Qualcomm is rumored to have new Arm-based laptops in development, and consumer versions of the new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, running on the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, are expected to be released soon. Qualcomm assured game developers that their titles will run smoothly on the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite systems without the need for code tweaking or asset changes.
At the Game Developers Conference, Qualcomm engineer Issam Khalil mentioned that the computers will use emulation to run x86 and x64 games at nearly full speed. Emulation, according to Khalil, does not affect GPU performance, and Qualcomm believes that many games will perform well using this technology.
Despite some limitations, Qualcomm is confident that its emulation will support most games, especially those on Steam. Developers have the option to fully port their titles to native ARM64 for optimal performance, or use hybrid ARM64EC apps for near-native performance.
Qualcomm’s emulation technology could potentially offer a combination of performance and power efficiency for Arm-based Windows laptops compared to x86 Intel-based machines. However, past emulation efforts from Qualcomm have not been without issues, as seen with the Arm-based Surface Pro 9. Apple has been successful in emulating x86 software on its Arm-based M-series chips with its Rosetta 2 translation layer, benefiting from having control over the entire ecosystem.
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