Something odd happened to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Dev Kit, an $899 mini PC powered by Windows 11 and the company’s latest Snapdragon X Elite processor. Qualcomm decided to abruptly discontinue the product, refund all orders (including for those with units on hand), and cease its support, claiming the device “has not met our usual standards of excellence.”
↫ Taras Buria at Neowin
The launch of the Snapdragon X Pro and Elite chips seems to have mostly progressed well, but there have been a few hiccups for those of us who want ARM but aren’t interested in Windows and/or laptops. There’s this story, which is just odd all around, with an announced, sold, and even shipped product suddenly taken off the market, which I think at this point was the only non-laptop device with an X Elite or Pro chip. If you are interested in developing for Qualcomm’s new platform, but don’t want a laptop, you’re out of luck for now. Another note is that the SoC SKU in the Dev Kit was clocked a tiny bit higher than the laptop SKUs, which perhaps plays a role in its cancellation.
The bigger hiccup is the problematic Linux bring-up, which is posing many more problems and is taking a lot longer than Qualcomm very publicly promised it would take. For now, if you want to run Linux on a Snapdragon X Elite or Pro device, you’re going to need a custom version of your distribution of choice, tailored to a specific laptop model, using a custom kernel. It’s an absolute mess and basically means that at this point in time, months and months after release, buying one of these to run Linux on them is a bad idea. Quite a few important bits will arrive with Linux 6.12 to supposedly greatly improve the experience, but seeing is believing.
Qualcomm made a lot of grandiose promises about Linux support, and they simply haven’t delivered.
“The launch of the Snapdragon X Pro and Elite chips seems to have mostly progressed well, ”
Was it really?
According to digitimes it was a dud:
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20240916PD211/qualcomm-market-ai-pc-mediatek-2024.html?
And just yesterday the news dropped, that the intergrated NPU is massively underperforming:
“TL;DR – We see 1.3% of Qualcomm’s NPU 45 Teraops/s claim when benchmarking Windows AI PCs”
https://github.com/usefulsensors/qc_npu_benchmark
There was a lot of early positive press about how energy efficient they are. But then there was a lot of negative press about how incompatible they are, especially with games. We’ve also seen some hard limits at hte upper end of performance (we’ve seen the same with Apple’s MX chips, though it doesn’t get as much press on the Apple side as these Samsung chips have received – I believe that comes down to brand marketing, and maybe the lack of a solid x86 emulation story, which Apple does have.)
The reason ARM is going to dominate has everything to do with their business model. They charge rent, to license their tech, and allow companies to extend their tech with their own customizations, and work out production themselves. For companies like Apple and Samsung, that’s always going to be more appealing than the alternative. The x86 vendors make commodity hardware, and sell finished units for profit margin (like good capitalists). That model works well for workstations, and might work for laptops with an effort at efficiency (we are seeing some of the results of that now with recent Intel and AMD chips – so much for that ISA theory…). But that model doesn’t work as well for companies that want to offer more of a differentiator.
To AMD’s credit, they’ve been offering custom design services for a while, so we have them in games consoles, and Steam Deck, an some other semi-custom places. This is the middleground between Intel’s aggressive commodity play, and ARM’s do-it-yourself approach. Interestingly, Intel is now pivoting in that direction, and away from the balls out commodity model they had been using for the last few decades. The evidence for this, is that they are selling off their fab business, just like AMD did a decade and a half ago. That’s only partly driven by their failures in the fab business, which has a decade long runway to recover from. It’s also driven by changes in the chip consumption landscape (their consumers – other hardware makers, not end-consumers). I suspect we’ll see a lot more semi-custom chipsets from Intel going forward.
As a side note, I wonder whether the new arrangement between Intel and AMD to work on x86 together (whatever that means) will lead to some of the minor fixups to the ISA that would make sense – like ditching some of the very old backward compatibility stuff that makes their decode pipeline just a little more complicated than it needs to be.
Intel is not selling their fabs. And ARM themselves aren’t doing too hot, since they are not raking in that much money off the licenses and their IPO didn’t generate even remotely close to the valuation SoftBank wanted to recoup their investment.
