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Qualcomm’s next-gen CPU for PCs will take on Apple’s M-series chips in 2023 plus Adreno GPUs for desktop.

tusharngf

Member
Developed by the Nuvia team

Qualcomm is looking to seriously beef up its PC processors, with the company announcing plans for a next-generation Arm-based SoC “designed to set the performance benchmark for Windows PCs” that would be able to go head to head with Apple’s M-series processors.

Dr. James Thompson, Qualcomm’s chief technology officer, announced the plans for the new chips at the company’s 2021 investor day event, with the goal of getting samples to hardware customers in about nine months ahead of product launches with the new chip in 2023.

Image_from_iOS__1_.jpg


The new chip will be designed by the Nuvia team, which Qualcomm had bought earlier this year in a massive $1.4 billion acquisition. Nuvia, notably, was founded in 2019 by a trio of former Apple employees who had previously worked on the company’s A-series chips.

The company is making big promises, too: in addition to offering competition to Apple’s stellar M-series chips (which power its latest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops and iMac and Mac Mini desktops), Qualcomm is aiming to lead the field for “sustained performance and battery life,” too. Additionally, Qualcomm promised that it would be scaling up its Adreno GPUs, too, with the goal of offering desktop-class gaming capabilities for its future PC products.

Qualcomm has tried to break into PC chips before, with products like the Snapdragon 8cx line of processors and its partnership with Microsoft on the Surface X’s SQ1 and SQ2 chips. But where Apple’s Arm-based chips offered a revolutionary experience of power and battery life when it launched the M1 lineup last year, Qualcomm’s PC efforts have been lackluster so far.

Source: Qualcomm’s next-gen CPU for PCs will take on Apple’s M-series chips in 2023 - The Verge
 
I hope so. I'm so tired of people saying how Apple M1 has changed their lives. Apple needs competition badly.

I work on a Mac mini m1 and, compared to my MacBook Pro 2015, I don't see anything life changing. Compilation times and maybe some video editing stuff but that's pretty much it, nothing that exciting. And for sure not worth the thousands that Apple keeps asking for it.
 

kikkis

Member
I hope so. I'm so tired of people saying how Apple M1 has changed their lives. Apple needs competition badly.

I work on a Mac mini m1 and, compared to my MacBook Pro 2015, I don't see anything life changing. Compilation times and maybe some video editing stuff but that's pretty much it, nothing that exciting. And for sure not worth the thousands that Apple keeps asking for it.
Its perf per watt that is impressive, which makes big difference in laptop space.

While I would like to see windows arm gain traction with new processors, I am not sure it will, probably not.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
I hope so. I'm so tired of people saying how Apple M1 has changed their lives. Apple needs competition badly.

I work on a Mac mini m1 and, compared to my MacBook Pro 2015, I don't see anything life changing. Compilation times and maybe some video editing stuff but that's pretty much it, nothing that exciting. And for sure not worth the thousands that Apple keeps asking for it.
For me the difference even with MacBook Pro 2019 i7 is quite huge.
 
Its perf per watt that is impressive, which makes big difference in laptop space.

While I would like to see windows arm gain traction with new processors, I am not sure it will, probably not.
It is impressive. It packs quite the punch for its consumption but that's the only thing that actually excited me. The rest is ok.
For me the difference even with MacBook Pro 2019 i7 is quite huge.
My laptop rarely throttles and doesn't suffer from high temperatures. Only does so when I'm editing some video but yeah, it's almost 7 years old.

I mostly code on it and watch YouTube/Apple TV+. Compilation times on the Mac mini are fast, but this is not the second coming of Jesus like lots praise it. Maybe this is the case where it shows that Apple is good at optimisation for old devices, Monterey runs amazingly well on my old MacBook Pro.

I still like Apple Silicon, just want more competition because , since there's none, Apple will eventually start raising their prices (again).
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
It is impressive. It packs quite the punch for its consumption but that's the only thing that actually excited me. The rest is ok.

