Build Instead of waiting for Intel and AMD to upgrade their neural processing units (NPUs), Microsoft is pushing forward its AI PC agenda with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus system-on-chips (SoCs).
During a special event ahead of the Build conference on Tuesday, Microsoft announced that these latest Arm-compatible notebook processors from Qualcomm will power the Windows giant’s next-generation Surface Laptops and Pro tablets. Microsoft’s new Surfaces are, we’re told, just two of 20 “Copilot+ PCs.” Qualcomm says they will launch with X Elite and Plus chips starting June 18th.
First introduced last fall, the 4nm TSMC-X processor pair is among Qualcomm’s first to use a Nuvia-derived Arm-compatible CPU core design. If you don’t remember, Qualcomm acquired Nuvia for $1.4 billion in 2021, setting up an ongoing legal battle with Arm.
We’re told the X Plus will have ten CPU cores and the X Elite will have 12. The Elite can clock up to 4 to 4.2 GHz for two cores or up to 3.4 to 3.8 GHz for all cores; The Plus can reach up to 3.4 GHz for all cores. If you believe Microsoft, Qualy’s chips are more than ready to compete with Apple’s self-developed chips.
Citing Geekbench 2024, Redmond says its X Elite-equipped Surface Laptop delivers higher multi-threaded performance than Apple’s M3 MacBook Air. Apparently Microsoft hasn’t released those results yet, but similar submissions from Acer and others seem to support those claims.
However, single-core performance does seem to be higher on the M3, so that would mean that Apple’s eight-core M3 in the MacBook Air is faster per CPU core, although Qualcomm wins by having more CPU cores and potentially more performance in the benchmark.
It’s not clear how much power the X Elite needs to reach that mark. When Qualcomm introduced the X Elite last year, we were told that the chip could be configured up to 50 watts. For reference, the M3 is generally believed to have a TDP of around 20 watts.
We reached out to Microsoft for comment on how hot it is to run Qualcomm’s chips, and the IT giant declined to comment on the topic. As always, we recommend taking any vendor benchmark claims with a grain of salt.
In any case, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop, with a 12-core X Elite, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of flash storage, seems to be at least cheaper than Apple’s latest MacBook Air. So in terms of performance per dollar, Microsoft might have the edge.
In addition to Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon duo, Microsoft is also introducing an emulation layer called Prism, presumably for running older x86 apps on the laptop’s Arm cores. The software giant claims its latest-generation Surfaces are up to twice as fast as the older Arm-based Surface Pro 9 thanks to this emulation layer.
The good news is that you may not need emulation for much longer. According to Microsoft, there are already native versions of Office, Chrome, Spotify, Zoom, WhatsApp, Blender, the Affinity suite and Davinci Resolve that can run on the computers. Meanwhile, Adobe has committed to bringing its apps to Windows on Arm.
It probably doesn’t hurt that Apple started moving to Arm four years ago and many of these apps already have Arm64-compatible binaries.
Everything about her is TOP
However, building a performance-competitive Arm notebook SoC is arguably secondary to the NPU that lies at the heart of the X-pair. Capable of achieving 45 TOPS ML performance at INT8, the X Elite and Plus are said to be the only parts available today that meet Microsoft’s 40 TOPS target – something Qualcomm stated in its own launch announcement really wanted to highlight.
Currently, Intel and AMD’s competitors – the Intel 14th generation (Meteor Lake) and the AMD Ryzen 8040 series – are at the top with 10 and 16 TOPS, respectively. Qualcomm’s lead won’t last forever. While Intel previously hinted that its upcoming Lunar Lake Core processors would deliver 45 NPU TOPS, the company revealed on Monday that the chip’s integrated GPU was capable of boosting an additional 60 TOPS, boosting the chip’s overall performance would bring it to over 100 TOPS when it hits the market in the third quarter.
We expect similar gains from AMD when its next-generation Ryzen processors launch later this year. Until these chips come to market, Qualcomm appears to have the AI PC market cornered.
