their drivers to Windows or even desktop Linux is problematic. And yeah, it's probably the same issue with Mediatek.
That's not true.
Android is not linux. It was a variation of Linux when it started sure but now the kernel is completely different to the point it's not even linux at this point 😂
I mean to be fair if I had a nickle for every out of tree kernel modules and patches typical Android phone comes with I wouldn't be living in my parents' basement
Booting Linux is already an absolute nightmare on ARM because of the scattered, disorganized mess that is booting on different ARM devices. The future of loading your own OS looks grim if ARM becomes a major PC chip
Qualcomm and MS, both dominant in the field of top tier marketing promises and then not delivering.
Using windows is getting to be a pain in the a** with each passing day.
Not delivering is a stretch, but they promised too much compared to what we got. Still though, my surface laptop 7 somehow have way better software support than my mac, so I consider it an upgrade nonethless.
@@mahamib what mac
@@Rusty01 M1 MacBook Air
@@mahamibfr 😂
As a solely Linux user.. and a Mediatek fan (I like the bang for buck underdogs lol) .... I think Mediatek could do the funniest thing right here. Go all in on ARM Linux and drop their best SoCs for it. Remember Valve is even hinting at slowly but surely getting Steam OS to arm as well. You could be the first in the market that actually seems like it has life, rather than Qualcomm who have seemingly flubbed their chance at getting into an established market.
Let's hope so. I just bought a Mediatek Chromebook. Maybe they'll improve Linux support that'll make its way to that.
A Mediatek and Valve collaboration would be amazing and will line up with their recent experiments on ARM. It's frustrating to see companies still target Windows for ARM when it has always been a half-baked mess. If application support is already a problem then why not use Linux where it's objectively better?
Mediatek+Valve would be a great complement to the recently announced Arch+Valve
If Qualcomm couldn't do it mediatek have less chances then them
Mediatek on Linux? And what kind of GPU are they going to include? Mali? PowerVR? According to MesaMatrix Vulkan drivers of those are in a tragic state. Maybe Broadcom, but it's still missing a couple extensions, making it limited to Vulkan 1.0.
Bundle their own drivers as a binary blob? They'd be setting themselves up for failure without the weight that e.g. Nvidia has, to basically force distros to adapt to them.
Realistically speaking, Qualcomm (despite the incompetence their representative has shown at this year's LPC, at the Android MC) and Apple (despite their complete lack of involvement) shape to be the better options for Linux on consumer-grade ARM hardware. For one: Apple actually ships quality hardware in high volumes and it's being worked on _a lot_ by Asahi, and Tuxedo plans to bring a Linux-first Qualcomm laptop to the market before the end of the year.
It seems like the ECB could be the Embedded Controller Board - this is a class of products that ITE does make (I posted this comment before with a link but it's not showing up, not sure if a moderation tool blocked it so trying again without the link). Embedded Controllers are essentially "BMC (Board Management Controller) but slightly less so" in that they're smaller and lower power than the BMCs used on servers, and typically don't have their own networking or graphics. They're responsible for power sequencing / power state management, fan management, UART breakout (for debugging), etc.
Generally I would have expected this to be soldered to the mainboard, but if this was development hardware, maybe they wanted to validate different vendors (ITE, Nuvoton, Microchip, etc) and put it on an add-in card instead. BMCs being on add-in cards is also becoming more standard in the server space so maybe they were just taking a page from that.
That makes sense; I wonder why it is on the board where it is, though... maybe just convenience, but it's especially weird the connector's right next to the SIM card slot. Maybe they have a version that could be remotely managed over 4G/5G?
@@JeffGeerling I'm not the most up-to-date on laptop architectures but it's also possible that the SIM card just needs to go to the EC to begin with, even for normal operation. Given this is Qualcomm I'm assuming they'd have some variant with WWAN built into the core SoC, and wouldn't need an external modem (so it's not like the SIM card would be running to that other modem). Said core SoCs don't tend to have a lot of higher-voltage I/O (they're on more modern process nodes with lower voltages), so they tend to use the EC as an I/O expander, which could include the SIM card. ECs then generally have options to present peripherals memory-mapped to the core SoC over a bus called eSPI.
