Arm expects more vendors to enter Windows PC chip market alongside Qualcomm Snapdragon

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Recap: The PC industry has been focused on CPUs based on Intel's x86 instruction set since day one. Arm has tried to get its fair share of the market for quite some time, and the company is now starting yet another belligerent assault against Intel and AMD through several chipmaking partners.

Arm Holdings is working to increase its market share in the Windows PC ecosystem. According to Rene Haas, CEO of the UK chipmaker and semiconductor designer, the Apple ecosystem has "completely converted over" and now it's time for traditional, x86-based PCs to contribute to the company's future business prospects.

Haas was asked about the PC market "potential" during Arm's latest shareholder meeting. His reply was that the British corporation is eyeing Windows as a tangible growth opportunity. PC systems built on Arm chips have been available for years, but Arm's proprietary, mobile and efficiency-focused ISA still accounts for just 1 percent of the PC market, according to the latest data provided by Canalys.

The new Arm attempt at stealing bits of the PC business away from x86 CPUs goes through a diversification of the supplier base, Haas said. For the Arm PC industry to grow, Arm chipmakers will have to provide "multiple units, multiple SKUs, multiple price points, and multiple experiences" to end customers.

Qualcomm and Asus are partnering to bring the Snapdragon X Elite SoC and new gaming-ready Arm PCs to the market, but the two companies aren't the only ones working on new Arm-based systems. Haas said that "multiple suppliers" will start serving the PC market with new Arm systems over the next 12 to 36 months.

Over the next two to three years, the Arm PC ecosystem is expected to take a significant level of market share, Haas stated. Arm PCs can provide "fantastic performance" compared to competing tech, and with a much better battery life. Thanks to the Arm ISA, manufacturers can build a "high-performance" machine with no need for an active fan.

Haas' statements suggest that many companies will start offering their Arm-equipped devices to the PC crowd in the months to come. The company is expecting significant growth once the vendor base diversifies, though different firms will likely aim for different segments of the PC business. The Snapdragon X Elite SoC is designed to power "premium" systems, while other manufacturers could choose a more inexpensive path to the Arm-based PC revolution.

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Arm expects more vendors to enter Windows PC chip market alongside Qualcomm Snapdragon

 

[LetTheWookieWin]

Unless I can build my own custom ARM-based desktop PC using a socketed (not soldered) CPU, this will be a hard pass for me. I don’t want a closed, non-upgradable platform.

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Unless I can build my own custom ARM-based desktop PC using a socketed (not soldered) CPU, this will be a hard pass for me. I don’t want a closed, non-upgradable platform.

Nah, they're inconsequential to me anyway. I own software dating back to the early DOS days, I need full native x86 compatibility for my gaming stuff and everything else. I don't want a "competitive" new architecture, I just want my x86 CPUs to be faster, harder, better, and maybe cheaper for decades to come :-D

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Nah, they're inconsequential to me anyway. I own software dating back to the early DOS days, I need full native x86 compatibility for my gaming stuff and everything else. I don't want a "competitive" new architecture, I just want my x86 CPUs to be faster, harder, better, and maybe cheaper for decades to come :-D

Why do you need full native x86 when ARM can run all x86 instructions? To my knowledge there is no x86 instruction that cannot run in the translation layer on either windows or linux.

Considering the sheer battery life of ARM based laptops, having a ARM chip with competitive performance would be far better then another power sucking x86 chip.

 

[gamerk2]

Why do you need full native x86 when ARM can run all x86 instructions? To my knowledge there is no x86 instruction that cannot run in the translation layer on either windows or linux.

At a performance hit. Itanium says "Remember me".

 

[Nelson28]

Arm is making another push into Windows PCs! Looks like they're tired of Apple having all the fun with their chips. These new machines are supposed to be powerful and have great battery life, which sounds pretty sweet.

 

[Ojref]

AMD had the right idea a few years back - a hybrid x86 and ARM CPU. I'm sure we'll see this re-emerge before too long.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

At a performance hit. Itanium says "Remember me".

Well, Alfonso brought up DOS software....pretty sure you wouldnt notice it there.

For games, the GPU on the 8cx was the limiting factor, not the CPU, even with overhead. If the X is as powerful as they claim, and especially on linux much work has been done to optimize ARM translation performance, that hit would likely be worth it in exchange for the insane battery life and still be able to play games without issue.

AMD had the right idea a few years back - a hybrid x86 and ARM CPU. I'm sure we'll see this re-emerge before too long.

A dual arch design would be a software optimization nightmare. Windows cant even get P and E cores sorted properly, and you want to throw a second totally different arch in there?

 

[LetTheWookieWin]

Why do you need full native x86 when ARM can run all x86 instructions? To my knowledge there is no x86 instruction that cannot run in the translation layer on either windows or linux.

Considering the sheer battery life of ARM based laptops, having a ARM chip with competitive performance would be far better then another power sucking x86 chip.

I think laptops are a viable use case, especially where performance is “good enough” and/or battery life is king. From the gamer and enthusiast’s perspective, I want platform upgradability and top-end performance. If ARM can deliver that, then great. But I see most hardware vendors wanting to eschew the PC’s open architecture in favor of a walled garden business model where planned obsolescence creates revenue. That’s what I worry about in a move to a post x86 world.

 

[daffy duck]

Hopefully many applications will be recompiled for ARM. I know browsers will, but I would hope Adobe ported Lightroom and Photoshop to ARM (and Linux) and also stuff like Matlab, Blender, COMSOL, etc. I don't want to run emulation mode for my most used apps.

 

[gamerk2]

Well, Alfonso brought up DOS software....pretty sure you wouldnt notice it there.

My suspicion is that native DOS wouldn't run. Aside from needing to handle the 16-bit x86 addressing scheme, the ARM chip would also need to handle the x86 real operating mode. Granted, DOS emulators are a thing to the point where booting up a native DOS OS is extraordinarily niche, but the point remains that it's unlikely to get *total* x86 backwards compatibility.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

My suspicion is that native DOS wouldn't run. Aside from needing to handle the 16-bit x86 addressing scheme, the ARM chip would also need to handle the x86 real operating mode. Granted, DOS emulators are a thing to the point where booting up a native DOS OS is extraordinarily niche, but the point remains that it's unlikely to get *total* x86 backwards compatibility.

nobody's running a native DOS OS these days LMAO. It's all through DOS emulators, and if it runs on a modern x86 chip, itll run on ARM via translation. There's no operation x86 does today that ARM cant do via translation. The 16 bit x86 scheme is already handled by DOSbox.