I thought that plan was announced, but maybe it’s just an option at this point. It was definitely mentioned as a potential.
I don’t think AMD or Intel can compete with ARM at this point, mostly due to business model and business structure. And then there’s RISC-V following the Linux trajectory. It would not be surprising to hear they are having trouble.
No. It was never announced and there is no plan.
Intel’s current CEO made it clear their foundry is an integral part of their business model/strategy.
As far as inability to compete with ARM. It depends on which markets and which vendors.
Although products using ARM ISA are having great success. ARM themselves are having a hard time, since their business model is a bit stagnant in terms of license revenue. FWIW Qualcomm and Apple, are completely different entities to ARM,
Risc-V is also having massive issues, and the central org had to basically fire a huge chunk of their workforce just to keep the lights on. They are having a very hard time pivoting away from anything that is not extreme embedded (with the associated low/nonexisting margins).
“Bigger hiccup” according to whom? How many people who want a computer with a Snapdragon X Elite want to run Desktop Linux on it? I mean, as a percentage of the total market for these things.
And this is why Desktop Linux people cheering for ARM (or even RISC-V) is dumb: PCs are a known quantity (and they even have iGPUs with open-source drivers), but the moment you leave the leafy suburbs of PC-land and step onto ARM or RISC-V territory, all bets are off, you are entering a world of non-standard bootloaders and proprietary drivers that require hacked Linux kernels to function.
kurkosdr,
I grant you that all the problems with ARM bootloading and general lack of standards creates a lot of trouble…but that doesn’t mean linux users don’t want good ARM computers. Having used a few raspberry PIs, I’d say software compatibility is already quite good on ARM. If an ARM vendor officially supported linux on hardware in the same class as apple M# ARM cpus, it would be a winner. Many of us want qualcomm to do this successfully however execution really matters and too often linux gets treated as a second class platform. 🙁
Nope, it’s garbage, with the lack of hardware acceleration for OpenGL being the big issue. This can be traced to the fact the RPis (like many other ARM boards) are powered by a smartphone SoC, where OpenGL support isn’t universal. Even the Raspberry Pi 5 doesn’t do OpenGL, it only does OpenGL ES and Vulkan. Too bad most Desktop Linux software that requires OpenGL graphics acceleration requires OpenGL proper, not OpenGL ES.
Really, I wanted to love my RPI3B+, but ended up with a passively-cooled Mini PC with an i7-5500U. At least an i7-5500U (and the UEFI bootloader it comes with) is a known quantity.
kurkosdr,
That’s your take, but it really depends on what you need it for. I’d always like better support from manufacturers, that’s a given. But most of my daily linux workload isn’t GPU accelerated anyway.
If it works for you, then more power to you. But it doesn’t mean that others don’t want linux ARM computers. It seems like we should be in agreement about calling for better manufacturer support.
Problem is, manufacturers don’t care no matter how loudly you “call”. Hence why considering poor Desktop Linux support a the bigger problem of the Snapdragon X Elite (as Thom did) is absurd: The 9 people who want to run Desktop Linux on laptops with this chip aren’t what’s keeping Qualcomm’s CEO up at night.
kurkosdr,
Well, it still might be in Qualcomm’s interest to support linux though, especially if it turns out that windows users aren’t eager to buy their ARM cpus.
Just like you wanted to love your RPI, I think there’s pent up demand for linux ARM computers…but we can agree execution matters. I think they could do well selling well supported quality linux products.
The main attraction of the RPi is its the low price (if you have the peripherals, you can get away with the board, a case, and a power supply). But if you think people will buy a $1000+ laptop and rip out the OS to install Desktop Linux, that’s not how it happens. Desktop Linux has managed to find a niche in IT professionals (who are managing x86 Linux servers), hence the 4% you see on StatCounter, but Desktop Linux on ARM64 is non-existent other than a few people who have moral views on ISAs.
kurkosdr,
I’ll state the obvious: RPI exists in a completely different market, IOT in particular, not typically desktop computing. Anyway, I don’t understand why you are saying this, it’s absolutely what many, if not most of linux users do including me. In my case I usually opt for high end but 2nd hand laptops to bring the cost down, which is almost always a device that originally shipped with windows. Linux vendors are good but niche, which makes them quite a lot more expensive than windows commodity computers.
https://system76.com/laptops-ultraportables
https://system76.com/laptops-powerful
x86 is still a monopoly, but apple has shown that ARM can be really compelling for portables. Although it’s not desktop, datacenters are also investing in ARM.