My laptop rarely throttles and doesn't suffer from high temperatures. Only does so when I'm editing some video but yeah, it's almost 7 years old.

I mostly code on it and watch YouTube/Apple TV+. Compilation times on the Mac mini are fast, but this is not the second coming of Jesus like lots praise it. Maybe this is the case where it shows that Apple is good at optimisation for old devices, Monterey runs amazingly well on my old MacBook Pro.

I still like Apple Silicon, just want more competition because , since there's none, Apple will eventually start raising their prices (again).
I too mostly code and M1, even in X86 instruction set compiles stuff that fast, that's probably faster than my 3900x desktop (could be due to Windows 10 is fucking pos for compilation, hope that Win11 improves things as promised). Without any noise coming from the machine, etc. I am actually happy with OG M1 that much that I am not updating for this year. I actually can take a laptop, go for a hike and done some work, which was impossible with the 2019 MBp. Especially the battery is amazing. For me to upgrade, I would need the 13" M1 Max. Because I already see the 14" in person and that's far more chunkier, which is annoying to carry. Memory possibly would be good, but even running Xcode + Android Studio + other stuff like Photoshop, with iOS simulator (and other shit like browser, onedrive) runs without a hitch for me.

That wasn't really possible with intel chips. Could be faster? Everything can be faster, however it's good enough. Especially for the price.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Developed by the Nuvia team

Qualcomm is looking to seriously beef up its PC processors, with the company announcing plans for a next-generation Arm-based SoC “designed to set the performance benchmark for Windows PCs” that would be able to go head to head with Apple’s M-series processors.

Dr. James Thompson, Qualcomm’s chief technology officer, announced the plans for the new chips at the company’s 2021 investor day event, with the goal of getting samples to hardware customers in about nine months ahead of product launches with the new chip in 2023.

Image_from_iOS__1_.jpg


The new chip will be designed by the Nuvia team, which Qualcomm had bought earlier this year in a massive $1.4 billion acquisition. Nuvia, notably, was founded in 2019 by a trio of former Apple employees who had previously worked on the company’s A-series chips.

The company is making big promises, too: in addition to offering competition to Apple’s stellar M-series chips (which power its latest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops and iMac and Mac Mini desktops), Qualcomm is aiming to lead the field for “sustained performance and battery life,” too. Additionally, Qualcomm promised that it would be scaling up its Adreno GPUs, too, with the goal of offering desktop-class gaming capabilities for its future PC products.

Qualcomm has tried to break into PC chips before, with products like the Snapdragon 8cx line of processors and its partnership with Microsoft on the Surface X’s SQ1 and SQ2 chips. But where Apple’s Arm-based chips offered a revolutionary experience of power and battery life when it launched the M1 lineup last year, Qualcomm’s PC efforts have been lackluster so far.

Source: Qualcomm’s next-gen CPU for PCs will take on Apple’s M-series chips in 2023 - The Verge
Both nVIDIA and Qualcomm now have incredible chip design teams (Apple lost some key individuals and they are “lucky” IMHO that their current M1 generation after Pro and Max still has headroom to scale frequency wise and MCM wise too to get after bigger Macs left to transition too [it buys them time to hire more and better as they design M2/M3]… then again Apple is not selling chips to others, they can afford to hardcoded instructions and features only used by their OS’s, frameworks, and by their dev tools). I am keen to see how they tackle Windows and if MS smells enough weakness in Intel to commit again to try to replace them on Windows.

