Ubuntu Making Progress On The Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Arm Laptop Support

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  • syrjala
    Phoronix Member
    • Apr 2012
    • 64

    #21
    Originally posted by chithanh View Post
    I agree that the Thinkpad X13s is overpriced. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 is a year old chip and was not competitive with contemporary Intel, AMD, and Apple chips back when it launched, and certainly isn't today. Also it doesn't support AV1 hardware decode which means battery life when watching AV1 video (which is gaining popularity fast) will suck.


    "great"?
    https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-K...-Webcam-Laptop
    At least my T14 gen3 has a USB camera. Dunno if you can get that on all Thinkpad models or not. Not that I actually care since I don't use the camera. Fortunately it also has a physical lens cover so I know it can't see anything even if some stupid software would turn it on.

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    • coder
      Senior Member
      • Nov 2014
      • 8923

      #22
      Originally posted by andyprough View Post
      My goodness, $1200+ for an underpowered, year-old phone chip.
      I don't know where people are getting these prices, but on the Lenovo US site, the starting price is currently $995:

      That's not the configuration I'd buy (if any), but it's more than you get in a phone. And furthermore, it's 4x X1 cores + 4x A78 cores @ up to 3.0 GHz. Show me a phone with that combination (or similar). The Snapdragon 888 had only a single X1 core @ 2.84 GHz, 3x A78 cores, and 4x A55 cores.

      Originally posted by andyprough View Post
      I predicted this idiocy would commence once people started hyperventilating over Apple building a laptop out of an iphone.
      No, Qualcomm first launched the 8cx back in 2019 and were partnering with Microsoft for even longer. They made a few generations of bespoke SoCs for Microsoft, with the SQ1 launching way back in Oct. 2019.

      Also, the M-series SoCs are only used in Apple's computers; not their phones. They share the same CPU and GPU cores, but the ARM-based Macs are more than simply putting an iPhone SoC in a laptop shell.
      Last edited by coder; 17 February 2023, 04:47 PM.

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      • coder
        Senior Member
        • Nov 2014
        • 8923

        #23
        Originally posted by brucethemoose View Post
        Eh, I think Qualcomm is taking the wrong approach. They should go E-core crazy and stick 32+ A510 cores (and 2-4 P cores?) on a laptop die.

        Devs would love that kind of compilation muscle.
        It's a good point. They could stuff way more ARM E-cores in there than you could with x86. That would be a very easy way to compete with x86 on thread-count. Except, the A510 cores really aren't great.

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        • szymon_g
          Senior Member
          • Sep 2008
          • 409

          #24
          ...or you could just buy an arm based macbook air (or pro) for the same price and enjoy better performance and unix based system out-of-the-box
          Last edited by szymon_g; 17 February 2023, 05:47 PM.

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          • Dawn
            Senior Member
            • Aug 2016
            • 203

            #25
            Originally posted by Brook-trout View Post
            13" laptops are fine for young children and little people.

            I would only buy a Linux laptop if it is 15 inches or larger. It would not Ubuntu. Being a seasoned Linux/Unix person. IRIX AND AIX. I would load Slackware 15 on it.

            Ubuntu is just way to cozy with M$ for me.
            I'm a woman and on the smaller side. 15" is way too big to be comfy for me.

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            • Palu Macil
              Senior Member
              • Feb 2016
              • 123

              #26
              Originally posted by szymon_g View Post
              ...or you could just buy an arm based macbook air (or pro) for the same price and enjoy better performance and unix based system out-of-the-box
              I can't really stand the UX/UI on Mac. I think in a lot of ways it's better than Windows, but everyone has their own preferences, and some of us like Linux. I personally really like Ubuntu which isn't terribly popular here but, for me it gets out of my way providing me the tools I happen to use in the smoothest way, has a look and feel I enjoy, and it doesn't make any of the terrible UI mistakes. I feel personally that Mac makes. I use a Mac for my job, and it feels like a awkwardly broken alternative to Linux, but for people that do different things than I do, I know it's well appreciated.

              All that said, I think I would buy a machine like this for the same reason I would buy a MacBook Air with the m1 chip. It wouldn't be for the best experience, best value, or best battery. It would be to have the best option available for Linux on arm. I wouldn't be more or less likely to buy this or a MacBook Air without a specific need, but sometimes it's nice to have some physical hardware in a particular architecture. Since a lot of what I do is on Linux once it's in production, I wouldn't mind having the ability to pick up a laptop that's solely used to check compatibility with this architecture. I think we'll continue to see some options for posting on arm in the future. And I don't think it matters much if the GPU or AV1 decoding works for the type of thing. I would use this for. Whether it's overpriced by a few hundred dollars or not isn't really terribly important considering I'm not going to replace my main workhorse laptop or my desktop with this anyway.

