- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
2024 could be the year the PC finally dumps x86 for Arm, all thanks to Windows 12 and Qualcomm’s new chip::We’ve already reported on Qualcomm’s new 12-core Arm uberchip, the Snapdragon X Elite, and its claims of x86-beating performance and efficiency. But it takes two to tango when it comes a maj
You must log in or register to comment.
Not a chance. We have several more years of x86 dominance.
I don’t know what the author was smoking, but nobody that knows what x86 and ARM are would reasonably say x86 is anywhere near its end. I want it to be, fuck I want it to be, but I’m also not stupid enough to think it’s happening even remotely soon.
I’m rather hoping RISC-V comes up and eats their lunch before it happens.
My reasoning for this is that I’ve lost too many hours trying to kludge finnicky ARM boards into supporting proper mainline video acceleration. It’s awful. It’s horrible. It’s a waste of time.
The silly x86 SBC I got worked out of the box with OneAPI with no complaints at all.
The ARM boards ran the gamut from gibberish/garbage rendering, dropped frames, washed out images because of cheap tricks to up performance.
I know this is more down to the weak (and proprietary) video cores included on these boards… but after spending a significant amount of time playing with them, I’m going to say “No, thank you.”
How can it be both the year of ARM and the year of the linux desktop?
Linux runs great on ARM 😉
Armbian is a really cool project. So is batocera. I have a few SBCs to play with.
Linux and ARM are not mutually exclusive.
Nearly everything on linux is FOSS, so no translation layer needed 1
Having used an ARM Mac, and the pains of countless utilities and apps that are x86/x64 only, as well as the pains of virtualising x86/x64 operating systems, I’m not a fan. I can virtualise ARM just fine on x64 but not the other way around.
(Edit: I’m not referring to OS utilities and apps - Apple have done a fine job with porting the OS to ARM, but the same can’t be said for the wider ecosystem - especially FOSS and niche developer toolchains).
I’m confused, my M1 MBP had like 1-2 things max that were x86 still that I needed and those ran fine on Rosetta.
I know docker is a bit more annoying but it’s not that bad IMHO.
Came in to say the same, and I run all sorts of weird shit. Rosetta is so seamless the only way I know it’s an x86 thing is that it takes a while to launch the first time.
That’s because macs don’t have games. They’ve had 3 iterations of ARM processors and I still can’t download steam natively. If I could, most of my steam library wouldn’t run natively.
Steam runs absolutely fine on my m1. I haven’t checked if it’s running Rosetta or native arm code, but I can’t tell at all so it doesn’t matter. All my Mac games run fine on steam, unless they are old and 32 bit. But macs dropped 32 bit support a while ago even on intel chips. The games run great too.
The CPU and processing power benefits would be great, but if I’m going to lose software support then I’m only going to do it for RISC V.
Yaaaah, came here to something something RISC-V ^.^ One of these days I’ll have a RISC-V system. I’ll have no actual use for it but I’ll love it stubbornly just because :D
Anyway I’m gonna be over here daydreaming about RISC-V taking over the world instead of ARM. Bwehehehehe.
(Edited to fix my ^.^-face)
Fundamentally, I’m not sure Qualcomm is the brand I’d trust to lead the world off of x86.
I understand nobody actually likes Qualcomm products in the cellular space, but they’re stuck with them due to patent minefields. That’s not really a great vibe to bring in when trying to compete against known-quantity x86 vendors.
I figured we’d see homogenous CPUs-- either in the same socket or as an addon module, so you can cast off some stuff to ARM or RISC-V but keep big x86 for games and heavy closed-source software, then flip to RISC-V main with x86 addon cards, and finally emulation.
Sort of thinking about a Pinetab-V, but even the flaky, doesn’t suspend right 20% of the time, wigi was weird on every OS except OpenBSD, Ryzen 2700U it would replace demolishes it. The Lichee Console looked neat with the EEE PC sizing and Trackpoint, but it’s way pricier.
Where would those benefits be? Let’s start with gaming on the M3 Mac - it’s CPU bound in many games even though apple’s compatibility later is actually good. And the GPU is a joke, even compared to the Intel dGPU offerings. Let’s not start on encoding (besides iMovie), packing or compiling things. Or even actually rendering stuff…
Compatibility layers are comprehensive, but they’re generally not performant. For me personally, I use a real computer that runs my daily workload, servers and games all at once on different virtual desktops, so a faster CPU will definitely be impactful.
It’s not just about avoiding 100% CPU either. CPUs not being the bottleneck for performance sounds like a great problem to have
I don’t care as long as desktops remain modular.
yeah, least thing I would want is my PC becoming another use and throw mobile phone(it’s already happening with mac and hp’s elitebook).
