Reasons not to buy an ARM device in 2024

What an exciting year 2024 is shaping into for hardware. We have seen a wholesale change of direction from Intel with the launch of the Core Ultra chipset which includes AI Boost (NPU) and of course the improved Intel Arc graphics giving improved performance far beyond the I5 & I7 chips we have been wedded to for the past number of years!

The battle was always between Intel and more recently AMD, however Qualcomm has really landed this year in the desktop market, with new chipsets (Oryon) which have been designed by NUVIA (which QC brought for $1.4 billion back in 2021). Nuvia for those that are interested was formed by a group of engineers from Apple who were responsible for the M1 + chip architecture which has proved so popular.

The Oryon chipset now the Snapdragon X series, is the result of that investment and as an ARM chip brings an amazing addition to lower power, long battery life and amazing performance chipset that run Windows 11 on Arm.

The first dip in the ocean with ARM

Most people will remember the Surface RT device that Microsoft launched in 2012, this in fact was the first exploration of the ARM architecture in mainstream computing. Windows 8.1 RT was of course based on Windows 8 at the time but compiled for the ARM chip that drove the RT. Its failings were clear in a world that was still in bedded in Win32 or x64 applications, that fact that these were a different architecture and could not run on the device. Applications compiled for ARM were available through the App store, but they were few and far between, this meant that Surface RT was good for browsing (if you liked the trident engine in Microsoft Edge) and the in-house office applications.

Let's fast forward to 2019 when Microsoft launched the Surface Pro X, still my favourite ever Surface device to date, running Windows 10 on ARM (WoA) Microsoft with Qualcomm had invested in their own silicon the Microsoft SQ1. With the ARM architecture it was super thin (the thinnest Surface ever) no fans, didn't get hot. Applications meant x64 could run (through emulation) but Win32 apps could not, (this was to do with an Intel patent which expired in 2020), however we also saw interest in companies like Adobe start beta testing versions of their apps compiled for ARM to run natively.

Wind the clock forward

Windows 11 on ARM brought a refreshed experience to us ARM users, now with the ability for running Win32 and x64 apps as well as native ARM apps. Steady increase in performance in the 8cx chip has come with the SQ2 and SQ3 processor.

Landing in a world of AI

The coming wave of AI infused services has driven a change in the market with the development of AI ready devices. As such Surface Pro 10 for Business has launched with the Intel Core Ultra processor featuring integrated AI Boost to deliver performance increase by running AI services locally instead of utilising the CPU or if you are lucky enough the GPU.

Qualcomm bring the Snapdragon X1E Elite and Plus chipsets to market this year based on the acquisition of Nuvia some years earlier. Let's first take a quick look at some benchmark results for the Core Ultra 5, the Snapdragon X Elite and the Mac M3

Benchmarks, benchmarks...

Benchmarking processor performance can sometimes be led by the manufacturer or just plainly be mis-leading to the end user but the Snapdragon X Elite rate a single core score of 2,574* and a multicore score of 12,562*, this immediately shows it out performing the Ryzen 9 7940HS, and also a significant improvement on the new Core Ultra 5 chipset with a score of 2,150* and 10,450* respectively.

*data from Geekbench6

Let's talk NPU workloads

As we use increasingly more AI services, whether that is image blurring, sound enhancement or running a local LLM on your device, Neural Processing Units process these workloads locally and reduce CPU performance. This of course leads more efficient processing and less battery use. We are expecting a proper 20-hour battery life on these ARM devices (an IT Pro dream especially in education!) As we look to the future more workloads will land including using machine learning for virus detection which will go above and far beyond the capacities of software driven virus detection.

Software... sorted

However, at the end of the day what we now have the ability that Windows 11 on Arm will run Intel applications both Win32 and x64, plus the native ARM applications (Google now launched the ARM version of Chrome). The marked performance of the Snapdragon shows that WoA is now a mature platform ready for mainstream computing.

Eutopia is near.

A super slim device with a 20-hour battery life, which creates an improved user experience by off-loading AI workloads, wrap that up in a well-engineered and proven design (say a Surface) then I feel 2024 is off to an amazing start which may reignite the depressed PC sales market of the past couple of years.

Building capacity

When you take a IT refresh of every 4 - 5 years, you need to ensure that any investment you make to today has capacity built in as more of these services come online and benefit the user by running locally. If you touch base with AI today in four years time what will you be doing with AI?, how does that change your day?

So, I go back to my opening statement

Up until now there has always been a reason not to buy an ARM device. However in 2024 there is if you are looking for a quiet, fast, efficient device with proper all day battery life then your next PC should be an ARM device with a Snapdragon X Elite at its heart.