              I think it's also important to know that Qualcomm isn't exactly bad at producing chips. The reason they lag Apple is because Apple isn't really so much a great technology company as they are an amazing investment company. They get to buy all the capacity they want with first priority by funding a lot of new TSMC fabrication build outs. That means If you're solely interested in performance and battery efficiency, apple is going to always be pretty decent and they can't really be competed with. However, I don't find that to be a very interesting metric personally because as soon as I can get through 8 hours or even 4 hours, I'm going to be around a power outlet again. Chances are my portable needs are not even going to be that heavy, so for me, I'm going to stick with my main workhorse laptop being a Framework and that's a fantastic experience for me.

              Anyone who is comparing this to Apple should probably get an apple. When a market is this small for a particular use case, I'm not sure you can really compare prices because you're just trying to get a specific thing into that thing barely exists. No one is forcing you to get it and I imagine nobody is trying to claim that it's better than all the competition. Certainly, I think it's interesting though.

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              • Jumbotron
                Senior Member
                • Jul 2015
                • 1247

                #27
                For those kvetching over a ThinkPad's price, it's a high end, status device. The closest thing to a MacBook in the non Apple world. Also ThinkPad's are sold en masse to corporations and the governments so they can get away with such inflated prices. Also the BOM (Billable Order of Materials) are going to be more than a typical x86 based solution because the scale of ARM manufacturing outside of the micro mobile space ( phones and tablets ) is much less than for laptops, NUCs and desktops which also inflates parts pricing .

                That said I'm glad to see the continued development of ARM based solutions outside of phones, tablets and IoT both Windows based and particularly Linux based. Once again Apple is the industry catalyst. And although I've never owned an Apple device and have no intention to in the future, I am glad they exist to simply move the computer industry where they need to move.

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                • coder
                  Senior Member
                  • Nov 2014
                  • 8923

                  #28
                  For anyone interested in the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, I just found something neat! A few days ago, it seems like MS just updated their Windows/ARM development platform. Key specs:
                  • Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (same as this laptop).
                  • $600 price includes 32 GB LPDDR4x and 512 GB NVMe storage.
                  • USB-C connectors (x2) support DP 1.4 with HBR3!

                  Powered by Arm64 and running Windows 11, this desktop device enables you to develop Windows apps for Arm, on Arm. Find device specifications, set up instructions, Arm-native developer tools, Support, and FAQs.


                  Let's hope someone gets it booting Linux, though I guess you could probably just rely on WSL. The FAQ says it support WSL.

                  Comment

                  • coder
                    Senior Member
                    • Nov 2014
                    • 8923

                    #29
                    Originally posted by stormcrow View Post
                    ... It's a ARM Thinkpad with a barely adequate ARM CPU and a currently unsupported (in Linux) GPU. This laptop isn't even great with full Windows hardware support.

                    ARM can be great processors, ... that GPU is going to be the Achilles heel. ...
                    According to https://mesamatrix.net/ here's what I found:
                    • "tu" Vulkan driver reports 100% conformance with Vulkan 1.3 w/ 133 extensions (68.6%) + 50.4% of non-versioned extensions.
                    • "freedreno" OpenGL driver reports 100% conformance with OpenGL 4.5 w/ 156 extensions (97.5%) + 27 (49.1%) of non-versioned extensions.
                    • "freedreno" OpenGL driver reports 100% conformance with OpenGL ES 3.2 w/ 41 extensions (100%)
                    • No opensource OpenCL driver, but I think it should work with Rusticle? Qualcomm has a proprietary OpenCL driver, which you can consult to see which version a given hardware generation is capable of supporting.

                    So, conformance of the in-tree drivers looks quite stellar, actually! And, presumably, there's also the fallback option of the proprietary drivers. Now I'm very curious to know how it performs!

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                    • coder
                      Senior Member
                      • Nov 2014
                      • 8923

                      #30
                      Originally posted by Palu Macil View Post
                      Qualcomm isn't exactly bad at producing chips. The reason they lag Apple is because Apple isn't really so much a great technology company as they are an amazing investment company. They get to buy all the capacity they want with first priority by funding a lot of new TSMC fabrication build outs.
                      I was with you until this part. Qualcomm had stopped designing their own cores. They used to, but starting with the Snapdragon 835, they switched to using ARM's own IP.

                      Apple, on the other hand, has poured $billions, first into acquiring PA Semi (2008) and then Intrinsity (2010), to design their SoC's fully in-house. Aside from their GPU IP, which is thought to be still largely derived from Imagination/PowerVR, pretty much everything else was designed by them. That's why, even on the same node, Apple has substantially out-performed every other ARM core and has done even better on perf/W.

                      It's like bizarro world how many people just don't want to believe that Apple, a company with annual revenues over 100x of ARM, 20x AMD, 6x Intel, and 5x of Tesla, is capable of designing its own CPUs. Just because we look down our noses at Mac users and don't like Apple's walled garden doesn't mean they don't have some great tech.

                      Originally posted by Palu Macil View Post
                      Anyone who is comparing this to Apple should probably get an apple.
                      Depends a lot on whether you're going to run native Linux on the Mac, and how much you care about GPU acceleration. According to Mesa Matrix, Linux drivers for the M-series GPUs are quite a long ways from having even usable conformance.
                      Last edited by coder; 19 February 2023, 12:39 PM.

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