Game Changer? (Premium)

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 850 announcement is a bit more profound than is immediately obvious. If the firm’s multi-year plan works out, Intel is in serious trouble in the PC market.

Again. Or something.

It all started out so promising. Microsoft announced in December 2016 that it was porting Windows 10 to the ARM platform, starting with Qualcomm, the market leader.

“I am suddenly very excited for a future in which portable PCs can be true best-of-breed devices that meld the best of the PC with the best of today’s mobile devices, and do so in a way that isn’t burdened by compromise,” I wrote at the time.

So, yes, I was immediately onboard. But then I had some inside information about Microsoft’s rationale for hooking up with Qualcomm: It was tired of Intel, with its near monopoly in the PC market, not moving quickly enough to address the battery life and connectivity issues that were making PCs less and less relevant.

Intel, it decided, needed a kick in the ass.

We then spent most of 2017 waiting for the revolution to start. But there were a few moments of clarity.

In May, at last year’s Computex, Microsoft announced its Always Connected PC initiative. Coming PCs based on both Intel and Qualcomm chipsets would offer integrated cellular broadband capabilities and great battery life. And they would utilize a Microsoft-made x86 emulation technology that would let (32-bit) Windows desktop applications run normally.

Then, in September, we learned that Microsoft’s PC maker partners were “on track” to deliver the first ARM-based Always Connected PCs by the end of the year. That never actually happened, however, and the first ARM-based PCs didn’t arrive until this past spring. In fact, only this week are they really shipping broadly.

Brad and I got our first hands-on time with the first two Windows 10 on ARM PCs, the HP Envy x2 and the ASUS NovaGo, back in December. The former, in particular, seemed to offer an impressive industrial design with premium touches. And both would be sold with reasonable price tags.

And then the bottom fell out.

I identified two key problems with this platform in reviewing the HP Envy x2. First, Windows 10 on ARM has major and confusing compatibility issues because it can only run 32-bit (Intel x86) desktop applications (and, as it turns out, 32-bit Store apps too). And second, the performance is terrible. Just terrible.

“While Windows 10 on ARM is, in some ways, a technological marvel, the performance and compatibility issues are far too problematic for PC users,” I concluded. “This platform is wrong for traditional PCs.”

Since writing that review, I spoke with Qualcomm and found out about their plans to jump-start the Windows 10 on ARM efforts. Like many, I was worried if the removal of Terry Myerson from Microsoft—he was a key enabler of Windows 10 on ARM and Qualcomm’s involvement with the platform—meant that this platform had hit a dead-end. Further, I was nervous that Qualcomm’s smartphone-focused chipsets would never adequately work on the PC.

Qualcomm asserted that it was committed to Windows 10 on ARM and that it had a multi-year, multi-generational chipset project in the works that would set things right.

Short-term, Windows 10 on ARM would see improvements even on the current Snapdragon 835-based chipset, thanks to refinements in the April 2018 Update and Qualcomm’s work to ensure that key application makers, like Adobe, had what they needed to port their wares to ARM. (This is key because Adobe Photoshop Elements is available in the Microsoft Store for Windows 10, but it is a 64-bit app, so it will not run on ARM-based PCs.)

Qualcomm is also working with wireless carriers from around the world to ensure that Windows 10 on ARM systems are compelling to potential users. Here in the United States, for example, I was told that Sprint would provide free unlimited LTE data to buyers of Windows 10 on ARM PCs through its network, and that deal has been publicly announced. Amazon, Microsoft, and other retailers around the world will soon announce their own deals.

But the new family of chipsets, starting with the Snapdragon 850, is the biggest news. Of course it is.

Instead of using smartphone-optimized chipsets like the Snapdragon 835 or 845, Qualcomm is instead creating new chipsets that are optimized for compute performance and thus for the PC. The 850 is the first, but Qualcomm is already plotting its successors for down the road.

At Computex, the firm is showing off a Snapdragon 850-based reference design PC, but no PC makers are expected to show up with their own designs. That said, Qualcomm will announce additional PC makers who are signing up to deliver Windows 10 on ARM PCs. That’s in addition to the first three, HP, ASUS, and Lenovo.

And it looks promising. According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 850 will provide a 30 percent performance boost, thanks to its Kryo 385 CPU. It will provide a 30 percent graphics performance boost, thanks to its Adreno 630 Visual Processing System. It will provide a 20 percent battery life improvement. And a 20 percent improvement in LTE speeds, to 1.2 Gbps.

The Snapdragon 850 will also provide Qualcomm Aqstic and aptX audio, with virtual surround sound capabilities. 4K video capture capabilities. And optimized, hardware-accelerated support for Microsoft’s machine learning and AI technologies. (This will be an area where Windows evolves in the near future.) There will be new form factors, new deployment models, new capabilities, and new regions brought on-board.

Qualcomm isn’t yet talking about what happens after the 850 specifically, of course. But I think it’s fair to say that we can expect future chip designs to arrive in parallel with Qualcomm’s chips for smartphones and other efforts. And that performance will remain a key focus for these PC-focused chipsets of the future.

And that has me thinking, again, about Intel.

Qualcomm is polite and professional when it comes to discussing Intel. But I have sources at Microsoft who are not so polite, and they’ve been very frank about the situation as they see it. The goal is nothing short of getting all those “f@#$ing Intel Inside stickers” off of PCs, as I was told.

That should excite you, even if you like Intel and wish to see it succeed. Competition benefits us all. And Qualcomm being serious about the PC market is nothing but good news.