By the way, it's a known thing that including links in TH-cam comments will make them disappear rapidly. I presume it is to keep people from having easy exits from YT.
@@JeffGeerling Wouldn't the daughter card most likely be the "baseband processor"? Cell phones run multiple operating systems simultaneously and one of them handles all the communication to the cell towers. They are usually designed as "blackboxes" which one can communicate using Hayes-style AT commands.
@@BenInSeattle PERHAPS they could have just used the single ITE chip on the motherboard, for all system functionality, but that ITE chip has optional features to be tied in into a nearby microcontroller (clearly it is), which would be where they run all their custom proprietary crap. They would have put signed certs/keys & modem baseband stuff into this adjacent micro. Then encrypt the whole thing with more Qualcomm signed encryption keys, the whole thing is very black box-like, and Qualcomm is known for this.
I'm glad you were Jeff Geerling in this video too, I was afraid by your announcement at the end of your previous video.
I've been waiting for this video for months. Not disappointed! Love the thematically appropriate tee shirt too!! :-D
“Mac Mini Killer” lol the EXTERNAL power supply alone is about the same size as a Mac Mini. Even if this thing had great performance (which it absolutely doesn’t) it still wouldn’t be a Mac Mini killer - it would just be a cool ARM mini PC.
it could be actually good, if it would be able to run linux....but Windows on arm is kinda shit, as well - lack of hardware availability
I though the mac mini also had a rather large power brick? Either way though it could be the foil to the Mac mini for those that don't like Apple's software/hardware walled garden approach even with a big power brick - there isn't a total system volume including all external cables, powersupply and peripheral requirement, just a practical and similarly small desk footprint experience.
@@foldionepapyrus3441 Mac mini has internal power supply.
@@s.i.m.c.a If you think that general software availability on WoA is bad then Linux is even worse
If they had spent a bit more engineering effort on it, they could have designed a better enclosure that dissipated the heat better so the fan didn't scream - and they could have put the power supply inside. But they didn't, and it's a hunk of e-waste as a result.
The review I've been waiting for! Thanks Jeff, ❤from Canada!
I genuinely planned on buying a snapdragon laptop to run Linux on. But that was back when we were told Linux support would be a thing Qualcomm was doing. Here we are months after launch and half the products don't work.
When it launched, I think Qualcomm said it would be at least another 6 months before everything is ready. There are already patches in the latest kernel releases, but also still issues and not everything works just yet.
Excellent broad coverage of this product Jeff! Thanks!
I’ve been following the saga on Twitter and was super excited to see the video. Thanks for sharing your experience!
I would LOVE an X elite laptop. I’m currently eyeing Asahi but haven’t pulled the trigger because of lack of support for all hardware
1:20 Obviously B. Microsoft is _notorious_ for their absolutely draconian launch requirements. Windows Phone flopped for similar reasons: $99/year (even if you didn't have plans to publish _any_ apps) + having to register each device with Microsoft + meeting minimum PC requirements just to use the emulator, which required bleeding edge hardware at the time. No one could afford it and library devs (i.e. NOT app devs) didn't want to go through the hassle and expense just so they could port their libraries to Windows Phone. The result? No apps in the Windows Phone app store and ultimately Microsoft cancelled the entire platform because they actively chose to ignore reality.
Windows Phone was a $30 flat fee by the time WP 7.5 was out. The emulator also did not require bleeding edge hardware. I wrote my first app with it when I was 16 on my dad's super old and out of date laptop.
@@GoogleDoesEvilI wrote my first text based adventure game in Quick Basic when i was 12 on "my" 486DX 66mhz that was bleeding edge. Also it was really easy to overclock it just by setting jumpers.
Them Windows 95 came and i had to get a Voodoo video card, it worked in DOS games too.
Microsoft was throwing around tons of money at established developers to do Windows Phone versions of their apps, and even provided contract developers to do the initial porting work. The problem was more that users never showed up after the initial app releases. Over time the Windows Phone versions stagnated as devs focused on adding new features/updates to the platforms that actually brought in revenue.
So submitting to the Apple AppStore is free now? Good to know... I also developed professionally for Windows Phone and there was *no* fees, *no* registration, nothing - I could develop on a mediocre PC and ship directly to B2B customers without any store requirements or device registrations. I honestly have no idea what the complaint is.