I think software compatibility is fairly easily divided.
If it’s in the distros repo, it great.
If it’s outside, it’s non-existent or (arguably worse) full of issues.
Simple example, I want a Pi to run Pi-hole, 0 issues.
I want to run some old framework you need to develop a legacy system ? Nothing. Or, more likely, even if ARM support technically exists, you have the Wrong ARM
Adurbe,
I agree….it really comes down to if you have the source code or not. Most code doesn’t rely on x86. Often all it takes to run on ARM is a recompile. I was really impressed with how simple and transparent this was, to the point where I honestly wouldn’t know if it’s running on ARM or x86, if not for the fact my x86 desktop runs much faster. I would not buy an ARM device if I were stuck with x86 software though.
My main ongoing gripe with ARM has been the hardware/driver/booting situation. I want to be able to take a distro of my choosing and run it on the hardware of my choosing, but ARM needs to become standardized. There are initiatives but who knows if significant ARM standardization will ever be realized. 🙁
No the hardware is not terribly linux-friendly, and the manufacturers of such hardware are severely shooting themselves in the foot here.
Linux on ARM can give you a full native experience, The vast majority of linux software – including drivers for arbitrary hardware, is open source and has already been compiled for ARM. There is virtually no downside to using ARM if you’re running Linux.
In the server space you can get ARM instances from several cloud vendors, you can run the same workloads on them and they cost less.
Windows is at the opposite end, most software and drivers not been ported to ARM, and older stuff likely never will be. Unless you stick to the tiny handful of native apps you will be running a lot of stuff through emulation, which incurs a significant performance hit and eliminates much of the power savings benefits.
Apple are a bit of a middle ground, as they have stopped production of x64 macs. If you’re developing software for mac going forward it _MUST_ be ARM. Pretty much any software that’s actively being developed/supported has already been ported to ARM at this point.
bert64,
I’d say the userspace experience is very good on supported hardware with a supported distro. But the hardware support situation is bad. I’d really like to buy generic ARM hardware and not be dependent on a single source for OS updates using generic operating systems with mainline linux kernels instead. We have this with x86 and it’s wonderful, but ARM has been disappointing in this regard due to the lack of ubiquitous standards.
If we can turn this around it would be fantastic, but I’ve been bitten by this many times on ARM hardware. Maybe it’s too much to expect everything to just run on random ARM computers, but I practically take it for granted on x86 and I wish the level of OS support on ARM computers was comparable.
Windows dev here. To be honest I wantrd to order one of these kits for development and testing of our .NET application to asure it runs well on that platform too. But then they were sold out and Qualcomm came up with their free device cloud, where you get to spent a few hours testing on a Windows 11 system in the cloud.
It was just perfect. We could test every possible case we needed to and didn‘t have order such a dev kit, that would now be collecting dust anyway.
BTW, testing revealed that you still can‘t install Microsoft SQL Server 2022 (latest release) on Windows 11 on ARM. So yes, go buy that new Surface Pro device as a .NET dev. It will run like forever compared to your sh*ty HP or Dell laptop, but it won‘t run SQL Server.
Luckily you’ll find out that SQL Server LocalDB works, and you think, well, that will do for now, then you move on, install Visual Studio 2022 which by now runs native on ARM, but then… it doesn‘t come with the Office development module. So your sources won‘t compile.
Come on.
This is Microsoft.
Selling a Desktop OS.
On a Microsoft branded system.
They don‘t even run all their software? Even emulated would be fine, but no. It just doesn’t work.
And they wonder why everyone does web dev by now and recommends Smartphones and Tablets?
Too bad.