The problem is legacy software, mountains and mountains of code designed for x86 machines. It is difficult to run that software at the speed people need and convince all those vendors to support whatever new architecture you want to push. MS tried to support a consortium back in the day to replace Intel with Alpha, but pulled out…. Alpha could not really scale (volume wise) and Intel went in a FUD offensive and bought time to get the magnificent Pentium Pro out.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I too mostly code and M1, even in X86 instruction set compiles stuff that fast, that's probably faster than my 3900x desktop (could be due to Windows 10 is fucking pos for compilation, hope that Win11 improves things as promised). Without any noise coming from the machine, etc. I am actually happy with OG M1 that much that I am not updating for this year. I actually can take a laptop, go for a hike and done some work, which was impossible with the 2019 MBp. Especially the battery is amazing. For me to upgrade, I would need the 13" M1 Max. Because I already see the 14" in person and that's far more chunkier, which is annoying to carry. Memory possibly would be good, but even running Xcode + Android Studio + other stuff like Photoshop, with iOS simulator (and other shit like browser, onedrive) runs without a hitch for me.

That wasn't really possible with intel chips. Could be faster? Everything can be faster, however it's good enough. Especially for the price.
I share the same feeling, would not go back to the Intel MBP’s, but the resolution of the 13’’ mode is a bit too low (do not get me wrong, I really really like the M1 MBP too, best laptop I have used in a while).

Although it is bulkier but for devs I would say 16’’ MBP with M1 Pro not Max (for most apps it feels like the old 17’’ felt but a lot lot smaller)… a lot higher sustained battery life (Verge’s mixed workload tests clocked it at just shy of 16 hours, the M1 Max was little over 10 hours which is similar to the M1 on the 13’’ MBP under the same test workload). Even with Low Power mode the new chip loses like 15% performance only which is not bad at all.

It is enterprise software like Sophos that drags CPU and I/O down, but then again having a few more performance cores and more than doubling SSD I/O performance should be a big help with it too (with Xcode as well ;)):
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
I share the same feeling, would not go back to the Intel MBP’s, but the resolution of the 13’’ mode is a bit too low (do not get me wrong, I really really like the M1 MBP too, best laptop I have used in a while).

Although it is bulkier but for devs I would say 16’’ MBP with M1 Pro not Max (for most apps it feels like the old 17’’ felt but a lot lot smaller)… a lot higher sustained battery life (Verge’s mixed workload tests clocked it at just shy of 16 hours, the M1 Max was little over 10 hours which is similar to the M1 on the 13’’ MBP under the same test workload). Even with Low Power mode the new chip loses like 15% performance only which is not bad at all.

It is enterprise software like Sophos that drags CPU and I/O down, but then again having a few more performance cores and more than doubling SSD I/O performance should be a big help with it too (with Xcode as well ;)):
Sure, but I normally can do a most of the work on my desktop, it's when I need to compile it on iOS and macOS is where owning a mac is valuable proposition. Since I need also CUDA environment I can't just get away with owning just a laptop. So for me it's an additional device, thus this is more than sufficient : ) I am getting around 8 hours of batter life, while using my workload, which ismore than enough for workday these days for me.

Also currently I am doing little bit of Rust, which is well known for slow compilation times and Mac os is handling things more gracefully than my R9 3900x (again could platform optimalization). GO on the other hand is quick on both that it's seemingly compiled faster than autoconf would finish setting up the environment for C.
 
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I too mostly code and M1, even in X86 instruction set compiles stuff that fast, that's probably faster than my 3900x desktop (could be due to Windows 10 is fucking pos for compilation, hope that Win11 improves things as promised). Without any noise coming from the machine, etc. I am actually happy with OG M1 that much that I am not updating for this year. I actually can take a laptop, go for a hike and done some work, which was impossible with the 2019 MBp. Especially the battery is amazing. For me to upgrade, I would need the 13" M1 Max. Because I already see the 14" in person and that's far more chunkier, which is annoying to carry. Memory possibly would be good, but even running Xcode + Android Studio + other stuff like Photoshop, with iOS simulator (and other shit like browser, onedrive) runs without a hitch for me.

That wasn't really possible with intel chips. Could be faster? Everything can be faster, however it's good enough. Especially for the price.
Same here. I have a feeling that 2022 will be the last year of my 2015 MacBook Pro, battery is gone and for sure no more support for it. I think 13' is the sweet spot for me, so I'm waiting to see if they will upgrade it or not. But I have a feeling that the price will rise way too much for my liking.

