2024 could be the year the PC finally dumps x86 for Arm, all thanks to Windows 12 and Qualcomm's new chip

yeah, but were not talkin some niche audience like apple powerpc products. lets not pretend apple had actual marketshare.

this is messing with legacy windows products that are deeply ingrained the world over. it will be far messier than that apple crap

Apple yes, windows? Not so sure, in windows there's alot of x86 games and everything, people just won't drop that you know? And with Linux gaining traction in gaming community x86 going to live at least another decade, ONLY way people going to drop x86 if you can launch x86 apps on arm without terrible drop off performance, while apple have that, others don't, so until then except mobile devices only apple and niche laptops gonna be on arm, because gaming and other legacy software people not gonna drop until you can launch it on arm without terrible drops of performance

Also 68k for PPC 🙂

Apple is a pretty closed system made for graphics designers and people who don't like choices. It isn't as simple to make it happen for the pc market.

I also doubt Microsoft will go arm on the next console. They've been enjoying all the easy ports to PC for their games and having to port over games based around arm to run on x86 would probably cost a lot more money and time. Game makers wouldn't like it.

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.

It isn’t as good because Rosetta 2 exploits some custom features built into the their M processors. Specifically, there is a special mode that strengthens the memory model, which is critical for both performance and correctness when it comes to executing multithreaded x86 programs on ARM.

Ah right! I forgot about Windows on ARM.

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.

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

Armbian is a really cool project. So is batocera. I have a few SBCs to play with.

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."

I'll never run

Fair play, if you don't need the compatibility with Windows drivers and software, there's no real reason to choose it in 2023.

Microsoft doesn't have loyalty? They have practical market dominance. I say this as a Linux user but ain't no way Microsoft can do anything to drive away their user base. If their users buy a laptop and find half their software doesn't run on it or runs sh*ttily due to emulation, I'm pretty sure they'll blame the laptop manufacturers before Microsoft or demand the laptops have a x86 variant and even that's a long way before moving to another os.

Exactly.

This quote reveals the lack of understanding about how MS works:

Thus far, there's little doubt that Microsoft's efforts with Windows on Arm have been half hearted.

Half-hearted? I bet MS research developed a plan for ARM before the public knew ARM existed. They have a massive research department.

They don't need to support ARM until it's well-established at a performance point that can supplant x86 even under emulation. Their major clients are business, and frankly laptop battery life is more than good enough for business users today (I can run almost all day on battery, and I do a lot of file management with a 3 year old, midrange business laptop).

Now what's compelling for big business is power consumption in data centers or even office buildings. But those systems aren't running Windows directly on iron - it's all virtualized. So even there I'm not sure ARM competes yet. Maybe for desktops in the office, call centers, etc. But those already use Mini PCs.

Gonna be interesting to see how it all works out. Will we really see dramatically better battery life on a Windows ARM laptop? Will this also be the return of Windows Phone/Tablet (does this change the tablet definition if it can run Windows/Linux?)

Edit: Forgot that MS already has Win10 IoT Enterprise, and Win10 IoT Core - so Enterprise for managing IoT devices, and Core to run on IoT devices. Core is much like Embedded Windows in that it's stripped down and only runs one app. I'm sure MS considered ARM devices when building it, and wouldn't be surprised they've already done extensive testing with an ARM version already.

Yeah I bought a $300 amd Chromebook and run Linux on it. Had to flash a new efi firmware to make it fully usable though. Worst part of it is the soldered 8gb of RAM but it works for my usage.

JB Weld is magic (as is it's competitor PC7, seems to be the same stuff). I just used it to fix an iPad keyboard - the part holding the iPad cracked near the hinge. Just filled the interior with JB and reassembled (it squeezed some JB out). Crack is still there, but the hinge area is even more rigid now. Of course it'll never come apart again.

I'd like to promote Goop. It's like a super thick rubber cement. There's very little it won't stick to. Very strong. It's pretty much all I use anymore. Oh, and it peels right off when you need to remove it (though it takes some effort).

I've glued phone mounts to the dash with it. Power strips to the underside of the desk. Glued laptops back together when the screw mounts break. Use it for the metal disks on back of phones for magnetic mounts. It's holding L-brackets to the back of the TV so I could put the soundbar on top. Also a bunch of industrial Velcro (the thick plastic stuff) on the back of the TV to hold a wifi router, Bluetooth adapter, USB hub, power supplies, and cable management.

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).

In new games sure. I was referring to old titles

Great to know, I have only run Raspberry Pi OS so far. But I think we also need parity in applications since a lot of packages are architecture specific. I'm sure most core packages and application packages in Linux must be supporting ARM.