DFI, the world's leading brand in embedded motherboards and industrial computers, proudly announced the launch of its innovative product lineup featuring Windows on Arm (WoA) at Embedded World 2024. DFI NXP products deliver high power efficiency and seamlessly integrate Windows on Arm, introducing a new era in computing where the traditional stronghold of Windows on x86 processors is evolving.

Arm and Microsoft revealed a compelling study that projected an 81% growth in the Windows on Arm market within the next five years. DFI's commitment to embracing this dynamic landscape is evident in its latest product offerings, designed to unlock the true potential of WoA. The diverse NXP product lineup included Single Board Computers, system-embedded Box PCs, and Panel PCs tailored to various customer needs.

Google has just released an Arm-optimized version of its popular Chrome browser for Windows PCs. This new version is designed to take full advantage of Arm-based devices' hardware and operating system, promising users a faster and smoother browsing experience. The Arm-optimized Chrome for Windows has been developed in close collaboration with Qualcomm, ensuring that Chrome users get the best possible experience on current Arm-compatible PCs. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Senior Vice President at Google, stated, "We've designed Chrome browser to be fast, secure, and easy to use across desktops and mobile devices, and we're always looking for ways to bring this experience to more people." Early testers of the Arm-optimized Chrome have reported significant performance improvements compared to the x86-emulated version. The new browser is rolling out starting today and will be available on existing Arm devices, including PCs powered by Snapdragon 8cx, 8c, and 7c processors.

Shortly, Chrome will receive an even more performant chip boost with Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X Elite SoC launch. Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, expressed his excitement about the collaboration, saying, "As we enter the era of the AI PC, we can't wait to see Chrome shine by taking advantage of the powerful Snapdragon X Elite system." Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite devices are expected to hit the market in mid-2024 with "dramatic performance improvement in the Speedometer 2.0 benchmark" on reference hardware. Being one of the most essential applications, getting a native Chrome build to run on Windows-on-Arm is a significant step for the platform, promising more investment from software makers.

According to sources close to Reuters, NVIDIA is reportedly developing its custom CPUs based on Arm instruction set architecture (ISA), specifically tailored for the client ecosystem, also known as PC. NVIDIA has already developed an Arm-based CPU codenamed Grace, which is designed to handle server and HPC workloads in combination with the company's Hopper GPU. However, as we learn today, NVIDIA also wants to provide CPUs for PC users and to power Microsoft's Windows operating system. The push for more vendors of Arm-based CPUs is also supported by Microsoft, which is losing PC market share to Apple and its M-series of processors.

The creation of custom processors for PCs that Arm ISA would power makes the decades of x86-based applications either obsolete or in need of recompilation. Apple allows users to emulate x86 applications using the x86-to-Arm translation layer, and even Microsoft allows it for Windows-on-Arm devices. We are left to see how NVIDIA's solution would compete in the entire market of PC processors, which are expected to arrive in 2025. Still, the company could make some compelling solutions given its incredible silicon engineering history and performant Arm design like Grace. With the upcoming Arm-based processors hitting the market, we expect the Windows-on-Arm ecosystem to thrive and get massive investment from independent software vendors.

Qualcomm is poised to significantly rebrand its PC chip lineup as it transitions from the existing 8cx series to the Snapdragon X Series, designed to differentiate its PC chips from Snapdragon processors in mobile devices. The new Snapdragon X Series will incorporate Qualcomm's Oryon CPU SKU, based on Nuvia's IP and praised for its advanced performance and power efficiency. In addition to the new CPU core, Qualcomm also plans to use a dedicated NPU for accelerating on-device AI applications. However, questions remain regarding the reactions of hardware partners, particularly in response to Qualcomm's request for proprietary power management integrated circuits (PMICs) to be used alongside Oryon SoCs.

This strategic rebranding also entails new logos and badges for the system, symbolizing the shift in the product lineup, and the company plans to introduce a simplified tiering structure for its PC ecosystem. Qualcomm currently holds a dominant position as an Arm-based SoC manufacturer for Windows-on-Arm devices. With this rebranding, Qualcomm hopes to position itself competitively in performance and in marketing as well, with established PC chip providers like AMD and Intel, potentially expanding Arm's market share in the PC industry. Further insights and details regarding the Snapdragon X Series will be revealed during the forthcoming Snapdragon Summit, scheduled from October 24 to 26.

With the launch of Apple Silicon for Mac computers, Apple has established itself as a great user of the Arm instruction set. Starting with M1, the company released an entirely new family of products running Apple Silicon. Today, thanks to the research of Strategy Analytics company, we have information that Apple is capturing as much as 90% of the revenue share present in the Arm PC market. The Arm PC market is a tiny subset of the entire PC market, mainly equipped with one-off Windows-on-Arm devices, Chromebook PCs, and Apple Macs. With the naturally low prices of the remaining Arm PCs, Apple Arm PCs offer a relatively high price point and a much more incredible selection of products.