The M1 Mac mini is their best in value device, without a doubt. It handles things really well, Android Studio and Xcode, but like I said, it's not something earth shattering. The new MacBook Pros prices are the result of no competition, and those will only increase if no one else enters the game. They know devs are loving them, big companies are buying them. But as an individual with no Macbook given by my company, they are way too expensive.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Same here. I have a feeling that 2022 will be the last year of my 2015 MacBook Pro, battery is gone and for sure no more support for it. I think 13' is the sweet spot for me, so I'm waiting to see if they will upgrade it or not. But I have a feeling that the price will rise way too much for my liking.

The M1 Mac mini is their best in value device, without a doubt. It handles things really well, Android Studio and Xcode, but like I said, it's not something earth shattering. The new MacBook Pros prices are the result of no competition, and those will only increase if no one else enters the game. They know devs are loving them, big companies are buying them. But as an individual with no Macbook given by my company, they are way too expensive.
Sure they are pricey, but when you do it as a job, especially without company behind your ass, it's a matter of few weeks for ROI. I both M1 MBp just so I can compile big Rust project for MacOS (Win/GNU version was already done) and not wait 16 years for it finish. I got my money back same day. But I know that many times it's not possibly to do highly specialized work for a big company, but when you have the ability, faster HW, could make your profit/salary quite a bit higher, especially if you need to debug it on time and stuff like that.

Side note, currently loving these two creatures.


rustacean-flat-gesture.png
images


Money making shit right here
 
Sure they are pricey, but when you do it as a job, especially without company behind your ass, it's a matter of few weeks for ROI. I both M1 MBp just so I can compile big Rust project for MacOS (Win/GNU version was already done) and not wait 16 years for it finish. I got my money back same day. But I know that many times it's not possibly to do highly specialized work for a big company, but when you have the ability, faster HW, could make your profit/salary quite a bit higher, especially if you need to debug it on time and stuff like that.

Side note, currently loving these two creatures.


rustacean-flat-gesture.png
images


Money making shit right here
Agree. The current prices are not that prohibitive, but if they raise them even more (which possibly will, knowing Apple) then it will become a problem. If you have a company giving them to you, that's not even a problem. I would love if my company did that, but they managed to get a Mac mini just for me, so I can't complain.

Lets see if I'm wrong (I hope I am because I'm currently all in on Apple, my MacBook Pro is the old product I have). But yeah, still tired of YouTubers pretending the M1 Pro Max Extreme even cooks dinner for them.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Agree. The current prices are not that prohibitive, but if they raise them even more (which possibly will, knowing Apple) then it will become a problem. If you have a company giving them to you, that's not even a problem. I would love if my company did that, but they managed to get a Mac mini just for me, so I can't complain.

Lets see if I'm wrong (I hope I am because I'm currently all in on Apple, my MacBook Pro is the old product I have). But yeah, still tired of YouTubers pretending the M1 Pro Max Extreme even cooks dinner for them.
I honestly don't really give a damn about Youtubers, because not much of them is going to have same workload that I have. Hell even my hobby, making music...or rather trying to...is barely covered and the differences of x86 Ableton live and ARM64 one is truly groundbreaking (CPU usage on same project going down from 50+% of available CPU to below 5%. Ableton has weird meter, which is showing how much CPU is available to it's own process, not the entire system, but if you overshoot it, than you get pops and other stuff like bigger latency, which makes it impossible to do it...Live : D).

Hopefully other companies can and will provide ARM64 chip, with included x86 emulation to an extent of M1, so Apple will be again pushed to innovate and making it cheaper.
 
I honestly don't really give a damn about Youtubers, because not much of them is going to have same workload that I have. Hell even my hobby, making music...or rather trying to...is barely covered and the differences of x86 Ableton live and ARM64 one is truly groundbreaking (CPU usage on same project going down from 50+% of available CPU to below 5%. Ableton has weird meter, which is showing how much CPU is available to it's own process, not the entire system, but if you overshoot it, than you get pops and other stuff like bigger latency, which makes it impossible to do it...Live : D).

