this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Interesting. Samsung making a bold move here, but one that could make sense.

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Samsung: We make fun of Apple until we copy them outright.

See also: removing ports, having a notch

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Let apple take the flak for moving the market and then quietly copy because of course it's more lucrative... classic.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This device has a notch?

Also when did Samsung attack apple for using M1/M2/M3?

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (4 children)

ARM is great on Linux where almost everything has an ARM version and apple can simply mandate that everyone supports it, but where are you going to find windows programs compiled for ARM?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The only reason Windows is still relevant is a massive volume of legacy x86 applications.

If that laptop won't support x86 emulation, it'd be actually worse that Linux ARM laptop.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Windows is relevant because it's a better product for the average user. The same goes for OSX. ARM isn't going to change any of that. Especially with NVIDIA GPUs being broken and a pain in the ass.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Windows is not a 'better' product, that would be ChromeOS. Zero configuration means nothing can get broken.

The average user who started with MS Office 95 is now 50 years old. The younger average user at least knows there are alternatives to Windows.

PC gaming is a whole other can of worms. I keep hearing that Valve did some black mahic and now most of Steam games work on Linux with no issues.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been gaming on linux for about two years now through steam proton and it's really good. Some games don't run because of anti cheat, some games run even better than on windows.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Gaming on Linux has come a long way and I always prefer to run it on Linux rather than a dedicated Windows boot, if possible.

But if you rely on VRR, DLSS and have a decent HDR display, Linux unfortunately still isn't quite there yet. VRR/HDR is mostly unsupported systemwide currently. DLSS sometimes works, sometimes requires a lot of debugging and ends up actually hurting the performance.

If your hardware setup allows you to run your games at a decent framerate without DLSS/VRR, this likely won't be an issue for you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Google Docs is the only meaningful competitor to Office. No one I know wants to try Linux desktop and I think it’s hard to convince anyone to give up the convenience of Windows. Proton works but in my experience requires too much experimentation for the average user.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

That’s one thing macOS does well: legacy support— at least for x64.

for now…

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have been running Windows 10+11 on arm for years now, the next version of Windows Server 2025 already has an arm preview release. Windows ARM has for a long time had x86 emulation, and has supported x64 emulation since about the start of COVID.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is it actually emulation? Macs don't do that.

They convert the x86 code into native ARM code, then execute it. Recompiling the software takes a moment, and some CPU instructions don't have a good equivalent, but for the most part it works very well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

MacOS does use the term translations for its Rosetta Layer while Windows Arm uses the term emulation. I do believe the technical difference is that MacOS converts x64 code to arm64 on the fly, while part of the reason for emulation on Windows is to support x86 and other architectures. Someone more knowledgeable than me may be able to better compare the two offerings.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

They did a good job when moving from os9-osx. Adobe took a looong time to move to osx

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

MS has been working on ARM for years. To think otherwise is naive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Oh yeah but has anyone else?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Any program written for the .net clr ought to just run out of the box. There’s also an x64 to ARM translation layer that works much like Apple’s Rosetta. It will run the binary through a translation and execute that. I have one of the windows arm dev units. It works relatively well except on some games from my limited experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't know what these chips are like, but x86 software runs perfectly on my ARM Mac. And not just small apps either, I'm running full x86 Linux servers in virtual machines.

There is a measurable performance penalty but it's not a noticeable one with any of the software I use... ultimately it just means the CPU sits on 0.2 load instead of 0.1 load and if it spikes to 100% then it's only for a split second.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think Qualcomm is probably charging far too much for the SoC. Their pricing has been super high for years because they know nobody is matching their performance on the mobile space. Not sure how much of it is the smaller process nodes too.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Isn't that a bubble? Phones are 10x more performant than they need to be anyway. Not like in gaming/server market where it's always too slow, no matter how fast.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My phone is now 7 years old and it still works perfectly. Maybe not the newest of the newest games, but i don't care for games on my phone anyways. And the amazing contributors keeping lineageos up to date for my phone model makes me not need a newer phone :)

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

My understanding is that Apple had bought up all of TSMC’s 3nm capacity in 2023. That exclusivity may be up now explaining why Qualcomm is selling chips based on 3nm. Looks like they are working with Samsung and TSMC on this chip. This article is bizarre as it underplays the reason someone would buy this laptop. Long battery life, low heat, high performance thin/light is very valuable. Not everyone wants to play games. Will be interesting to see if Microsoft delivers.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If it is not cheaper than x86 then people will just keep buying x86 computers.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

If power consumption is lower, that means can have a more compact cooling. There's a lot of people who would pay the premium for longer lasting and lighter laptops, myself included.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

If power consumption is lower

Is it tho?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If it’s anything like the new MacBooks, then hell yes. I can go full days at the office, programming, without a charger. My old dell xps would crap out after 2 hours, tops.

Edit: I would come home with 60% battery left on the MacBook.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If it isn't, then there is almost no point in going ARM for Windows. Apple demonstrated that it can be quite lower or better perf at same power consumption.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

meanwhile the long gone RISC hype train

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Do you mean RISC V

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah i was wainting for that ? Did they ever had any plan to do so ?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

ARM is RISC (or at least a version of it).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I won't write them off before I've owned one, I imagine they could be good for things like battery life but I'm not sure if they'd be an improvement over other chips like ryzen apus.

Will be curious to see the advantage and disadvantages.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Samsung uses their competitors chips? Kinda weird to see

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What, how is Qualcomm competing with Samsung?

Apple uses Samsung hardware, btw.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Samsung make exynos chips which are arm. But Samsung even uses qualcomm in their phones in other regions so it's not unusual

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exynos are subpar to Qualcomm arm chips, or at least they were not so far ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

To surprise of no-one :)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Not sure what you mean, they've always used Snapdragons? The S23 from 2023 uses one, and the S3 from 2012 uses them in some models, and most galaxies between those do as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think these ARM chips are more expensive than we realize! Apple's egregiously high upgrade pricing on MacBooks sucks, and 8gb of RAM by default on the base model sucks as well, but it is likely to raise the average sale price of devices equipped with their chips. This has been known for some time, I feel.

I'll cut Samsung some slack since we don't know the unit cost of the Snapdragon chips, and they aren't likely to sell out of these devices right away even with competitive pricing because of the state of Windows on ARM. I'm excited to see how Linux support pans out on the next generation of non-Apple ARM notebooks, though; I think this is a chance for some manufacturers to take Linux more seriously, as Linux on ARM is actually not a terrible experience.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or it is just corporate greed. Samsung would love to position something that is just okay into a premium price tier and not have to pay Intel. Sure they’re going to pay Qualcomm instead but you can bet that Qualcomm is giving some great introductory prices to their early partners.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

For example Apple uses HBM instead of DDR5. They also give the CPUs heaps of L1/L2/L3 cache to avoid memory access as much as possible. And some of the stuff they do with flash memory is just as expensive.

That's the real reason Apple Silicon Macs cost so much and I'm more than willing to pay that price. But it's also the reason those Macs are so fast.

How does Qualcomm compare? I have no idea.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I know Windows does ARM to x64 translation decently, but does the chip also feature special hardware functionality to aid this, like the M chips (TSO for example)?

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