On the global scale, Arm PCs now account for 9% of the total PC market share, where x86 vendors are dominating the field. "Apple's M-series family of processors set the benchmark and gave Apple a 2-3-year lead over the rest of the Arm-based PC processor vendors. Qualcomm captured just 3% revenue share in the Arm-based notebook PC processor market in 2021 and lags Apple in CPU performance," said Sravan Kundojjala, Director of Handset Component Technologies service at Strategy Analytics. This points to a particular case of Apple's better product and feeding the demand with higher-performing processors. Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia should yield different results in the coming years, as the new IP is yet to appear in Qualcomm SoCs.

Qualcomm has been in the game of creating SoCs for the PC market with the company's Snapdragon lineup. These processors mainly were beefed-up versions of their mobile designs and were based on the Arm instruction set architecture (ISA). Microsoft has backed this effort by creation Windows-on-Arm (WoA) project that enables the Windows OS to operate on Arm processors. However, up until now, Qualcomm's designs were not very powerful as they represented a relatively moderate approach to the problem and almost made no sense of purchase compared to the standard laptops equipped with x86 processors from AMD and Intel. This is about to change.

According to the news from Investor Day yesterday, Qualcomm is preparing high-performance Arm SoCs for the PC market. The company has recently acquired Nuvia Inc., a startup focused on creating novel IPs based on Arm ISA. And this is what Qualcomm will use in building its next-generation PC processors. As the company plans, in August of 2022, it should start sampling OEM partners with these new chips, and we will be seeing them in consumers' hands in early 2023. If everything goes as planned, this should represent direct competition to AMD, Intel, and now Apple in the high-end SoC market. After PCs, the company plans to tackle datacenter, mobile, and automotive market.

Qualcomm is trying to get into the PC space with their mobile Snapdragon chips, which offer great battery and decent performance. However, so far only Apple managed to get the right formula for developing custom low-power, high-performance chips. It is exactly Apple's M1 processor in question that Qualcomm intends to mimic. According to the recent interview with Qualcomm's new CEO Cristiano Amon, we are informed that Qualcomm plans to produce laptop chips that would directly compete with Apple's. That means that, despite the ecosystem differences of Apple M1 (macOS) and Qualcomm Snapdragon (Windows-on-Arm), the company wants to deliver equal if not better performance and great battery life.

With the recent acquisition of Nuvia, Qualcomm has a team of very talented engineers to back up its claims. The company also recently hired some of the developers behind Apple's M1 chip. The company notes that it will be using only the best solutions for its upcoming SoC, which will include a 5G modem. Mr. Amon has also noted the following:

We needed to have the leading performance for a battery-powered device. If Arm, which we've had a relationship with for years, eventually develops a CPU that's better than what we can build ourselves, then we always have the option to license from Arm.

Designing a custom processor can be a rewarding thing. You can control your ecosystem surrounding it and get massive rewards in terms of application-specific performance uplift, or lower total cost of ownership. It seems like cloud providers have figured out that at their scale, designing a custom processor can get all of the above with the right amount of effort put into it. If you remember, in 2018, Amazon has announced its Graviton processor based on Arm instruction set architecture. Today, the company has almost 10% of its AWS instances based on the Graviton 1 or 2 processors, which is a massive win for a custom design.

Following Amazon's example, the next company to join the custom server processor race is going to be Microsoft. The Redmond based giant is looking to build a custom lineup of processors that are meant to satisfy Microsoft's most demanding sector - server space. The company's Azure arm is an important part where it has big and increasing revenue. By building a custom processor, it could satisfy the market needs better while delivering higher value. The sources of Bloomberg say that Microsoft is planning to use Arm ISA, and start building independence from the x86 vendors like Intel and AMD. Just like we saw with AWS, the industry cloud giants are starting to get silicon-independent and with their scale, they can drive the ecosystem surrounding the new processors forward rapidly. The sources are also speculating that the company is building custom processors for Surface PCs, and with Windows-on-Arm (WoA) project, Microsoft has laid the groundwork in that field as well.

In the past few years, the Windows-on-Arm (WoA) market has gotten some momentum has with companies trying to develop their WoA PCs, primarily laptops. One example of that is Microsoft. The company has launched a Surface notebook powered by a custom chip from Snapdragon, called Surface Pro X. This device is being powered by the Snapdragon SQ2 processor. However, what seemed to be missing for a while was the lack of support from the Arm itself for this type of market. That is what the company decided to change and make a brand new processor IP dedicated to "on-the-go" devices as they call it, translating into laptops.

The Cortex-A78C is a new design direction which Arm thinks is a good way for laptops, to get some more serious work done. Unlike the regular Cortex-A78 which is a heterogeneous design of big and little cores (Arm's famous big.LITTLE architecture), the new Cortex-A78C revision aims to change that. The "C" version of the processor is actually a homogeneous structure made up of all the big cores. Where you would typically use four big and four little cores for a design, Arm has decided to go all big with this design. For multithreaded purposes, this is the right decision to boost performance. The level three (L3) cache has seen a boost as well, translating to 8 MB of L3$ found on the die. We are eagerly awaiting to see the first designs based on this configuration and see how it performs.