Qualcomm is still trying to replicate Apple's success when it switched to using Arm chips in its laptops. This time via Snapdragon X Elite, which was released 15 years after their first attempt to bring Arm to Windows.
So far, this system may be quite promising, including Qualcomm's latest promise which states that the majority of Windows games can now run on Snapdragon-based laptops which will be released soon, without the need for a porting process by 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 3/2024).
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 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.
Khalil promises that developers don't need to change the code or assets of the game to get full speed. Most existing games experience bottlenecks on the GPU side, not the CPU. Qualcomm also said that GPU performance was not affected in this emulation process.
They also confirmed that they have Adreno GPU drivers for DX11, DX12, Vulkan, and OpenCL, and will also support DX9 and up to OpenGL 4.6 via layer mapping.
Qualcomm realizes that the success of this new platform will depend on the availability of a platform that is compatible with existing applications, as stated by Micah Knapp, Qualcomm's senior director of product management.
"In the near future, we have to provide a platform for what people already have. As much as I would love to, I don't think all developers will suddenly port all their apps to Arm," said Knapp.