Qualcomm offers seamless gaming compatibility on Windows laptops with the latest Arm chipsets
Qualcomm is introducing an innovative approach to using Arm-based chipsets in laptops that could radically change the market for portable computers. In particular, the consumer versions of Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 models, powered by the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, are already in the final stages of development. In the past, the transition to the Arm architecture required Windows software developers to port their applications for compatibility, but Qualcomm aims to simplify this process for game developers by providing high game compatibility out of the box.
At the Game Developers Conference, Qualcomm engineer Issam Khalil shared that new Snapdragon-based computers will use emulation to run games developed for x86 and x64 architectures with almost no performance loss and no code changes required. The bottleneck of most games is the GPU, and since emulation has little impact on its performance, games are expected to run efficiently.
However, there are certain limitations, especially for games that use specialized anti-cheat technologies at the kernel level, which may not work due to emulation. Qualcomm has tested the emulation with popular games on Steam and found that most of them work satisfactorily.
For game developers looking to optimize their games for the platform, Qualcomm offers two additional paths: porting games entirely to native ARM64 for better performance and power efficiency, or developing hybrid ARM64EC applications where part of the software runs natively and the rest is emulated to provide near-native performance.
Qualcomm’s move could help increase the appeal of Arm-based Windows laptops by offering high performance while maintaining energy efficiency. If the emulation proves successful, it will be a significant achievement for Qualcomm, which has previously faced criticism over x86/x64 emulation. Apple is currently leading the way in emulating x86 software on Arm chips with Rosetta 2, but Qualcomm could strengthen its position in the market if its emulation technology lives up to expectations.
