>but with smartphones you don't have a choice. You don't have much choice now sure, but it's not as if there weren't any efforts at x86 smartphones (like the Z

>but with smartphones you don't have a choice. You don't have much choice now sure, but it's not as if there weren't any efforts at x86 smartphones (like the ZenPhone). Nor is it as if there wasn't a long run up of phones leading to the modern smartphone either. And even in this how is not directly relevant to the case of x86? I mean, we're directly doing a comparison to the RISC/MIPS/etc era yeah? Couldn't back then someone say "well but with PC you don't have a choice, so it's different"? x86 got heavy traction on the back of WinTel, then moved up to bigger iron, which didn't really fight hard in the lower end lower margin space. Does there really seem to be no deja vu with that vs ARM gaining heavy traction in iOS/Android/embedded then moving up to PCs and servers, where Intel/AMD didn't really play in the lower end lower margin space? There was a period with plenty of choice in servers, but then x86 won. And again it's not as if someone can't come up with compelling arguments, x86 has some real moats even beyond pure performance. There is enormously more legacy software for x86 for example, and the ISA for it will be under legal protection for a long time to come which complicates running it on ARM. But it's hard to say how much that matters in much of the cloud space, particularly if we're imagining 5-10 years further down the line. x86 takeover didn't happen overnight either, and the first efforts were certainly haphazard. But momentum and sheer volume matter. It just seems like something that needs to be addressed at any rate, more deeply then you have and certainly more then Linus did.