Ask Paul: March 14
Happy Friday! We have friends in town, our third week straight with visitors, so it’s been super-busy and we’ll be away over the weekend. Complicating matters, Laurent was off yesterday and today, so I’ve been trying to keep up with the news, too. And I had to get up at 4:30 am yesterday for a sunrise canal boat thing, and … I’m exhausted. So please bear with me. :)ЁЯР▓ Snapdragon X v2timo47 asks:With the upcoming next gen Snapdragon chips, what are the chances of a version that won’t require fans? My feeling is that primary focus will be on making them more powerful to match Apple, and not so much on increased efficiency?What I’ve been told is that the focus on v1 was on CPU and the focus on v2 is GPU. I would have almost assumed that NPU was the focus, but I guess that was just happening regardless. What Microsoft/Qualcomm needed was an Arm chip that could meet the performance of x86 for real. And it had always fallen short before. Clearly, they nailed it on v1 in that regard–with some help from Microsoft’s improved Prism emulator–but now they need a similar push for GPU. And so that’s happening.I will say, I don’t quite understand or even agree with the expansion of Snapdragon X into lower-end versions mid-stream on v1. They added Plus variants, then more plus variants, and then an even lower X tier. And while some of that can be explained by binning, now it feels like they’re just treading water until v2 is ready. I’m surprised this is taking so long.Regarding the fan issue, I suppose lower-end variants could be used in fanless systems, but these things currently sell in low enough numbers that creating unique designs just for that many not make sense. For example, Microsoft will never make two Surface Pro designs, one for a fanless version and one with fans, unless it can sell enough of both. But this may not matter. While I was initially worried about this, fans aren’t a real-world issue with Snapdragon X-based PCs, you never hear them anyway. And having them there means you can at least use the compute when needed, unlike with Apple’s fanless MacBook Air, where all it can do is slow down the processor to lower heat.Related to this, Pakeha asks:Pretty much everything for ARM is laptops right now. Hopefully, the desktop PC will come. I am looking forward the NUC type computers. Any thoughts on the possibility before 2026?The first Snapdragon X-based NUCs were announced at CES in January, so that’s happening now. (Geekom announced theirs early, angering Qualcomm.) The bigger push on the desktop PC side will likely occur when the Snapdragon X v2 chips arrive–I’m hearing September–with improved GPUs. And/or the MediaTek/Nvidia chipset(s), which I believe are on a similar schedule.Given the nature of NUC form factor PCs, though, there’s no reason current-gen Snapdragon X chips can’t be quite effective right now. But this is still a low-volume thing, and most of the emphasis will be on laptops, whi…The post Ask Paul: March 14 appeared first on Thurrott.com.
