Qualcomm Tests New ARM Processor for Windows: Snapdragon X Plus

Morrissey Technology – After launching a new ARM processor for Windows-based computers called the X Elite, Qualcomm has now released its new ARM processor. The name of this ARM chip for Windows is Snapdragon The naming of the X Plus is in accordance with the SKU number for the chip, namely X1P, while the X Elite has the SKU S1E.

Qualcomm has been testing the X1P44100 and X1P46100 since at least last February. Both chips are integrated with the X65 5G model, but their architecture is unknown. However, it is estimated that the core of the X Plus will be based on the X Elite, but with lower speed. There are also those who speculate that the X Plus only has 10 cores, compared to the 12 cores on the X Elite.

Previously, Qualcomm also touted the gaming capabilities of the platform that would become Apple Silicon. Qualcomm promises that the X Elite platform can run the majority of games on Windows without the need for a porting process from the developer.

This promise was made by Qualcomm in a session at the Game Developers Conference 2024 entitled ‘Windows on Snapdragon, a Platform Ready for your PC Games’. In this session, Qualcomm engineer Issam Khalil admitted that he had tried out a number of Windows games on the yet-to-be-announced laptop using an x86/64 emulator, and according to him the games operated at almost full speed.

For information, Qualcomm said that the Snapdragon

This kind of emulator is what made the x86 to Arm transition on macOS in 2020 relatively smooth. Namely how Rosetta 2 can ‘translate’ x86 applications to Arm smoothly without experiencing a significant decrease in performance.

Yes, actually Windows has also supported x64 emulation for a long time, but it seems that Qualcomm is not too sure about this feature. Qualcomm provides three options for application developers who want their applications to run on Windows on Snapdragon.

Developers can port their applications to ARM64 natively to get the best CPU FOR4D performance and power consumption, especially since Qualcomm’s scheduler can dynamically lower the CPU frequency to save power.

Developers can create hybrid ARM64EC applications, where various Windows libraries and Qualcomm drivers can operate natively, but the application runs in emulated form. According to Khalil, the performance in this option is close to native performance. Developers can also do nothing, and their games will still be playable using x64 emulators.