Ubuntu Making Progress On The Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Arm Laptop Support

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  • brucethemoose
    replied
    Originally posted by mdedetrich View Post

    (although I disagree with this statement because Apple just prioritizes noise over cooling, its just they can get away with it now)
    Eh they could still aim for silence with a better thermal solution. Its just a cost cutting measure.

    But you arent wrong either. My G14 will run fanless... if I configure it that way. But its clocked very aggressively out of the box, which I find annoying in a laptop.

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  • mdedetrich
    replied
    Originally posted by coder View Post
    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.
    Yeah I cannot upvote this enough. I don't think people here have a clue how ahead in some areas Apple is compared to other companies and I would also suspect most people here don't have an Apple M1/M2. I have one as a work laptop and was quite shocked (in a positive way) how impressive the hardware is, especially when compared to Intel based Mac's.

    I mean their SoC's are so power efficient that they are still beating the competition with Apple's infamous "substandard" cooling solutions on their laptops (although I disagree with this statement because Apple just prioritizes noise over cooling, its just they can get away with it now)
    Last edited by mdedetrich; 21 February 2023, 09:16 AM.

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  • mdedetrich
    replied
    Considering the chip they are using, this is way too overpriced. You may as well pony up the extra and get a Mac with M1/M2 when Asahi Linux gets to shape rather than using a laptop that essentially has a phone SoC.

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  • deusexmachina
    replied
    Originally posted by mihau View Post
    Nice, but an X13s Gen2 is way overdue at this point
    Right, if these "Windows manufacturers" (well-deserved name) wouldn't stop spreading themselves so thin with distraction and clout, then they could build one good laptop per generation. How do they expect to compete with Apple? Support it for longer, get the latest stuff (zen4, USB4, OLED, ECC support that the CPUs already have anyway, 2x M.2, etc)!

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  • mihau
    replied
    Nice, but an X13s Gen2 is way overdue at this point Preferably with USB4 and real upstream drivers for everything. I'd also like to see one of these powered by coreboot, but seeing as the current gen chip isn't supported yet, it doesn't seem realistic. Plus they probably use some stupid FW verification scheme that would prevent modification anyway.

    I'm starting to think that my next laptop might be ARM based. That fanless enclosure and much more battery are great. And it helps that my primary use case is developing open source firmware that can be cross-compiled and doesn't need much performance to build. But I have my doubts about the firmware... I've been burned with horrible FW too many times to buy anything that I can't put my own firmware on. Perhaps a chromebook edition may come at some point. That would be my perfect laptop.

    Leave a comment:


  • deusexmachina
    replied
    Just work on Linux/Ryzen power management and fixing abhornet sleep... Then you can better compete with M1/M2s reasonably. It is a very basic and straight forward reason that Macbooks can sleep for a month and still work but no Linux laptop I've seen even lasts a week.

    Leave a comment:


  • coder
    replied
    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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  • coder
    replied
    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
    replied
    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.

    Leave a comment:


  • Jumbotron
    replied
    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.

    Leave a comment:

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