Qualcomm is tipped to have new Arm-based laptops of its own coming, while consumer versions of the new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, running on the new Snapdragon X Elite chipset, are expected to be released soon.
The company has now announced to game developers that their titles will run smoothly on any unannounced Snapdragon X Elite systems.
During the Game Developers Conference, Issam Khalil, a Qualcomm engineer, revealed the computers will use emulation to run various x86 and x64 games at almost full speed without needing to tweak code or change assets.
He explained games are typically held up by the GPU, and emulation doesn’t impact GPU performance. Due to this, the company claims most titles will perform well.
Now, certain games won’t work through emulation, specifically those using kernel-level anti-cheat technology. However, Qualcomm has been testing emulation with the top games on Steam, and is convinced its technology will handle the work.
It was also revealed that there are two other options for running games on Snapdragon-based Windows machines. Either, the titles can be fully ported to native ARM64 for optimal CPU performance and power usage, or, Qualcomm will support hybrid ARM64EC apps, where Windows libraries and the company’s drivers will run natively.
If this can be pulled off, it could help Arm-based Windows notebooks offer strong performance and better power efficiency than x86 Intel-based laptops.
Apple is arguably the most successful company when it comes to emulating x86 software on Arm-based M-series chipsets, with the help of the Rosetta 2 translation layer.
