Maximum PC - USA (2019-07)

Intel’S reSponSe

The rise of non-x86 laptops, especially

ones powered by Qualcomm, has

inevitably lead to Intel shaking off its

complacency and moving to counter the

threat of this new hardware. While it

hasn’t explicitly admitted so, its Project

Athena initiative is a response to the

rise of non-x86 hardware. If you’ve not

heard of it, Project Athena is a laptop

design initiative that will see Intel

work closely with a number of laptop

manufacturers to help shape the future

of laptops by offering products that are

smarter, faster (thanks to 5G), and more

power-efficient—so battery lives are

much longer. If always-on, always-

connected laptops with long battery

lives sounds familiar, it’s because that’s

exactly what Qualcomm’s Snapdragon

platform offers. While Intel’s focus on

those aspects could be coincidental—or

simply a response to what customers

are now wanting from laptops—we

can’t help but think it is also driven by

the threat posed to its market share

by this new breed of laptop.

Intel has suggested that initial

Project Athena laptops could release

as early as the second half of 2019.

However, if that’s the case, then we

wouldn’t expect to see any Project

Athena-certified laptops until very

late this year.

According to Intel, “the next wave

of Project Athena designs” will come

in “2020 and beyond,” so expect to

see Project Athena laptops from

manufacturers, such as Asus and Acer,

next year. Whether or not they can

compete with Windows on Snapdragon

laptops remains to be seen. But if Intel

can come up with laptops that feature

the best of what Snapdragon laptops

offer, without the compromises—due to

them still running on Intel hardware—it

could have a hit on its hands.

of Windows 10 that worked on non-x86

gear, it struggled with even simple tasks.

Worse, these laptops were incredibly

expensive, considering the level of

performance you got. While they should

have been priced around the same as

a low-end Chromebook, they ended up

costing closer to $1,000—and for that

money you could buy a high-end Intel

laptop that would blow the Snapdragon-

powered device out of the water.

Still, they were doing something new,

and they hinted at the possibilities of

non-x86 Windows laptops.

Qualcomm continued to refine its

Snapdragon platform for laptops and

smartphones. The octa-core Snapdragon

845 came out in December 2017, and

brought with it both performance and

battery improvements.

In 2019, Qualcomm produced its best

Snapdragon SoC yet with the Snapdragon

850 platform. It brought a 30 percent

increase in performance compared to

the previous generation, and offered

25 hours of battery life. It also came

with an improved modem for faster 4G

LTE speeds, thanks to the Snapdragon

X20 LTE modem, which offers peak

downloads of 1.2 gigabits; it’s also better

at performing in areas of weak signal.

The boost in performance also brought

support for 10-bit HDR video content and

surround sound. While these are things

we’ve come to take for granted in modern

laptops, previous WoS notebooks lacked

the oomph to deliver a decent experience.

So, although earlier Snapdragon-

powered laptops didn’t do anything

to challenge the dominance of x86

hardware, the improvements promised

by Snapdragon 850 could give the likes of

Intel and AMD reason to worry.

What’s really exciting is that in our

experience, the Snapdragon 850 really

does deliver on those improvements.

We’ve been playing with the Lenovo Yoga

C630, and the improvements over the HP

Envy x2, which runs on the Snapdragon

835, are very impressive.

In Geekbench 4, the HP Envy x2 scored

770 (single-core) and 3,116 (multicore),

while the Yoga C630 easily surpasses it

with a single-core score of 2,291 and a

multicore score of 7,101. In our day-to-day

experience using both laptops, we were

seriously disappointed with the Envy x2,

but the Yoga C630 managed what previous

Windows 10 on ARM laptops failed to do,

combining smartphone-like connectivity

and battery life with performance that’s

not too far off x86 laptops.

This leap in performance for the

Snapdragon platform should get Intel

worried. But what comes after it could

really make Team Blue sweat.

The fuTure of Snapdragon

While the Snapdragon 850 represented

a big leap in making non-x86 laptops a

more viable alternative, it was still held

back by one major compromise: The 850

SoC was first and foremost a chipset for

smartphones and tablets that is also used

for laptops. However, in 2019, Qualcomm

©^
qualcomm

The Snapdragon 8cx is Qualcomm’s next-gen platform, designed for laptops and PCs.

Windows on ARM brings the Windows 10

desktop experience to non-x86 hardware.

maximumpc.com aug 2019 MAXIMUMPC 47