Hopefully other companies can and will provide ARM64 chip, with included x86 emulation to an extent of M1, so Apple will be again pushed to innovate and making it cheaper.
I mean, I also don't care much about YouTubers but yeah, always find it funny and you clearly see the Apple bias. I also tried making music before and it lagged like shit, but I gave up because I'm horrible at it.

Good to see the M1 doing its magic for some people. Hope Qualcomm comes and changes the Windows landscape with faster and energy-efficient chips. Apple really needs competition.

EDIT: I don't think Windows will move to ARM anytime soon. Too much baggage and MS's own emulation is simply trash. On an unrelated note, I wish Apple took Apple Arcade serious - their chips are powerful but we keep seeing the same trash every single time. Buy studios, create studios, do something Apple, you fucking twats.
 
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KAL2006

Banned
Apple's M1 cbio was exciting that they are using a ARM chip that runs MAC OSX where they can finally merge MacOSX with iOS or at the least have a dual boot option. All that got flushed in the toilet when both iPad Pro and MacBook Pro released with M1 chip. Seems like Apple want you to buy both devices, and allowing MaC OSX on a iPad Pro would affect profibility in the App Store for iPad so they will continue to gimp the iPad and the chip doesn't really make a difference.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Sure, but I normally can do a most of the work on my desktop, it's when I need to compile it on iOS and macOS is where owning a mac is valuable proposition. Since I need also CUDA environment I can't just get away with owning just a laptop. So for me it's an additional device, thus this is more than sufficient : ) I am getting around 8 hours of batter life, while using my workload, which ismore than enough for workday these days for me.

Also currently I am doing little bit of Rust, which is well known for slow compilation times and Mac os is handling things more gracefully than my R9 3900x (again could platform optimalization). GO on the other hand is quick on both that it's seemingly compiled faster than autoconf would finish setting up the environment for C.
You have a sweet setup :).
 

KAL2006

Banned
Can't wait for half my apps and games to not work, release them already!

Games don't matter, PC gamers will continue to buy their x86 gaming laptops and PCs. However I do think it's vital that Adobe, Office and all the main PC business and work software finally runs on ARM. And not shitty cut down versions for Android. I have a Tab S7 Plus and if there was a future Android Tablet that I can dual boot to a Windows experience where Microsoft finally ported their apps to be compatible for ARM I'd love it. It's time to move away from x86, ARM is just lighter, thinner, less power consumption and cheaper.
 
I hope so. I'm so tired of people saying how Apple M1 has changed their lives. Apple needs competition badly.

I work on a Mac mini m1 and, compared to my MacBook Pro 2015, I don't see anything life changing. Compilation times and maybe some video editing stuff but that's pretty much it, nothing that exciting. And for sure not worth the thousands that Apple keeps asking for it.
Apple M1 has changes my life. Period. The jump from laptop pc to M1 is huge.

It´s my 1st Mac and i will never go back to windows…. 11! 11 ! 11 !😱
 
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Remember when Qualcomm was caught with it's pants down by Apple A6 and NEVER recovered?
They made promises but never delivered.
They already tried this game with Microsoft and failed.
Talk less, do more.
 
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SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Much like Apple's M1 puffery and marketing bluster, I believe "Desktop-class gaming capabilities" is meant to refer to powerful mobile GPU's, not literal desktop parts.
Likely this is about entering the laptop market, competing with Chromebooks and the like.
 
Qualcomm making M1 type chips

-NUVIA mostly composed of former Apple engineers
-Apple suing because they don't like their secrets going out from former employees
-Windows 11 ARM will finally run smoothly
-Understand the need for powerful ARM based laptops with 5G/Wifi6e, not sure how desktop will work with rival x86 especially considering gaming: no native built games for Windows ARM :pie_thinking:
 
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