But, but.....(@0:27) today is Oct. 2nd...am I watching this from the future?!...QUICK WHAT'RE THE WINNING LOTTERY NUMBERS!?
Hehe oops!
I actually went back in the video when I saw that to see if I read it wrong. Hope the future is nice Jeff lol
I went straight to the calendar, I’m I watching this from the past
Living in Australia lmao
quick note for 11:34
You can change the allocated RAM to WSL by editing the .wslconfig file in your home folder
for example
```
[wsl2]
memory=24GB
```
It's still slow. Much better if Linux distro has direct hardware communication instead of using other software to do silly tasks.
I have the lenovo yoga sli snapdragon with 32gb. The programs I need have been ported to arm. I use it for video and photo editing and it works fine. Im not doing Hollywood level production interms of size and effects but it has replaced my lenovo I7 quite well. I purchased it because it was light, small and powerful for my needs, because I work on the road. Im sure it will get better. For higher level work I have a powerful desktop for projects I get when Im home. But I hope that the developers get more programs working especially games.'
You said the quiet part out loud, and the thing I was pining for hard before giving up and investing in modern Intel with P and E cores for my homelab expansion. ARM systems that bridge the gulf between massive Ampere monsters and SBC computers would be a massive shift towards viability for ARM as a competing platform to X86 for everyone, including Windows ARM for personal computing IMO. It really makes me curious where the breakdowns are in managing this project on the whole.
Can't believe Jeff posted from the future (Oct 3).
If you want Snapdragon X for Linux: Tuxedo is making a Snapdragon X laptop that is Linux first. I assume they are mostly waiting for software to get finished at this point.
I love the pixelation during the thermal paste application. Better to do that than have the comments flooded with the skreeching about how you're doing it "wrong". Also, it was a little creepy when you mentioned Asahi Linux just as I was loading their Github page.
Thee instructions said in no uncertain terms that you are not to open it, and as a natural reaction, Jeff opens it immediately without even turning the thing on first. I appreciate his dedication to the EEVBlog way.
Qualcomm should have shipped a cheaper 16 gig of RAM configuration of this, Polish this up and have a vendor sell it as a Mac mini competitor. With the current mini being M2 they could have had a brief window to launch this with 16 gigs of RAM while being cheaper and faster than the current m2. Of course this will change soon but I still think it would have been a compelling mini computer.
Hey, you finally got it! Glad you didn't have to borrow my laptop!
I'm also trying to sell that laptop - trying to live every day with ARM is *not* my cup of tea, I just got a normal x86 laptop to replace it.
This DevKit debacle aside, I'm actually having a good experience running Windows on ARM (SL7, 15"). Battery lasts for ages and i only use one x86 app. I hope both Qualcomm and Microsoft stay the course on this.
If they do, especially if Microsoft keeps investing heavily, I think it could be viable in a year or two for more people - need to get more apps arm-native!
I love the form factor of mini-pc's like this. I'd love a mini-pc that has a VESA mount so you can mount one behind a monitor for like a computer lab or something.
2:48 Thanks for the segue back to Jeff, Linus. ;) :P (Nice edit :P)
(a) The magnuson-moss act says they can't void the warranty. (b) The FCC doesn't "license for resale", they certified devices as legal for import and sale. The fact that you bought it means you can sell it. (legally: first sale doctrine.) The license for any software on it may not be transferable, but that's debatable. (The lack of FCC, UL, CE, etc. certifications could mean the thing isn't even legal at all, but that's a question for Customs.)
I'm still very impressed with my Snapdragon Lenovo T14s Gen 6 running Windows 11 on ARM. Let alone how well old games work on it.
Wait, did MS finally ship a Windows equivalent to Apple's Rosetta x86 "emulator"?
I still have my old Windows Arm dev kit from 2023. That thing came in a timely manner (even though UPS tried to lose it) but pretty cool little box.
