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> knowing that you'll have significant difficulties developing for the majority of current market share? I think this is a very small issue. The reason why it
by tylerhou 6y ago
> knowing that you'll have significant difficulties developing for the majority of current market share?
I think this is a very small issue.
The reason why it's hard to develop for ARM today is that reasonably powerful (read: non-phone) ARM processors are not very common. The barrier for developing on ARM is that you have to explicitly purchase another ~$500 laptop in order to test on ARM. Also, libraries generally support x86 but not necessarily ARM. With small desktop market share, the expense is often not worth it.
On the other hand, x86 processors are ubiquitous, and if you're a developer, you can almost certainly find a old laptop or desktop with an x86 processor laying around to test your software on (especially if you're in the demographic to buy relatively expensive MacBooks). Also, since most people use x86, it makes sense to invest in that market.
TL;DR: ARM -> x86 barrier to entry is much lower because x86 processors are so common, x86 opportunity is much more lucrative, and most libraries already support x86.
- armitron 6y agoThere is a plethora of powerful ARM processors for dirt cheap prices. The market is flooded with ~50$ 64bit multicore ARM boards that run Linux. In fact, there are no x86 equivalents, so you're basically describing the opposite of what's actually the case.
- icedchai 6y agoRaspberry Pi's? Pine64's? I have many of these devices. These are fun to play around with, but are no replacement for a modern x86-64 system.
- armitron 6y agoA replacement for modern x86-64 system is definitely not what the comment I replied to described, even though a lot of these ARM boards certainly apply, depending on subset of tasks needed. Here is one example of what you get for 50 dollars: https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-c4/ https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-c4/ This is a quadcore 2GHz 64bit board that can run Android / Ubuntu 20 / Wayland / WebGL / Linux Kernel 5.4 / Vulkan.
- makomk 6y agoThe comment you're replying to was asking for something better than a smartphone; this is worse. It has four of the lower-power and lower-performance Cortex-A55 cores; typically in a smartphone those would be paired with several higher-performance Cortex-A75 cores, but the board in question doesn't have those. This is fairly typical for Pi-style boards.
- icedchai 6y agoYes, this is exactly what I mean. When I said "modern x86-64", "modern" meant anything in the past 4 to 6 years. The average developer would be better off buying a used laptop with an older Core i7, and putting a new SSD into it.