Snapdragon X ARM Print Driver Support

The following is accurate as of August 1st, 2024. We will try and update this article as the compatibility situation changes.

This past June, Microsoft and Qualcomm announced a partnership to develop a new line of Windows 11 laptops based on Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X processor. As with the new M-series processors in the latest Mac computers, these Snapdragon X processors are based on the ARM architecture - meaning the processor has more in common with the one found in a high-end smartphone than a traditional computer.

This has some major benefits in terms of battery life and overall power efficiency. Recent advances in the ARM platform mean these processors have become more than good enough to use for general computing - and even light-to-medium creative workloads, such as editing images in Photoshop.

With this latest generation of Snapdragon X laptops, Microsoft has introduced a compatibility feature to help ensure the majority of programs written for Intel and AMD processors (collectively called the x86 platform) will work with the new ARM-based processor. And we can confirm from first-hand testing that most (but not all) programs do work fine with this compatibility layer.

However, hardware drivers are not able to make use of this compatibility layer and hardware manufacturers will have to come out with new versions of their drivers to support this new platform. This includes printer drivers.

Currently, attempting to use a printer with a laptop running on Snapdragon X processor will fallback to a generic "Windows IPP" driver based on the Mopria standard. This driver allows for basic functionality of virtually all printers to work, but it does not support using ICC color profiles and there is no way to work around that.

We have tested several printers from both Epson and Canon with these new Snapdragon X laptops and all models, except as noted below, from both manufacturers seem to have the same or similar issues and fall back to the generic Windows IPP driver.

The Canon imagePROGRAF Pro series printers (ie Pro-200, Pro-300, Pro-1000 Pro-2600, Pro-4000, etc) that support the free Canon Professional Print and Layout program are able to communicate directly with the printer and bypass the installed driver completely - but only so long as the printer is connected via ethernet or wifi. Connecting the printer via USB won't work even when using Canon PPL. This means that it is possible to still color management with this specific line of printers so long as you print through this Canon application.

The comparable line of Epson printers (ie P900, P8000, etc) do not work, even when using Epson Layout software over a network.

If you are using a RIP software that implements its own driver, such as Onyx or PrintFactory, then you also will be bypassing the installed driver and color management will be up to that RIP software. Note that RIP software like ImagePrint that make use of the printer driver, will not work. We have not extensively tested paid RIP software with the Snapdragon X processors - so if you use a RIP currently, you would for sure want to contact your RIP software vendor if considering an ARM-based Windows computer.

In addition to printers not working - other hardware such as graphics drawing tablets and monitor calibration tools, both used by many of our customers, are often also not currently working with these Snapdragon X based laptops.

The above issues appear to only impact Windows and printing on Snapdragon X laptops running Linux works fine, including printing through TurboPrint.

For the above reasons, at this time we cannot recommend our customers purchase one of the Snapdragon X based laptops until either the x86 emulation layer is able to support hardware drivers, or more hardware manufacturers - especially printer manufacturers - have made drivers and/or applications available for the Snapdragon X processor-based computers.

Hopefully this will change in the near future, and we will try and keep this article up to date as it does.

Original Publication Date: August 27, 2024

Article Last updated: August 27, 2024

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