Framework laptop with a qualcomm X Elite upgrade could be a winner, after a linux device tree is grown and harvested :-)
And more importantly, _supported_. I wouldn't buy a laptop with Snapdragon X until Qualcomm actually gets behind Linux running on it... don't want to have a hackintosh-like maintenance burden for my daily driver!
considering the state of documentation and opensource drivers, no it would not. It would be like a big cra ppy tablet
@@JeffGeerling While I agree that would be good company support isn't required for a good experience - history suggests if the community is behind it sufficiently it will just work well enough to be useable, but probably a little lacking in performance by comparison. Though to get that community love this time around I think this thing would need to be way more energy efficient, performant or perhaps more compact with the 5g modem maybe even on the same silicon for the ultimately compact but desktop flexible computing device or something. Just something to make it actually worth putting in the effort.
Device Trees are a non-starter. ACPI and UEFI have problems but you cannot treat a laptop like a phone. It would need SystemReady LS certification ideally. With Device Trees, every single laptop would need its own, like phones. That will not fly if Microsoft has anything to do with it.
I really love your honesty. You add a lot of value to my communications.
>>Its October 3rd today
Its October 2nd here, Jeff really shows tec from the future, for me at least :D
It's a shame, for a moment there it seemed like ARM will finally bring a change in Windows world, but soon after release it went completely silent. I actually forgot about it until I saw this video.
1:18 that was not what happened initially (iirc). Apple tried to shaft the developers by offering them just 200 dollars in store credit upon returning their DTK and a 4 month expiry for it. It was after quite a bit of backlash from the devs that they agreed to increase the compensation to 500 dollars and the expiry to 2021.
10:37 "you're 100% there" does feel like teasing though
Haha especially as that sits on the screen for like 20 seconds.
Ummmm Jeff, it's only October 2nd...
Not for Australians…
@@IJMacD I mean when the video was created/edited it absolutely would not have been the 3rd yet... even in Australia lol
I was excited about this chip. This is a mess. I hope the situation can improve. I was excited about Windows on ARM, but I also want a good Linux on ARM option. Thanks for covering this.
The use of Linus's segue is gold XD
It was too easy :D
I went with Surface Laptop 7 and maxed out the memory and did the 1 TB storage option. As for power it's a tiny power brick but I power though the Thunderbolt 4 dock with two external mointors. Also when running on battery I can get days out of a full charge unlike my work laptop where running on battery barely gets though 5 hours. As much as Jeff hates Windows and Microsoft the release products are solid. I have WSL loaded along with my native development tools. Best laptop I have owned.
Very subtle Action Retro shoutouts.
I've been waiting on support for Linux on these ARM processors. It'll be interesting getting my third ARM desktop. The originals dating back to the late 80s.
Been running a surface laptop 7 with Snapdragon for about a month now and it's been a breeze so far. I expected it to be way more buggy because of the mixed reviews but I'm really impressed. Performance is awesome, battery is wonderful it's only missing Linux support.
I don't doubt that it will be good, but the problem has been Microsoft and qualcoms Abysmal delivery, even despite the powerful chip.
If I were running Qualcomm, I would be throwing everything I could at this, including making it as easy as possible for porting of windows applications/drivers and offering MS free dev resource to ensure Windows for Arm is a well-polished. After all, if this were done right, it could well hand Qualcomm the Windows laptop market and push out x86!
It makes me wonder how much of this who fiasco is Qualcomm being messed around by MS.....
Holy moly, I remember that video where Alex was utterly frustrated with every step of their non compliance.
@6:55 I can see an outline of a slot in the case molding right in front of the SIM card holder.
Oh yea good catch
that comparison to fusion power nearly made me spit out my coffee >_
the ECB likely stands for Embedded Controller (EC) board. And due to the ITE chip and its functions, controls all the low level system pin control, voltage, fans, keyboard, LEDS, and sensor management. And its all tied in to a second microcontroller running proprietary code. This is the single point of control over the motherboard, sort of like a low level management engine. protected by encrypted qualcomm keys. a lot of computers do this but we need to know about it.
Qualcomm and Microsoft are missing the point, they are trying to be Apple instead of being a world leader and making this affordable for the masses, that's where the big bugs are. Unfortunately most people will still buy intel at a much better price point.
