AMD's first Arm-based CPUs in over a decade, codenamed Soundwave, are heading to Surface laptops from Microsoft. AMD Soundwave APUs To Bring Arm's Competitive Value To Surface Laptops As Apple's Pressure Mounts on Microsoft The AMD Soundwave SoCs were first spotted back in 2024, when they were listed as a next-generation 3nm APU design. Few details were known back then, but a year later, we learned about Soundwave being AMD's attempt at the Arm ecosystem. Initially primed for a 2026 launch for Microsoft's 2026 Surface lineup, the plans changed…
The Hot Take: That seems skewed against the victor.
Qualcomm has won two claims against Arm in a Delaware court, collecting a princely $2 while both companies proclaimed victory.
According to Notebookcheck the jury found Arm breached its licensing agreement and intentionally interfered with Qualcomm’s business relationship with Meta Platforms. After a five-day trial, it awarded nominal damages of $1 for each successful claim.
The verdict gave both corporate publicity departments enough ammunition to declare success, although neither company has finished fighting. Arm shares fell about a per…
The Hot Take: Nice if that's the case, and big trouble for Qualcomm too.
Internal tests of the Exynos 2700 have Samsung LSI buzzing – the chipset outperformed Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 (both of them, actually), according to anonymous insiders. The testing was pretty thorough and included CPU, GPU, NPU and power efficiency benchmarks.
First, let’s clear this up – Qualcomm has officially confirmed that there will be two Elite chips in the next generation. They are tentatively being called the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro. This is separate from the non-Elite Gen 6 chip, by the way.…
The Hot Take: This is the biggest limitation to ARM SoC's as their GPU's are mid-range. So acceptance from gamers will require ability to get high end GPU for performance.
The Snapdragon X2 Elite might have doubled down on compute performance, but a multitude of tests show that its GPU continues to be one of the weakest links of the SoC. Fortunately, a user shows that the RTX Spark driver has introduced unofficial eGPU support through a USB4 connection, allowing you to experience competitive shooters like Overwatch at upwards of 200FPS. Redditor shares “simple to follow” instructions on how to bring eGPU support to Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops Notebooks like the ASUS Zenbook A16 offer a solid configuration to…
The Hot Take: They just said that iPhone model loss would be off set by datacenter sales. So i guess they'll be hurting for a bit.
Qualcomm has predicted its entry to the datacenter market will yield $15 billion of annual revenue by FY 2029 – huge growth, but also a modest number compared to its more established rivals. The chip design firm dangled the $15 billion figure on Wednesday along with its Q3 results, which included a warning that revenue from its business selling modems to Apple is about to crater. Execs told investors that supply chain constraints mean Qualcomm expects “an acceleration in the step down of Apple product revenues” as its contribution to the next…
The Hot Take: APU is the cousin of ARM's SoC. Mid-range across the board if you ask me is what I'm seeing the industry shifting to.
Intel is reportedly developing a socketed Nova Lake-S processor with substantially stronger integrated graphics than recent desktop Core products. Information attributed to hardware leaker Jaykihn describes a configuration with twelve Xe3P graphics cores.
The Hot Take: Is ARM going to shine or show it's mid-range performance?
The NVIDIA N1X is surely powerful enough for the Windows-on-Arm market, but the current prototype software prevents it from reaching its full potential. User Puts Microsoft's Unreleased NVIDIA N1X-Equipped Surface Laptop Ultra To Test; Discovers Chip Being Held Back by Unfinished Drivers The NVIDIA RTX Spark laptops will debut in the coming weeks, and if you were wondering about their performance numbers, here is an early sneak peek by a TechPowerUp user, who got his hands on an early prototype from Microsoft. The user "Fouquin" says he found…
The Hot Take: Still not buying the ARM SoC's are better than discrete system CPUs. We'll have to see how Intel/AMD ACE instructions far against this.
NVIDIA has started using clusters of its own Vera processors to develop future CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators. The company says initial electronic design automation testing shows performance improvements of up to 1.
The Hot Take: Interesting, we'll see if they get the ext GPU with the SoC internal GPU issues worked out but I'm still thinking Risc-V may do it better.
Windows on Arm systems were long regarded as an interesting alternative to conventional PCs, but they were significantly limited when it came to demanding hardware support. A current test now shows that this situation is gradually changing. A notebook with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite could be successfully operated with an external NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, […]
The decision to employ older Cortex-X925 and Cortex-A725 cores on the RTX Spark to form a 20-core CPU configuration will probably haunt NVIDIA because a new Cinebench 2026 leak reveals that the chipset produces subpar multi-core results, despite Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra housing the SoC set to the ‘High Performance’ profile. Fortunately, the RTX Spark manages to retain some dignity in the single-core benchmark. High Performance mode on Surface Laptop Ultra isn’t enabled by default, but hidden configuration allows RTX Spark’s Cortex…