Ampère makes some ARM CPUs that go with modular boards, where you can socket your own CPU, DDR5 RAM, NVMe drives and PCIe accessories.
For all the informed technical analysis and debates about this, the vast majority of consumers don’t care about any of this stuff, and they’re the ones who will decide this “year of the whatever.” The worse option technically speaking has won out many times in the past.
Consumers will choose more battery life, all else being equal.
There’s a lot of focus on Windows for these types of chips, but Chromebooks are probably the best use case for them right now. ChromeOS runs great on ARM and there’s no legacy software to worry about, but they feel kind of slow because the ARM chips they’ve used have been slow. I’d love an ARM Chromebook that actually rips.
Could we have a future where we have an arm main CPU, gaming GPU, and also an x86 card?
The main advantage of ARM right now is that there are low power cores available. The actual instruction set is unrelated to this advantage. If Intel or AMD put more serious effort into power efficiency most of the advantages go out the window.
As for instruction set changes impacting what software you can run I think that is still a big issue. Yes porting to ARM is straitforward in more modern programming environments but most software actively developed at the moment has a lot of old cruft that won’t easily port if the engineers can even be convinced to touch it. Most businesses are dependent on old software not all of which is still maintained. Most gamers are even more tied to old software that is not going to get ported and often has annoying anti-virtualization checks (see games breaking on systems with enabled intel e-cores).
I am not sure how large the modern non gaming personal pc market is (tablets, phones, works computers, and chromebooks probably took a chunk out of it) but that could be in play.
Steam. Almost all games would be impacted. On Linux we already use translation layer (Windows -> Linux), but I am not sure if it’s a good idea to emulate X86_64 on top of translation layer.
Getting anti-cheat that technically already works enabled on Linux has been a lot of work and Epic still won’t enable it. Piracy protection systems will also be an issue. Most EA games inspect your CPU to see if they like it on startup (I think this is using vmprotect and some non-OS x86 calls but don’t quote me on that). These kinds on anti virtualization checks are really common (not just in games ProctorU and lock down browser do them too). I don’t think valve running an open virtualization layer will be well received by companies and they will probably ban it from running games. MMOs (due to botting) and anything with anticheat will look particularly askance at this. I also suspect Valve won’t want to try hiding the VM signatures as it borders on violating DMCA.
Newer games will probably get ported if a large part of the market buys into ARM. Unity stuff might get re-released as it is .net if the publishers can be bothered. Minecraft java edition will also always love you (the launcher might not though).
I don’t see how hiding sigs could be seen as violating the DMCA…
Anti virtualization is sometimes used in copy protection. Altering virtualization to avoid those checks might be circumvention under DMCA.
Just because something is in place as DRM does not mean it is inherently covered by DMCA. Otherwise “run in compatibility mode” would be considered a DMCA violation.
Gaming is already a solved issue. Any console manufacturer managed to get games developed regardless of processor instruction set. All it takes is investment and a market.
Xbox and PlayStation are currently x86, but they’ve used different processors in the past. But Nintendo manages uses arm and gets great price/performance. For the PC market Valve could use it’s marketplace to make arm and Linux work for gaming. They’ve made good progress but they could be more aggressive. If they lowered their rates for Linux and/or arm support the gaming industry would move. They could also use the stick as well as the carrot. If they refused to list new games that don’t support Linux and arm the industry would move even faster.
I don’t think gamers will move the market much either way. Apple is the biggest computer manufacturer in the world and their users don’t buy their products for PC gaming. I imagine the rest of the market is similar. People are buying PCs for productive web browsing and office apps. If arm Windows and Linux machines can get half the battery performance macbooks get, they slowly displace x86 in the market for new machines. But half the problem is software optimisation for battery life. Intel macbooks got better battery life, as long as you were using safari rather than a chromium browser.
In new games sure. I was referring to old titles
2024 will be the year of ARM on desktops!
Wake me up when they make faster ARM than my 5900x
I’m all for it, just don’t leave out the DIY market. I would love a socketable ARM platform. Risc-V would be even better.
These new are highend. So expensive, powerhungry and not hugly better than x86 CPUs on their tasks. Must have something that makes it a nobrainer so that it is much better on every aspect.
Apple just had 100% control of all Apples products so they basically forced them over when their new product was just better in most cases.
A Galaxy Book 360 that runs cold and has great battery life would be perfect. I need photoshop and illustrator on a Windows machine that runs as well as a Macbook, I don’t care about gaming with an ultrabook.