Have to say I absolutely love the inclusion of the sponsor segue in the clip from LTT 😂
Great video Jeff. Windows ARM has forced Intel to finally make an efficient x86 chip. This will kill Snapdragon and windows on ARM instantly, because it’s good enough and everything works. Devs won’t invest time in porting until there is a big market, and the market won’t buy ARM boxes until the native software is available. Sad, but they can’t drive the transition the way Apple could.
The mini PCs are actually the same size when they’re new as when they’re used, so this is also about the same size as a new one.
"it's October 3rd today" Damn, it came with a time machine?!
U nailed the main reasons why X-Elite/Plus failed to capture projected market share and much needed interest of the classic x86 PC users. Once again M$ & Qualcomm didn't get what is necessary and mandatory for the smooth CPU architecture transition even after Apple showed and pawed the way years ago with the M1. It's simply unacceptable that these HUGE tech giants cannot execute something so important - especially after 2 failed attempts of the previous Arm based chips for Windows. Honestly, after seeing their incompetence I give even more thumbs up to Apple for doing it right, enjoying their leading position and all the benefits which come with it. Qualcomm and M$ even got ex Apple engineers from Nuvia to help them to nail it (what else u can ask for?!) and they screwed it anyway... what a losers! What could be a true market disruptor ended up as another industry failure, what a shame!
And don't even get me started about Linux. Qualcomm deserves a slap on their over confident face starting with their CEO about not targeting Linux which Apple is officially staying away from (being closed source), but at least there's reverse engineered Asahi Linux! X-Elite/Plus has nothing so far from the Linux community and Linux devs r not that exciting about it as they were once with Apple's M1 transition.
Overall, both Qualcomm with M$ have proved once again their execution together as partners is trash! They should either give to somebody who can do it right or drop it completely or "RECALL" it indefinitely. Not even advanced Copilot Azure A.I. can help M$ to change Windows to what it should be and even if it will, they most likely won't execute correctly ending up as slow, bloated "Swiss knife" which will never catch up with Apple. M$ is so much deep in their enterprise Azure cloud + A.I. datacenter "sweet hole", they forgot about PC Windows users and what they were always asking for. On the other hand, only if Apple could open their closed doors more towards Linux and beside that also by making their iPads more like a real MacOS computers, than just a kids toys.
3:33, I don't know - I can't foresee that SSD failing
Haha I totally missed that joke. Nice.
8:38 "no hyper-v support" doesn't mean hyper-v doesn't work because there's a way to make WSL2 work on windows 11 home and WSL2 hard depends on hyper-v, it just means that the *user settings* for hyper-v are deleted and locked down with no way to change them outside of installing and uninstalling WSL2 and that's it, which severely restricts what you can do with WSL2 and prevents tweaking WSL2's low-level settings. windows is full of dark patterns like this where it supports linux apps, but only kicking and screaming and shanking everyone every step of the way.
12:41 Microsoft will go hard on supporting ARM soon, but only once Microsoft has an actually bad quarterly profit report.. which might be a bit of a wait... I thought everyone knew that.
Wow
Jeff lives in future (still octber 2, vid released 2hrs ago)
I recognize this behavior from Qualcomm when they bought the CSR series of Bluetooth chips, they immediately locked all development software behind layers of company registration.
Thanks for the video. I was looking at buying a new laptop a couple of months ago. At about the same time the copilot arm laptops launched I found the base model M3 MBA on sale for $850 and picked one up. MS isn't providing a decent x86 to arm translation layer to make it worth the risk of buying a Windows on arm computer.
Dear Jeff, would you be so kind and spin Ollama on it and test tokens per second with some new models? Like llama 3.1, llama 3.2. Also, if you could show the impact on gpu and tpu and memory usage.
No surprise sales are short of expectations. Instead of providing developers with necessary tools months ahead of release Qualcomm decided it was better to pour some money into extra marketing campaigns. What's the point of it if the most common software does not work? I really wish we had good Windows ARM PCs, but I highly doubt it is feasible in the next few years
EDIT: Fixed some typos
Great video Jeff!
I have never been more tired of a new technology like I am of AI and everything related to it.
Yeah, Organic Idiocy collective like M$ thinks clouds and AI have real life use. :/
Seems like anyone who was serious about developing for these chips probably already went out and bought a machine that had the chip in it. Definitely a dropped ball.
You killed it Jeff! :-) Just kidding. Good work.
