167
Qualcomm Aiming For Snapdragon X Elite GPU Support In Linux 6.11
(www.phoronix.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
167 points (98.3% liked)
Linux
48099 readers
647 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Not a given. Translating can still be more efficient.
If both AMD/Intel and Qualcomm do a good job with their core design and the same process node is used, I don't see how a translation layer can be any faster than a CPU natively supporting the architecture. Any efficiency advantages ARM supposedly has over x86 architecturally will vanish in such a scenario.
I actually think the efficiency of these new Snapdragon chips is a bit overhyped, especially under sustained load scenarios (like gaming). Efficiency cores won't do much for gaming, and their iGPU doesn't seem like anything special.
We need a lot more testing with proper test setups. Currently, reviewers mostly test these chips and compare them against other chips in completely different devices with a different thermal solution and at different levels of power draw (TDP won't help you much as it basically never matches actual power draw). Keep in mind the Snapdragon X Elite can be configured for up to "80W TDP".
Burst performance from a Cinebench run doesn't tell the real story and comparing runtimes for watching YouTube videos on supposedly similar laptops doesn't even come close to representing battery life in a gaming scenario.
Give it a few years/generations and then maybe, but currently I'm pretty sure the 7840U comfortably stomps the X Elite in gaming scenarios with both being configured to a similar level of actual power draw. And the 7840U/8840U is AMD's outgoing generation, their new (horribly named) chips should improve performance/watt by quite a bit.
Not what i am saying. I said that it is not a given, that translation means less performance.
In theory you can achieve similar or even higher performance, all depending on how well or how bad the original machine code is. Especially when you can optimize it for a specific architecture or even a specific CPU.
And yes ARM has shown to be more power efficient then x86 CPUs even on higher load (not just low powered embedded stuff).
Wine/Proton on Linux occasionally beats Windows on the same hardware in gaming, because there's inefficiencies in the original environment which isn't getting replicated unnecessarily.
It's not quite the same with CPU instruction translation, but the main efficiency gain from ARM is being designed to idle everything it can idle while this hasn't been a design goal of x86 for ages. A substantial factor to efficiency is figuring out what you don't have to do, and ARM is better suited for that.
It has been since P4
As you said yourself, it's not the same thing. Proton can occasionally beat Windows because Vulkan might be more efficient doing certain things compared to DirectX (same with other APIs getting translated to other API calls). This is all way more abstract compared to CPU instruction sets.
If Qualcomm actually managed to somehow accurately (!) run x86 code faster on their ARM hardware compared to native x86 CPUs on the same process node and around the same release date, it would mean they are insanely far ahead (or, depending on how you look at it, Intel/AMD insanely far behind).
And as I said, any efficiency gains in idle won't matter for gaming scenarios, as neither the CPU nor the GPU idle at any point during gameplay.
With all that being said: I think Qualcomm did a great job and ARM on laptops (outside of Apple) might finally be here to stay. But they won't replace x86 laptops anytime soon, and it'll take even longer to make a dent in the PC gaming market because DIY suddenly becomes very relevant. So I don't think ("PC") gaming handhelds should move to ARM anytime soon.
I think that's what we see with apple silicon, right?
Ehhh, kinda. Intel E-cores kinda throw off the balance a bit, but generally yeah.
It's not that uncommon in specialty hardware with CPU instructions extensions for a different architecture made available specifically for translation. Some stuff can be quite efficiently translated on a normal CPU of a different architecture, some stuff needs hardware acceleration. I think Microsoft has done this on some Surface devices.
@ShortN0te @narc0tic_bird + battery life, which is always useful on a handheld
You would need some ISA that greatly benefits from translating. Like ELBRUS.