if you've been looking for a Windows laptop or tablet there are actually quite a few systems that are now
featuring qualcomm processors that's right the same company that
probably made the chip that's sitting inside your Android smartphone but
why the heck are they putting ARM architecture qualcomm chips in Windows
computers instead of the x86 architecture cpus from AMD and Intel
that we're all used to is this kind of like what apple's doing with their ARM
based m1 chips well yes and no so as consumer-grade ARM
chips have become more and more capable in recent years i mean just think about
how much more powerful smartphones are than they were a decade ago it's become
clear that you don't necessarily need a high-powered x86 chip to handle common
tasks like watching videos shopping online or working inside of an office
suite so Windows on ARM was conceived as a way to give laptop and tablet users
the full Windows experience they're already familiar with but with
significantly better battery life as ARM chips tend to use less power than x86
ones Windows on ARM first appeared in 2018 so
we were well into the era of smartphones as do-it-all devices by the time it
showed up but it wasn't especially well received users complained that the
qualcomm based systems were rather sluggish and it certainly didn't help
that the first systems used the snapdragon 835 an already year-old chip
that was designed more with phones in mind than laptops so while it was cool
that snapdragon gave these laptops 4g connectivity basically by default that
wasn't exactly a feature that made up for generally poor performance meaning
they didn't get off to the rock and start that apple did
another contributor is the fact that Windows for ARM doesn't have the
advantage of a vertically integrated company behind it making the hardware
and software go hand in glove together
another issue was that early Windows on our machines couldn't support many
common Windows programs natively Windows itself and apps offered through the
microsoft store were specifically written for ARM chips but other programs
had to be emulated which is to say basically they had to be translated from
x86 instructions to ARM instructions in real time which taxed the CPU and
resulted in even worse performance making matters even worse increasingly
common x64 applications so the 64-bit
version of x86 wouldn't run at all as Windows for ARM
didn't originally feature an x64 emulator
but 2018 was years ago now and Windows on ARM is a lot better these days so
what did microsoft change we'll tell you right after we thank
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secret lab today so microsoft's plan wasn't to just leave Windows on ARM
running on weak hardware with poor software support qualcomm started to
come out with chips like the snapdragon 8cx which was specifically designed for
laptops and tablets and packed a much bigger punch than the reused phone chips
microsoft then tweaked the hcx and created their own version of it called
the sq1 which made its way into their surface pro tablet lineup in 2019
qualcomm then expanded the chip product line to cover more price and performance
tiers and while their new lineup still hasn't caught up to Intel or AMD in
terms of performance the newest chip set to be released at the time we shot this
video had a multi-core performance score in geekbench comparable to a ryzen 5
2000 series so it's definitely nothing to
excuse me sneeze at indeed reviews of more recent devices have noted snappier
performance combined with multi-day battery life and we should see better
compatibility with third-party apps going forward Windows 11 is finally
introducing support for x64 programs though the feature has notably been
removed from Windows 10 since Windows 11
came out okay the way Windows on ARM handles emulation
has also been streamlined with Windows 11 being able to emulate portions of
programs that haven't been ported over to run natively on ARM so developers can
actually run combinations of x86 and 64
and ARM code at the same time if they have a program that isn't fully written
for ARM yet which is super cool microsoft has also made more developer
tools available to programmers which should encourage more software studios
to write for Windows on ARM in fact adobe has recently rolled out native
Windows on ARM versions of photoshop and lightroom with more of the creative
suite apps to follow of course Windows for ARM isn't a magic bullet for solving
the performance versus battery life problem especially if qualcomm is the
only one building chips and they have been microsoft has had an exclusivity
deal with qualcomm for Windows unarmed pcs bow that is reportedly ending soon
meaning we could see more competition coming down the road in fact it appears
the industry may be moving more toward getting chip fabricators like tsmc to
directly customize off-the-rack ARM designs instead of buying whatever
qualcomm is offering that way other chip makers that want to get their hardware
inside Windows for ARM systems can bring their own innovations maybe resulting in
higher levels of performance and allowing Windows on ARM to become a true
rival to apple's m series ecosystem just be prepared to shell out some money
if you want the best performance you can get on a Windows on ARM device as these
laptops sell for amounts that rival higher end x86 64 systems
um but with obviously less performance
but better battery right i mean who needs a charger
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