new class of Windows Notebooks: "Copilot+ PC"

These were just intruduced by Microsoft. As usual, a lot of smoke around this. - new ARM-based processor family from Qualcomm "Snapdragon X" - performance supposedly better than Apple's M series (for now) - like all new processors, it contains an NPU (for accelerating AI) - price seems to be Apple-like: <https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/copilot-pc/ci/40407> This is for pre-orders from a US discount store, in US dollars. - most models are from Microsoft so far. There is one Asus and one Lenovo. - my understanding is that they won't run Linux now. Linux support for the processor is being promised by Qualcomm but it isn't yet ready. It may be that the "Copilot+ PC" models lock out Linux anyway (my impression is that previous ARM-based Surfaces did that). - Microsoft is pushing these as being able to run LLMs locally and that the new version of Windows will delightfully exploit this. - A centrepiece of this is something called Recall that assists you in finding (computer) things that you used previously Summary: in six months or a year these might be interesting to Linux users. Right now they are too expensive and not compatible. Trivia: the least expensive models listed on BH Photo are US$999.99 These do not have enough resources to run Recall.

Here's an article about Linux support on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoCs that power these notebooks: <https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/qualcomm-goes-where-apple-wont-readies-official-linux-support-for-snapdragon-x-elite> Summary: "Most of the functionality is present but many important bits are still being developed". Not very useful to us yet. Maybe in six months the support will be in the kernel. It might take a while for that to get to your favourite distro. I haven't looked at this video but it seems more optimistic than I am: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEaGyCAS9fY>
participants (1)
-
D. Hugh Redelmeier