Ooh, spicy Jeff, I like it. I really want these things to be good, entirely for power efficiency (the rest of copilotshit can do one until there's something useful there), but Qualcomm and Microsoft are doing a really good job of ruining everything.
Thank you for convincing me not to buy this, at least yet. Windows 11 Home was the deal breaker for me. I have been happy with my Volterra, although I mostly use it for Microsoft Word, via Remote Desktop on my M3 MacBook Pro. Sadly, Word does not run as well on Mac OS. Amazingly, Steam runs my old games really well on the Volterra, where Steam on Mac OS will not.
It's very frustrating how Qualcomm is messing up ARM on Windows AGAIN. Like have they seriously not learned anything? Are we just throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks I mean what good is a copilot or arm pc in 2024? Theres literally no reason to buy one especially over the new Intel Lunar Lake and AMD APUs. The saving grace of these might be Steams Proton if they actually are making ARM games compatible with x86 as rumors suggest.
Guaranteed all the delays are because of both software and hardware licensing issues. Software because of implementing very new libraries and hardware because of inexperience building an entire system as SDK platform.
That's why you partner with a hardware partner Snapdragon. They have systems and people in place that already know how to deal with it. You shouldn't take your foray into selling complete systems with a product you're trying to rush. Especially if that's an SDK you could have released as a module months ago and you entire business process relies on.
So the next video we see you put Linux on it? Spoke a bit too soon, it's mentioned near the end.
Plus side they absolutely fixed the overheating problem my 2023 dev kit has. Run the CPU and GPU hard at the same time and it'll just crash. It should at least work for games, although performance will be really weird and it's not much less power hungry than my x86 desktop.
"Sure, you can run Asahi on a Mac."
Bold statement.
Interesting video. To think this is almost the same spec as Tesla Hardware 3 for Full self driving. Does that mean this is powerful to be able to do that, or scary that driving is being done on such a low power system. Hmmm
It's quite maddening that out of the box it does not have an open UEFI and the acpi support that it should have. The challenge is still that when you speak to Qualcomm server folks, they are all in, but on the consumer / workstation they are not motivated. And, some of the best and brightest UEFI/ACPI OSS devs now work for qualcomm.
Thank you Jeff ! 🤟🙏
I feel like this was a little overblown. I haven’t had many of these issues on my slim by 7x (it’s cool, quiet, efficient, powerful for its form factor), and I’m not sure this dev kit is comparable to the apple ARM transition devkit.
Windows ARM devices have been around for years, including from Qualcomm. There’s nothing too unique about these chips that you need a dev platform just for them.
They definitely squandered the launch of this dev kit, no words there, but it’s not as dire as it seems.
oh really? what software did you run on that ARM device? Because most games don't run. A lot of productivity software and VPN clients are only for x86 still. If all you need is a browser and Office you are probably fine on ARM
@@marcogenovesi8570 not really the part I'm disputing, but a surprisingly high amount of x86 software just works out of the box. I didn't even realize some of the apps I was running were x86. It's basically as good as Rosetta 2 was on the Mac. Most people aren't playing video games locally on sub 3 pound laptops, so I can't see it being an issue for most people. I do light web dev stuff and spend a lot of time ssh'd into a remote Linux box, using WSL on Ubuntu, using containers, etc. not perfect but no chip transition ever was going to be.
I'm mainly quibbling with the overhyping of the importance and significance of this dev kit and treating it as reflective of the snapdragon X devices out there. It's just not. Aside from being a completely different form factor, it just seems rushed and unoptimized in a way that doesn't hold true for the Qualcomm laptops out there. The fan noise was the strongest one for me--i didn't even remember I had a fan until doing a firmware flash. There's a lot of good here, and afaict they're all getting fairly good customer reviews from normal folks.
It's an initial release of a new architecture and platform.
Give them time to get their things together.
Such a release is much harder for Qualcomm than it was for Apple, because: 1) unlike Apple, Qualcomm doesn't control the software stack, 2) Qualcomm isn't in the business of building end-user products, 3) due to all legal stuff that has been going on before the release, the current chip is probably at least a year old design which reflects in performance, however taking the delay into consideration, the performance of this chip is actually really good.
