by Joe Rossignol
Microsoft will tout that its future Windows laptops with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor will be faster than the MacBook Air with Apple's latest M3 chip, according to internal documents obtained by The Verge.
“Microsoft is so confident in these new Qualcomm chips that they are planning a series of demonstrations that will show how much faster these processors will be than the MacBook Air M3 for CPU tasks, AI acceleration and even app emulation,” the report says. Microsoft believes its laptops will deliver “faster app emulation” than Apple's Rosetta 2.
Featured in October, the Snapdragon X Elite features an Arm-based architecture similar to Apple Silicon. Last year, Qualcomm said the processor achieved 21% higher multi-core performance than the M3 chip, according to Geekbench 6 benchmark results .
There are a few caveats here, including that Microsoft and Qualcomm are comparing Apple's cheaper M3 chip instead of the more expensive M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. Apple-powered MacBooks also offer industry-leading performance per watt, while the Snapdragon X Elite will likely run hotter and require laptops with fans. After the M1 chip upgrade in 2020, the MacBook Air became fanless. Apple can also optimize MacBook performance because it controls both the macOS hardware and software.
However, it is clear that Apple's competitors are making progress with Arm-based laptops. Microsoft plans to announce Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops later this year, including the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 on May 20.
Tags: Microsoft, Qualcomm[ 411 comments ]
