Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G vs Apple M2 vs Microsoft SQ1

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G Compute Platform (or SD8cx Gen2, SC8180XP) is a ARM based SoC for Windows laptops. It integrates a similar CPU part as the Snapdragon 855 (same cores but without the Prime Core feature) and is manufactured in 7nm at Samsung. The 4 Kryo 495 Gold cores are based on the ARM Cortex-A76 architecture (for performance) and clocked at 3.15 GHz under load. The 4 Kryo 495 Silver cores are small ARM Cortex-A55 cores for power efficiency and clocked at 1.8 GHz under load (most likely).

Compared to the predecessor, the Snapdragon 8cx, the Gen 2 offers higher clock speeds and an integrated 5G modem (X55 with Sub-6 GHz and mmWave support). Wi-Fi was also bumped up to Wi-Fi 6

The processor performance should be similar to a Intel Core i5 8th gen U-series (e.g. i5-8250U) according to Qualcomm. However, this is only the case for native ARM64 compiled Windows apps which are not that many (in mid 2019). 32 bit applications and games for AMD/Intel run in a rather slow emulation and 64 bit apps wont start at all (but an emulator should come in Windows in 2021).

The integrated Adreno 680 graphics card could also be a bit higher clocked.

The chip is very power efficient as its produced at TSMC in the modern 7 process. Therefore, laptops using the Snapdragon 8cx can be passively cooled (no fan) and should not throttle under constant load.

Apple M2

The Apple M2 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2022 MacBook Air and, MacBook Pro 13. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 16 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with  up to 2,4 GHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with up to 3,5 GHz and therefore higher than the M1 cores. The architecture should be similar to the A15 (iPhone 13) with Avalanche and Blizzard cores.

The chip features a unified memory architecture for the CPU and GPU cores and supports up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 for a bandwidth of up to 100GB/s.

According to Apple, the M2 offers a 18% higher CPU performance at the same power consumption level compared to the Apple M1. In our tests, the MacBook Pro 13 with active cooling was able to reach the 18% in Geekbench Multi. In other benchmarks we measured 12 to 15% gains compared to the M1. Therefore, the performance is now near the M1 Pro with 8 cores. The passively cooled MacBook Air may however suffer from throttling in longer load scenarios.

The integrated graphics card in the M2 offers 8 or 10 cores and a peak performance of 3.6 TFLOPs.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 16 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.

The Apple M2 includes 20 billion transistors (up from the 16 billion of the M1) and is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is rated at 20W what we also measured under CPU load.

Microsoft SQ1

The Microsoft SQ1 is a ARM based SoC for Windows tablets (Surface Pro X). It is based on the Snapdragon 8cx but with higher clocked CPU and GPU cores. The CPU cores clock with up to 3 GHz. The 4 Kryo 495 Gold cores are based on the ARM Cortex-A76 architecture (for performance) and clocked at up to 3 GHz (2.84 GHz  for the 8cx) under load (no single core Turbo). The 4 Kryo 495 Silver cores are small ARM Cortex-A55 cores for power efficiency and clocked at 1.9 GHz (unverified) under load. The integrated X24 LTE modem supports up to 2 Gbps download speeds. Furthermore, the SoC integrates ac-Wifi and a dual-channel 32-bit 1866 MHz LPDDR4x memory controller.

The processor performance should be similar to a Intel Core i5 8th gen U-series (e.g. i5-8250U) according to Qualcomm. However, this is only the case for native ARM64 compiled Windows apps which are not that many (in mid 2019). 32 bit applications and games for AMD/Intel run in a rather slow emulation and 65 bit apps wont start at all.

The integrated Adreno 685 graphics card is a higher clocked version of the Adreno 680 in the Snapdragon 8cx. Microsoft claims 2 TFlops theoretical performance compared to the 1.8 for the Adreno 680 (+11%).

The chip is very power efficient as its produced at TSMC in the modern 7 process. Therefore, laptops using the Snapdragon 8cx can be passively cooled (no fan) and should not throttle under constant load.