What you need to know
- During Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm highlighted several big-name creative apps that are now optimized to utilize NPUs.
- Blender, Affinity Photo 2, Capture One, Moises, Cubase, and Nuendo either already take full advantage of Snapdragon X processors or will soon.
- Microsoft and Qualcomm have worked on Windows on Arm for years, but 2024 has been a turning point for the computing platform.
As a seasoned tech analyst with over two decades of experience under my belt, I must say that the recent developments at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit have left me quite intrigued. The optimization of popular creative apps for NPUs on Snapdragon-powered PCs is a game-changer, especially for those in the 3D modeling, photography, and music production industries.
The top Copilot+ computers experienced significant enhancement during Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit held in Hawaii. However, this improvement isn’t due to a hardware update or the introduction of a new chip (although Qualcomm did hint at its upcoming next-gen processor at the event). Instead, PCs powered by Snapdragon with an NPU will now perform better when running a selection of popular creative applications.
As a researcher, I’m excited to share that several software tools I frequently use have been upgraded with Next-Generation Processing Unit (NPU) capabilities, either available now or due soon. These updates are designed to enhance performance and efficiency by offloading specific application tasks from the Central Processing Unit (CPU) or Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), onto an NPU instead. This shift is expected to significantly improve the overall user experience for tools such as Blender, Affinity Photo 2, Capture One, Moises, Cubase, and Nuendo.
Using the software known as Blender, widely recognized for its 3-D modeling capabilities, now offers a free-to-download feature powered by an NPU (Neural Processing Unit). This plugin enables Blender to perform rendering tasks on your PC’s NPU, thus significantly decreasing the time needed to transform a 3-D object file into a 2-D image, particularly when using text-to-image AI.
As a researcher delving into the realm of creative applications, I am thrilled to share that the entire Affinity suite, including its apps, was optimized for Windows on Arm earlier this year. However, what truly excites me is the recent enhancement in Affinity Photo 2, which allows it to capitalize more effectively on the hardware of Copilot+ PCs equipped with Snapdragon chips.
Capture One is a photographers’ software designed specifically for studio photography, which operates more efficiently on Windows with an Arm processor, providing improved battery life and performance compared to emulation. This app also features advanced AI cropping and AI-enhanced color grading that leverage Snapdragon NPUs (Neural Processing Units).
Moving forward with audio applications, Moises has been improved to work seamlessly on Windows devices powered by ARM and Neural Processing Units (NPUs). This tool is particularly useful for musicians as it enables them to separate vocals and instruments within music tracks. Additionally, the app can identify chords, adjust pitches, and rekey songs. The enhanced functionality of instrument and vocal isolation is now more efficient on Snapdragon-equipped PCs due to the application leveraging a device’s NPU capabilities.
This week, I’m thrilled to learn that Cubase and Nuendo, two remarkable tools for musicians like myself, now support Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus PCs natively. These Digital Audio Workstation apps have been significantly enhanced, thanks to Microsoft’s comprehensive rewrite of its MIDI stack for Windows from the ground up. This upgrade promises a smoother and more efficient music creation experience!
Snapdragon X tease
Qualcomm didn’t provide extensive details or numerical data regarding its upcoming Snapdragon chips for computers, but they did exhibit some charts and performance benchmarks. One chart about Qualcomm’s 2nd Gen Oryon CPU suggests that the future processors from Qualcomm will offer substantial performance improvements while consuming less power.
The assertion that the 2nd Gen Oryon CPU consumes approximately 57% less power than its previous model is noteworthy if it stands up under real-world conditions. It’s worth mentioning that Qualcomm’s demonstration only showcases single-core performance in a Geekbench test. However, should these advantages be genuine, Qualcomm could be preparing CPUs capable of challenging Intel and AMD’s top offerings, such as the Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2, in terms of performance.
It appears that app developers are fine-tuning apps for computers powered by Snapdragon and Qualcomm is hinting at its upcoming Oryon chips, making it an exciting time for the Windows on Arm platform. The year 2024 marked a significant shift in Arm-based computing, particularly within the Windows sphere, and it looks like 2025 could be the year this platform really takes flight.
Read More
- LDO PREDICTION. LDO cryptocurrency
- JASMY PREDICTION. JASMY cryptocurrency
- DOGS PREDICTION. DOGS cryptocurrency
- UXLINK PREDICTION. UXLINK cryptocurrency
- DOP PREDICTION. DOP cryptocurrency
- OKB PREDICTION. OKB cryptocurrency
- QUINT PREDICTION. QUINT cryptocurrency
- METIS PREDICTION. METIS cryptocurrency
- KNINE PREDICTION. KNINE cryptocurrency
- SQR PREDICTION. SQR cryptocurrency
2024-10-22 15:09