Live and Snapdragon X Elite (2025)

davide37 wrote: ↑

Thu May 23, 2024 10:50 am

I'm upgrading to a Surface Pro 11, which has a Snapdragon X Elite CPU and runs non-native apps through a Windows emulation layer called PRISM. It's too early to predict whether Live will have any compatibility issues - Microsoft are currently saying that 90% of apps should work - but I'm hoping that the Snapdragon's eight performance cores will give me a significant performance boost over the two cores in the Surface Pro 9's core i5 CPU. I can always return the SP 11 if it doesn't work out. I'll report back my experience one way or the other.

Update: Ableton support have posted on X that Live won't be compatible with Windows on ARM PCs, so I've cancelled the order for the Surface Pro 11. Shame.

For sure it will be compatible down the line, but surely you can't expect it right now. Qualcomm has to prove itself by significant adoption of the market, finding and fixing early bugs. and providing both documentation and direct vendor support to get drivers and more complext CPU instructions sets ported or supplemented.

We went through this with Apple Silicon. That was a much more "controlled" transition because it was one company's direction. On the Windows site, there is so much mare hardware and drivers to consider. I'd be surprised if anything is truly ready in 2024, especially with music software which is particularly complex and niche.

Currently Snapdragon CPUs don't support AVX instruction set, which bars a lot of music software from working properly.

Keep a legacy machine around.,