Possible Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 hits Geekbench with better scores than modern Intel processors, but it is no match for the Apple M1

[Redaktion]

Qualcomm is rumoured to be developing a new high-end SoC for laptops this year, and someone may have already benchmarked it on Geekbench. The so-called Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 offers a huge performance leap over its predecessor and the Microsoft SQ2, with scores that rival the Core i7-1065G7 and Core i7-1165G7. The Apple M1 has the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 well beaten, though.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Possible-Qualcomm-Snapdragon-8cx-Gen-3-hits-Geekbench-with-better-scores-than-modern-Intel-processors-but-it-is-no-match-for-the-Apple-M1.528833.0.html

[opelit]

Wonder if it's again limited to 7W. M1 can run at 20W if no more. It's also why we should not compare performance of these two chips.

If Qualcomm will do notebook chip with normal for laptops TDP then we can talk.

[fffhgf]

Wonder if it's again limited to 7W. M1 can run at 20W if no more. It's also why we should not compare performance of these two chips.

If Qualcomm will do notebook chip with normal for laptops TDP then we can talk.

The TDP of M1 Macbook Air is 10Watts - total CPU package cores
The CPU uses only 7 watts to play rise of the tomb raider.
In the mac mini M1 its like below:
The total TDP of M1 is 14-15W for CPU cores and 10-12 W for GPU cores
so its a total of around 25-27Watts for M1

[Muhammad Anhar]

I haven't seen these Qualcomm chips being used on 13-inch laptop, but still used on Surface Pro form factor. They could be clocked higher on laptop too.

[RinzImpulse]

Single core is still crap tho, not even equal to 8th gen core i5 (yes, ARM and x86 are different arch, but Apple chips are based on ARM too)

I haven't seen these Qualcomm chips being used on 13-inch laptop, but still used on Surface Pro form factor. They could be clocked higher on laptop too.

No because of ARM limitation. The higher the can reach (at least for now) is 3.2 GHz, but it still will be hot as hell

[Jan Onderwater]

Apple has made a great leap forward on the competition and they (the competition) will have to work hard to catch up, and this will be almost impossible to match or even overtake. The total horizontal and vertical integration offers Apple a big advantage. Just look at the A-Series SOC, it is still about 2 generations ahead of the best other SOC manufacturers can produce. This is not because Apple can do magic, it is because Apple owns their own HW and OS and can optimize it. They have much better margins (android smartphones have become a commodity, can only compete on price) so they can buy the latest production capacity from TSMC. But even if, and this is a big if, others produce a SOC as fast as Apples, they still need MS or Google to produce an Operating System. This will be generic, and thus less optimized, which means, slower. And even if Google or MS come up with a very fast and good OS version for ARM SOCs, they still have to convince Software Manufacturers to make SW for their platform, which is unproven and has a small install base (since they as yet have not anything that is like Rosetta2). Why would you as a SW developer do that, when you can make SW in the same time (or less) for a Mx series Apple or X86 windows with a much larger Install base? If Apple doesn't get serious problems or make mistakes, and properly scale the M series to 12-24-36 or more cores, and design each generation 10-20% faster than the last (like the A series), Apple will walk away from what others can offer in the next few years. The only ones who can really compete will be Google and MS when they start designing their own chips and optimizing them for their operating systems. This will also mean the end of generic computer designs (X86 Wintel, Android/ChromeOS). At least this is how I see it.

[_MT_]

Apple has made a great leap forward on the competition and they (the competition) will have to work hard to catch up, and this will be almost impossible to match or even overtake. The total horizontal and vertical integration offers Apple a big advantage. Just look at the A-Series SOC, it is still about 2 generations ahead of the best other SOC manufacturers can produce. This is not because Apple can do magic, it is because Apple owns their own HW and OS and can optimize it. They have much better margins (android smartphones have become a commodity, can only compete on price) so they can buy the latest production capacity from TSMC. But even if, and this is a big if, others produce a SOC as fast as Apples, they still need MS or Google to produce an Operating System. This will be generic, and thus less optimized, which means, slower. And even if Google or MS come up with a very fast and good OS version for ARM SOCs, they still have to convince Software Manufacturers to make SW for their platform, which is unproven and has a small install base (since they as yet have not anything that is like Rosetta2). Why would you as a SW developer do that, when you can make SW in the same time (or less) for a Mx series Apple or X86 windows with a much larger Install base? If Apple doesn't get serious problems or make mistakes, and properly scale the M series to 12-24-36 or more cores, and design each generation 10-20% faster than the last (like the A series), Apple will walk away from what others can offer in the next few years. The only ones who can really compete will be Google and MS when they start designing their own chips and optimizing them for their operating systems. This will also mean the end of generic computer designs (X86 Wintel, Android/ChromeOS). At least this is how I see it.

The big difference is that Apple can do whatever it wants. While Qualcomm has to satisfy a whole range of customers. Which leads to designs tending towards common subset of features. Apple has high margins and huge volumes on its own. Therefore it can afford an expensive processor. That would be unpalatable to many players, reducing volumes and rising prices, putting more pressure on margins. I don't know what is the current situation but it used to be that Apple's chips were much more expensive to make. They were much larger dies. Also, Apple decided years ago that they want to scale to at least laptop level. And so they developed their phone processors in that direction.

Modern Windows applications work just fine on ARM. They're not native x86 in the first place. It's the legacy software which is a problem. And perhaps even some of specialist modern software that was written for performance reasons in something like C++. How difficult the transition is depends on how good your code is. For example, Apple could easily transition to x86 back in the day because they put in the effort to ensure that their code is not unnecessarily dependent on a platform. I believe the story is that they actually maintained an x86 version of Mac OS as a way of checking quality of their work. If your code is of poor quality, it might be an absolute nightmare and it might be better to just start from scratch.

So, when it comes to software, I'm not convinced it's the case that Apple better optimizes for their hardware. I think they might simply be doing a better job. And optimizations are either very focused or they are at tool chain level (compiler). But because they control both aspects, their software and hardware teams can get together and easily figure out what they want and find compromise. They can steer processor development the way that suits their goals. Much better than when you have 10 players with different ideas, perhaps even unwilling to share them as they consider them trade secrets.

[SirStephenH]

What exactly is newsworthy about an 8-core chip having slightly better multi-threaded performance than a 4-core chip? Despite the slightly higher multi-threaded performance and the author's attempt at using an apples and oranges comparison to paint this as a bigger deal than it is, Qualcomm is still far behind Intel/AMD in overall desktop/laptop performance.