Snapdragon X Elite BIGGEST LEAP from Voltera

They should just sell that Dev kit with the finished X Elite chips, that looks sexy

Here's a test idea for evaluating different developer runtimes on identical setups:  - Create a Windows VM on an X-Elite laptop, and allocate let's say 4 cores to the guest OS. - Create a MacOS VM on a M-series Macbook, and allocate the same number of cores. - Run identical tests that use the Python interpreter, Javascript, the Java and .NET (I think .NET framework can target Mac) Just don't forget to normalise for the CPU frequency.  This test will reveal the efficiency of these runtimes as implemented for different platforms. Another setup: instead of a Windows VM on X-elite, create Window VM on another identical Mac, and allocate same number of cores. Then of course, unleash the SCHWARZENEGGER on them :D

I find it hilarious that the Voltera dev kit is basically a Surface Pro X motherboard and a Surface Dock shoved into a box. It does make financial sense for a low volume production.

One interesting thing to think about is why x86 code running with the help of Rosetta, or Prism for that matter, has a performance impact. In theory, it should run at the same speed, as both Rosetta and Prism are fully translating the x86 machine instructions into equivalent ARM before executing even the 1st instruction. In theory, "ideal" x86 code can be transcoded into "ideal" ARM code. The problem is, the compiler already made some decisions and optimisations when compiling say the Swift/C++/Rust code and building for the 86 target - and these are unknown to Rosetta/Prism when they "look" at the block of machine instructions to translate. Moreover, some of these optimisations baked-in by the compiler will have to do with architectural differences such as cache layout and specific memory access optimisations. Still, it is entirely possible, in theory, that the translation to become perfect, and there would be no difference between Rosetta-translated ARM and native ARM. If this doesn't happen, it is because Apple considers Rosetta "good enough" (which is, more than good enough).

Those video effects of clocks over the laptops are great and provide valuable visual enhancements !

Virtualisation in case of the Macbook M2 Pro simply means it's running Windows in isolation, no translation or anything else that would hinder performance of the code is happening. So the performance is almost literally what Windows ARM binaries would run on Apple silicon if Apple would've enable Bootcamp. So basically if your host OS is ARM, and the guest OS is also ARM, the "virtualised" binaries should run at native speed. The only difference would be attributed to compiler optimisation - I imagine Microsoft's ARM compiler back-end to target Qualcomm's specific setup (eg. for example make certain assumptions like cache topology or core/cluster allocation strategy of the OS). Certain optimisations could make some difference. Also, Windows' thread dispatched (can't remember it's actual name) / thread scheduler would work differently from MacOS. But by en-large, ARM guest code inside an ARM host OS, like what you're testing, should roughly run at full speed. (with the caveat that MacOS virtualisation framework does not expose the E-cores, at least not on my M1 Pro) The test is simple: run Geekbench 6 or Cinebench on the Macbook M2, then in a MacOS VM (I tried it with UTM/Qemu) then run Windows 11 ARM on the same M2 macbook with say VMWare Fusion. You should all get roughly the same results.

Have you installed windows 24h2 in the volterra project? This version is very focused on our arm

again, amazing editing, and amazing speed of informationflow without being confusing... really love your videos.... keep up the style an quality

Great to see quick builds for development. Other than running the local db from VS what options would you recommended to connect to a sqlserver instance on snapdragon?

Judging by your lastest benchmark videos, Apple now has a serious growing competitor :D. No the time to get lazy on chip advancements :))

Hmmm, you only allocated 4gb to the VM on macOS so suspect that accounted for slower loads and builds

How do you get the Visual Studio on the Mac? I can't seem to get it!

does the speedometer 3 test the single core of arm or x84 machines?

Hi Alex👋🏽 Love your videos I'd like to know what differences there are between running Windows natively on ARM PCs Vs as a virtual machine on Macs. Are there any limitations of running it virtually on the Mac apart from WSL 2 or maybe some hardware needed for anticheat functionality in games? If or when games get written for windows on ARM, will they be available on M-Series Macs running Windows virtually as well??

Love my Dev Kit 2023. My daily driver and easily good enough for what I do.

Alex, could you please provide the link to the python code of the mandelbrot algorithm are you using for benchmark? Beacuse, of course there are a bunch of mandelbrot implementations in internet. I am pretty interested in the algorithm from the mathematical -numerical point of view. Thanks in advance.

Hi Alex, thanks. Speaking of Windows for/on ARM: Do you know any USB WiFi adapter being supported by W11 on ARM? Need such device to access my corp NW from within my Parallels hosted W11 VM. Appreciate your support.

Great vid Alex. Just wondering - did you get the Snapdragon X elite dev kit? It's been in pre order and queue since May for me. Not sure if it's region based delay.

Alex, is it possible to run Virtual Machines on a Snapdragon Maschine ? I need several different for my projects. Apple can, so it must be somehow possible on Arm based maschines...

and what about virtual macOS running on Windows ARM machine? :)