Oh no! The title said the C word. It's a very bad word.
even twice!
8:02 ISWYDT "You put too much paste on that cpu!" :D
Windows Dev Kit 2023 was a no brainer compared to this.
You used Linus' segway to segway to you... Brilliant. Now if only you had an ad spot there LOL
Literally a few days ago I wrote post on Reddit r/SBCs saying I was looking for something right inbetween the RK3588 and Ampere. The fact you almost ended up saying what I wrote had me wheezing. But it's so true. At some point, you want to grow beyond an SBC - but Ampere is gonna eat your wallet whole! So right now, there is this big hollow spot in the gap between 300 - 800 market - i'd guess. Sure, there are outliers, but you get the point o.o
Bah, can't Ampere just make a 16core, sell it for 500 and call it a day? x.x
Exactly! I've been asking Ampere to make a desktop/small workstation form factor thing, so far they focus on servers + higher-end workstations. But at least their 32-core CPUs are coming more available now... after years on the market :(
The worst burn, is a Jeff burn. 🔥
Hi Jeff, I noticed you are doing power monitoring with HA and captioned for the test you were using a 3rdReality plug to do it. Is that how all of the other devices at 9:31 are power monitored? Love the videos and hope the new nipper and wife are doing well.
Yes! I have 12 of those Thirdreality plugs around the studio, monitoring devices I want to get a good idea of over time (or just a few devices I want remote on/off capability for).
@@JeffGeerling If only they did a UK version. Harder to find this side of the pond Zigbee versions.
Great video and thank you for all the effort. How hard would it be for RaspberryPI to release a Mac mini type device based on the compute module 5. Doesn't seem like that far a leap from where they are now. Yes, performance won't be mind blowing, but RPi5 is not too bad if you have NVMe storage and a proper graphics card with that supports acceleration in Linux.
I think a couple 3rd party companies will build some decent mini PCs with the CM5 once it's here. Would love to see Raspberry Pi at least build it into a Pi 500 at some point!
Windows on ARM is a BIG disappointment. I had so many hopes after the announcement of the X ELite chips. I also thought Microsoft and Qualcomm would really move forward and constantly deliver new updates to improve performance.
Wrong! Even after 3 months, I still had the same problems as at the beginning. In the end, I sold my Surface Laptop 7 with X Elite and ordered a notebook with Intel LunarLake.
What problems where you having?
"Running ECB" is likely the "embedded controller" board, not sure why it's on a daughterboard though?
ECs are used in laptops and desktops to run LEDs, fans and other basic system functions. (backlights, power LEDs, RGB nonsense, etc.)
I bought a snapdragon x elite laptop and was able to fresh install windows! I had to split the image so it fits in a FAT32 drive. I made a little program for it.
Individuals can sell this without problems, the FCC thing only limits companies. And the fan really isn't issue as this isn't a enduser product but devkit where they just put some random radial fan that is powerful enough to keep 100W cool.
I am sure there will be mods with more silent cooling options, wouldn't mind this as my next Linux box if it works.
Yep I was waiting for it
If you want to use 10-gigabit ethernet with it, Mellanox ConnectX-4 and newer NICs have in-the-box Windows 11 ARM drivers.
I agree, the whole Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows 2024 / Co-Pilot PC launch was very poorly managed by Qualcomm and Microsoft. I gave up trying to purchase this dev kit as Arrow makes it impossible to order it in the UK unless you are a VAT registered business. I will use the money I saved to purchase a M4 Mac Mini instead! I like Windows 11 arm and had a lot of using it on my Windows Dev Kit 2023. The Snapdragon X family of processors are a significant improvement over the 8cx Gen3 / SQ3 processor in the Windows Dev Kit, but there are too many X Elite and X Plus skus, making it very confusing for the consumer. Coupled with the lack lustre GPU performance, this still isn't a great advert for Windows 11 arm. All X Elite skus should have come with the 4.6 TFLOPs GPU and the X Plus with the 3.8 TFLOPs GPU. There is only one commercial Snapdragon X Elite laptop with the top tier X Elite sku and 4.6 TFLOPs GPU and that's the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge 16-inch 1 TB model. Why no Microsoft Surface devices with this top end sku?