TUXEDO Working on Snapdragon X Elite Linux Laptop
It recently showcased a prototype of a new ARM notebook at Computex, the annual computer event in Taiwan. Powered by the Snapdragon X Elite and running an ARM port of their Ubuntu-based TUXEDO OS with the KDE Plasma desktop.
This is the same chip that’s been in the (tech) news a lot of late as it’s powering Microsoft’s new wave of Copilot+ PCs and laptops running Windows 11 ARM. Like Apple Silicon, the X Elite has CPU, GPU, NPU and memory all on one chip, greatly bolstering performance.
While the NPU (45 TOPS) allows for gimmicky AI nonsense in Windows 11 that isn’t the real lure of these chips: it’s their performance and power usage edges closer to Apple’s M-series chips. Scoff at Apple as a company, but the engineering of Apple Silicon has raised the bar industrywide.
Qualcomm’s claims that Snapdragon X Elite rivals the base-level M3 do rely on selective, cherry-picked benchmarks (uses more power than the M3, trails it in GPU performance, lower single-core speed, much lower memory bandwidth., etc) but the fact it’s getting closer is huge.