Unlike Apple had with their transition to ARM, Microsoft has little incentive to make sure this all works out. My guess is they just did it at Samsung’s behest to see if what would happen, and then want to “let the market decide” if it’s worth investing more. They are run by data chasers not leaders.
So again Windows on ARM ending up being a total train wreck, now who possibly could have predicted that. We all know on what operating system, outside Apple, is to ARM on what Windows is to x86 and beyond. So Qualcomm best to focus on GNU/Linux or it won’t happen in regards to the “PC desktop”. I don’t know what they were thinking with Windows, likely some upper management was involved not in touch with reality. The amount of money they must have burned for it, just beyond.
Geck,
As a proponent of linux on ARM, I don’t think we’re in a good position to criticize windows on ARM….we really ought to be working together because the standardization that windows needs could benefit linux just as much.
It’s pointless to work with Microsoft on where it comes to desktop on ARM, they are simply not interested. Google likely is a better party for that, if they ever do decide to support GNU/Linux on desktop.
Geck,
I disagree. It wouldn’t be pointless because they have more pull than linux does on standardization. Even if microsoft aren’t totally committed to ARM, the standardization that only a giant can shape is something that the linux community are in desperate need of on ARM and have been for decades.
It’s one of the reasons linux devs have often targeted apple hardware, not because apple hardware is open or well documented for FOSS, but because apple has a strong presence and apple hardware can give linux a stable development target.
So although I understand linux users sometimes feel microsoft are the enemy, in this particular instance I think it would be in our interest to work together to get ARM standardized like x86.
I wouldn’t object to google standards either, but to date they’ve let manufacturers boot custom versions of linux without standardizing the hardware. This harms us in that it prevents us from being able to boot generic operating systems like we do on x86.
No holly wars here, just facts. Microsoft is not interested in ARM on desktop succeeding and won’t do much about it. On top of that standardization isn’t really the main problem here. So people relying on Microsoft are just missing the point here completely, are barking up the wrong tree.
Geck,
We can’t kid ourselves, the lack of ARM standardization has been a systemic deficiency for linux on ARM, especially for those of us who don’t want to be tethered to the manufacturer for things like OS updates.
I don’t want to be dependent on windows, but you seem to be missing my point. Heck even on x86 there’s no denying that linux has benefited from the standardization that Microsoft requires for windows. I understand some just want to treat each other as sworn enemies, but I just think it would be a lost opportunity if we couldn’t work together on standards for the benefit of all. Standardization has a much better chance by working together than fighting.
The truth is GNU/Linux on ARM works just fine, much better then Microsoft Windows on ARM. People arguing ARM on desktop needs Windows to succeed, such people in my opinion don’t know what they are talking about and on top of that that it won’t happen. For Windows to be some sort of a factor here in near or distant future.
Geck,
You can say whatever you want, but until I can take off the shelf hardware and be confident that I can install an arbitrary OS or even compile and run my own mainline kernel without hacking, then it falls short of my expectations. The standardization is well behind x86 and it makes the linux experience bad for users like myself.
Everyday linux users are complaining too because the status quo is just as bad for us and FOSS. It sucks, but that’s the unfortunate reality. Linux has run on ARM for decades in the form of android and various SBCs running custom linux operating systems, but that falls well short of what we have with x86. Despite your tendency to lash out at microsoft, most of the x86 standards we have are thanks to them. We are clearly a benefactor of microsoft standards on x86, and we would do better to have them on ARM too. Whether you care to admit it or not for our part linux operating systems have failed to produce ARM standards over decades and it’s not for the lack of linux ARM devices. I know some people are too partisan to see that working together is beneficial for everyone: working with microsoft might well be our best opportunity to incorporate meaningful standards that would benefit linux tremendously. Or let’s just continue the pointless fighting, that way nobody wins and everyone’s happy /sarcasm.