Compared to Apple’s M3, Qualcomm boasts that its silicon has up to 2.6 times higher NPU performance. However, while the Neural Engine in the M3 reaches a maximum performance of 18 TOPS, Apple’s newly announced M4 SoCs are capable of increasing this to 38 or perhaps more. Unfortunately, this chip is only available in the iGiant’s expensive iPad Pros.
As for what you’ll do with all of these NPU TOPS, Microsoft says they’ll enable a host of new AI features for Windows. This includes Cocreator for on-device art generation in Paint; and live captions in things like video calls. And then there’s Recall…
What’s this Windows recall all about?
Microsoft has decided to use this pre-build event to announce the Windows 11 recall for Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PCs and all other computers that meet Redmond’s hardware requirements. The feature shown here is said to be currently in preview and awaiting user feedback.
Recall is expected to automatically log everything you do on your desktop – from web pages visited to app activity and meeting conversations – and store it locally encrypted so you can search and revisit it using AI. At the moment it seems to mostly involve taking screenshots of your desktop every few seconds and saving them to memory for later searching. If you vaguely remember doing something on your PC recently, you can query it using text or dragging a scroll bar in the timeline and remembering it.
This is a real privacy nightmare, even though Redmond insists that everything on your PC stays private. From the FAQs:
We’re told that users can use Recall’s settings to “make choices about which snapshots Recall collects and stores on your device.” You can limit which snapshots Recall collects; For example, you can select specific apps or websites visited in a supported browser to filter out from your snapshots.
“In addition, if necessary, you can pause snapshots, delete some or all saved snapshots, or delete all snapshots from your device using the Recall icon in the taskbar.”
According to Microsoft, Recall won’t spy on private browsing in Edge or detect DRM-protected content, but will likely suck up things like passwords, financial information, and the like while you use your PC unless you take the above measures to stop it .
According to Microsoft, you need at least 256 GB of storage space, with at least 50 GB free; In such a configuration, Recall’s default usage is 25GB, which can store approximately three months of snapshots. This can be adjusted and old snapshots can be discarded if necessary. It’s a bit similar to the Windows 10 Timeline, which was abolished in 2021.
Microsoft has also touted several apps that provide additional support for NPU acceleration, including Davinci Resolve, Cephable and CapCut.
Swim against the current
Qualcomm’s X Plus and
As mentioned, Arm isn’t too happy about Qualcomm acquiring Nuvia and now developing its own Arm-compatible CPU cores; Both Qualcomm and Nuvia are Arm licensees, and Arm is not thrilled with the way Qualcomm has adopted Nuvia’s Arm-compatible technology. So unhappy that Arm sued Qualcomm over the whole debacle, arguing that the Snapdragon maker had violated its architectural license with Arm and needed to negotiate a new license to use Nuvia’s designs, no doubt at a higher price.
Don’t forget that Arm has asked the courts to order Qualcomm to destroy its Nuvia-derived designs, which would be a big blow not only to the Snapdragon house but also to its partners like Microsoft if it were to become a legal battle That would come.
Nuvia’s cores are also a step backwards for some in the Arm world. As we understand it, the Nuvia-derived CPU cores that are at the heart of the SoCs are based on the instructions.
In contrast, in recent years Arm has integrated AI-accelerating features – such as Scalable Matrix Extensions 2 or SME2 – into its newer Armv9 CPU architecture. These are already used by Apple in its M4 Armv9 SoCs.
Qualcomm’s decision to move away from Armv9 – the tech giant has previously used the architecture in its smartphone SoCs – and its CPU-level improvements in favor of moving AI work to NPUs means the Arm world is facing a potential The gap is: On the one hand, Microsoft and Qualcomm are today advancing Armv8 processors with custom units to specifically process ML code. And on the other hand, Arm is trying to get people up to Armv9, where AI-accelerating instructions are built into the CPU architecture by default.
Considering Microsoft has pushed hard for Qualcomm’s Armv8 chips to bring AI capabilities from the data center to the customer; Apple is Apple; Google is in love with its own on-device ML accelerators; and Samsung and MediaTek are hovering in the middle, and with Arm and Qualcomm in legal dispute, we sympathize with developers – from operating system and framework makers to app developers – who are trying to get maximum portability and maximum performance on Arm to reach. ®