You are too Windows centric to even recognize the fact GNU/Linux is for ARM what Windows is for x86. As for what you, as an end user, want to do with your ARM hardware and supposedly can’t, there are no such technical limitations involved. Everything you wrote is already possible for as long as your hardware/software vendors supports it. If they chose not to support such use case then what Microsoft can potentially do is to put Azure Linux on some ARM hardware and to support your use case, Windows is irrelevant here.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdragon-x-elite/48800
The future of ARM on desktop is GNU/Linux and not Windows. What companies such as Microsoft or Google can do is to speed up the progress, by providing this combo, beyond that good luck. Maybe some Chinese operating system could compete on the long run but unless it will be open source i feel that the adoption in western world could be slow. On the other hand TikTok succeeded without much issues involved.
Geck,
I’m sorry but you are 100% wrong. At home I’m completely linux centric and I have no interest in running windows. But I also live in a world where most linux users are actually running linux on windows certified hardware and be fairly confident that it will work. Most manufactures don’t treat linux as a priority. The devices that do ship with linux are typically using proprietary drivers and non-generic operating systems. You might like to gloat about the fact that they run linux under the hood, but for pragmatic people like me practicality is much more important than having this pride. I really want to benefit from FOSS and these non standard ARM devices are a fail despite the fact they run linux. You seem to be in denial about this but you are absolutely wrong to pretend that standardization is not a problem for us.
So basically what you are saying is in the end you want to be able to run something like Debian on it and ideally for device drivers to be FOSS. Why on earth do you believe Microsoft with Windows will ever resolve that for you? Windows is irrelevant here, maybe Microsoft can provide you that with something like Azure Linux in the future. Standardization isn’t the main issue here, on why you don’t have that ATM, the main problem is it’s due to a choice of vendors, to not provide you with that option. IMHO that will change in the future, Qualcomm tried with Windows and failed miserably, burning tons of cash in the process. They won’t repeat the same mistake again and next time they will rather invest this money in real enablement of such hardware, with GNU/Linux, Canonical to provide a generic image … Google might at some point come to their senses and provide some hardware with real operating system and not some limited version of it. After all they are interested in enabling standard GNU/Linux apps in both their Chrome and Android variants. So eventually they will connect the dots, i guess, especially after Qualcomm provides upstream device drivers for such hardware and one would need to be extremely stupid, not to use that. Reinventing operating systems and claiming there are better options out there, solving non existing problems, compared to available option out there. Just use the standard option that works out of the box and rather focus on the rest.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Snapdragon-X1-Audio-FW
We are getting there and over time i feel that Qualcomm will more and more start to understand, on what is really needed if they want for people to use their hardware on desktop. Bottom line it has to work and GNU/Linux is a perfect enablement option for that, good upstream support is hence a must. I am sure that the next generation of such hardware will behave better from the get go. Somebody like Google can after leverage that rather effortlessly. Software providers have all the programming languages and tools available, to compile their software for such platform. So this is it and not Microsoft Windows, that won’t ever work good on ARM, it’s just not suitable for that and on top of that there really isn’t much interest on Microsoft side to achieve that. It would undermine their Wintel monopoly.
Geck,
I’m getting the distinct impression that you have zero experience writing operating systems, which is fine, but if you had you would realize just how important platform standards are. Standards mean everything when trying to get an OS to boot and linux needs them too. But your dogmatic disdain for others blinds you to genuine opportunities to improve the situation for everyone. It speaks to human nature, I suppose, but it’s frustrating to see people double down on a hateful one-sided world view that impedes progress for everyone than work together towards common goals. 🙁
Cut the crap with such insinuations. What will happen in the next 3 to 5 years is somebody will give you a laptop with such hardware in it, or you will buy one, and then, when exploring modern operating system options, you will likely first start with Microsoft Windows, it will say unsupported, like you get with most x86 hardware these days, then you will try to find Chrome OS or Android image, considering all the abstraction invested in it, to avoid admitting Google is fully dependant on GNU/Linux and developing their own kernel is a pipe dream, it ought to work? Nop. No such image exists. Then what you will do next is you will try Ubuntu generic image, or even Azure Linux, and it will just work. Go figure! That is the reality of ARM platform and its future on consumer devices, such as on laptops. And it’s up to Qualcomm to make sure it works like that, from booting to drivers. No technical limitation stands in their way and they don’t need Microsoft to resolve that for them with more standardisation. They can fix that without much further ado and it looks like they learned their lesson and are now doing exactly that.
Geck,
I’m being serious. Operating system developers know how important platform standards are and you wouldn’t be dismissing it if you had this experience.
You’re not giving credit where credit is due. Windows tends to support hardware much longer than the industry average. It’s not perfect and win11’s requirements may be the exception to the rule, but that you can still update to a current supported version of windows on decades old hardware really puts ARM vendors to shame (including those running linux). Your argument stems from bias and is not objective.
Well, lets simply wait and see then, on who wins it out and on who is the golden standard in regards to ARM for desktop. Will it be Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Azure Linux. Which one of this two will support this hardware for longer and which one of this two will enable you to run latest version on such hardware for longer.
Geck,
Sure, we will see where things end up, However in comparing “Microsoft Azure Linux” to a desktop OS, you’ve not really shown that MS ARM standards aren’t beneficial for linux, it kind of shows the opposite.
Azure is a managed service like AWS that abstracts the hardware. Instances can even migrate several times during their lifetime. It’s not really comparable to a decade’s old desktop.
You seem to be so caught up with Microsoft, on how Microsoft will supposedly save and enable ARM on desktop, on how they are the only ones setting industry standards, for everything … Microsoft has been utter rubbish, on when it comes to ARM in general, for years, better decades. That is on why i gave the example i gave. On one side we have Windows, the operating system that will supposedly save and enable ARM on desktop, Microsoft supposedly investing all the resources and effort in it. On the other side they have what you call not even a desktop oriented operating system, not caring at all if it ever works on the hardware this news is all about. So lets see on which one of the two will end up doing a better job. In terms of supporting the mentioned hardware on the long run.
Geck,
Not really, but I’m not going to deny the role they play in setting standards. This is why I mentioned apple earlier too. I’m not really a fan of either apple or microsoft, but I’m not going to deny that their hardware standards have benefited linux developers who want and need common development targets. The linux community has failed to bring about hardware standards, instead we continue to rely on others. We can’t push computer standards the way microsoft and apple do.
Need Windows to sell enough units to make it profitable. Likely saw sales figures were well below needed to make a profit and pulled the plug early. Linux fanboys are not enough of a customer base to keep production runs of a product going. Honestly the problem is they are still trying to sell them as premium devices with a +$1000 price tag, when they will just never be that.
This always happens with Windows when they try to pivot away from x86/PC.
Their software ecosystem is just too wide, and the legacy volume just too large.
Apple can transition because they have infinitely narrower software/hardware ecosystem. Plus NeXTStep/OSX has an arguably better multi-platform architecture/approach than NT.
It is disappointing that a site such as this which purports to celebrate alternative operating systems fixates on £inux. I know that the general public think £inux = Alternative OS, but the current audience are hopefully more enlightened! Readers of this site are just as likely to delight in the exploits of Haiku, Genode, Redox and other emerging OS (I’m sure you have favourites I omitted to name), even if for a lot of quotidian stuff we revert to boring old £inux and M$ Windows.
Instead Qualcom should document the system to provide a level playing field for any alternative OS.
Unless you count Distrowatch, there are literally no other sites that regularly cover Haiku, Genode, Redox, all the BSDs, and so on. The reason you see more Linux news than anything else is because Linux is so huge and widely distributed, it’s getting changes daily and you don’t have to be here to see it. Visit Phoronix and you’ll see at least 10 Linux related stories a day, and they also cover lesser known OSes from time to time (but not nearly as much as this one).
Look back 20 years ago and this site was covering Syllable, MorphOS, OpenBeOS, RiscOS, all the PDA OSes, and emerging phone OSes like Symbian and later WebOS. What do all of those OSes have in common? They are all pretty much dead or dying, and there simply isn’t any news to cover. Similarly, all the niche OSes you named have less coverage here because there simply is not as much news about them. Sure, Thom could write an article about every point release, but then people like you would complain there is *too much* focus on niche OSes.
A good news site follows the current events, but also dedicates time to niche and retrospective news, and looking at the latest article about Sun SPARC systems from the mid 90s, I’d say there’s plenty of non-Linux stuff here if you prefer it too.