6 ms·

I really wish this tech was available outside of the Apple ecosystem. If Apple continue like this, x86 machines won't be able to compete. I wonder if other ven

I really wish this tech was available outside of the Apple ecosystem. If Apple continue like this, x86 machines won't be able to compete. I wonder if other vendors are looking at this and contemplating transitioning to ARM as well.

Skunkleton 6y ago
> I wonder if other vendors are looking at this and contemplating transitioning to ARM as well. Perhaps, but with what hardware? The PC era was defined by mostly open hardware that had a high degree of interoperability. ARM does not bring the same.
- wmf 6y ago
  ARM devices being closed is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The SystemReady program is working towards an open PC-like ecosystem.
- scoopertrooper 6y ago
  The ARM ecosystem is way more open that the PC ecosystem. Think about it, instead of having a single (AMD barely counted till recently) CPU manufacturer designing and manufacturing the chips, you now have a company that publishes reference designs and several other companies build an array of interesting implementations. The only reason why ARM seems more closed is that you primarily interact with ARM chips on highly restrictive platforms. The M1 chip will go along way to changing that perception as consumers will now be able to use an ARM based platform as they normally would a regular computer. But, that's not the only way, you can buy a wide array of ARM based devices with recent-generation ARM designs and very flexible IO. e.g. https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/ https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/
  - anuila 6y ago
    Is there anyone shipping an ARM motherboard and ARM chip? I think the "openness" is also defined by what the market offers. All I see are non-extendable notebooks. Also until you can run non-linux "desktop software" on one, it will always feel like a "tablet"
    - scoopertrooper 6y ago
      > Is there anyone shipping an ARM motherboard and ARM chip? I think the "openness" is also defined by what the market offers. All I see are non-extendable notebooks. The closest analogue to what you described in the ARM world would be plugging either a Computer-on-Module or System-on-Chip into a carrier board. Today's ARM deployments are presently largely focused on energy efficiency, so they make heavier use of integration than typical x86 deployments. e.g. https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/apalis-arm-family/nxp-imx-8 https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/apalis-arm-famil... https://www.toradex.com/support/partner-network/hardware https://www.toradex.com/support/partner-network/hardware https://www.toradex.com/products/carrier-board https://www.toradex.com/products/carrier-board > Also until you can run non-linux "desktop software" on one, it will always feel like a "tablet" There are millions of linux users around the world that would challenge your assertion that desktop linux doesn't qualify as anything beyond a tablet. In any event, Windows already runs on ARM and some rapscallions have already got it up and running on a Raspberry Pi despite Microsoft's present prohibition on doing so. I'm sure Microsoft will free up the licensing in due time as market demand presents itself (if only to allow interoperability with M1 Mac VMs). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyLdAs_roIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyLdAs_roIA
      - anuila 6y ago
        That’s the issue. Linux runs everywhere and is not a consumer product, that’s why I exclude it. Until you can build your own general-purpose PC and can decide to make it ARM, it will not be considered an equivalent option, it will just be another tablet, “chromebook” or “board for hackers”
        scoopertrooper 6y ago
        I honestly don't follow you at all. We're now at a point where every major consumer operating system now has an ARM version available. You can build your own general purpose PC with ARM today. It's not done regularly because ARM chips historically tended to be less powerful, so the type of person that went out and built their own PC wouldn't want to build an ARM PC. This is now rapidly changing given chips like Apple's M1 and the upcoming Arm Cortex-X1 are surpassing their x86 competitors in performance orientated benchmarks. Once Microsoft gets their act together with their own version of Rosetta 2 and we reach the X2 generation, you'll start to see a rapid shift towards ARM desktops with X1 chips in the mid-tier segment. Eventually the premium "gamer" tier will follow as M1 has proven that it's possible create an ARM SoC that surpasses top tier x86 single threaded performance at a fraction of the power budget and mountains of thermal headroom. This will be accelerated by the fact Nvidia is purchasing ARM and now has massive incentive to get Nvidia discrete graphics cards paired up with ARM SoCs.
  - qayxc 6y ago
    You have a curious definition of openness there. Most ARM SoCs are the opposite of open - they're proprietary to the max and don't even support an open boot process. > The M1 chip will go along way to changing that perception as consumers The M1-chip will change nothing w.r.t. to perception of "openness" - consumers don't care about the CPU inside their devices. What consumers see is a machine that'll last longer on battery, is much quieter and performs outstandingly well. Openness is important to developers and enthusiasts who want to use the hardware as more than just a commodity. Apple Silicon will kill the ability to upgrade your Apple device - no more RAM expansion slots, no more external GPU support, no more upgrading of internal storage, no more 3rd party repairs. Apple Silicon turns laptops and Macs into consoles: closed ecosystems in terms of software and hardware. I wouldn't call that "openness" at all. The RK3399 inside the Pinebook Pro is also not exactly "open" from a hardware point of view: still no open source drivers for the GPU for example (other than reverse-engineered volunteer efforts).
    - kzrdude 6y ago
      Raspberry Pi has gradually made their broadcom soc platform more open - I believe they support open boot loaders now?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- bloody-crow 6y ago
  Essentially what's missing right now is AMD or Intel or maybe some other company releasing an ARM chipset/motherboard spec and a CPU combo that an average consumer can buy and install into a normal ATX tower. Also, different Linux distros committing to shipping ARM images. Windows also somewhat supports it already, although not very well for now. It would seem that ARM has a much higher potential performance ceiling than already relatively optimized x86 and derivatives and so once we have enough viable ARM options for desktop or high-performance laptops, the industry won't have a choice but move along with it. If you're building software and your competitor releases ARM support and suddenly their product performs better than yours, users will go to them. If videogame makers realize that they can push more performance on ARM, they will start releasing ARM-optimizing games or even shift to ARM-first in time.
  - hvidgaard 6y ago
    Windows and x86-64 has way too much momentum for that to happen any time soon. What is going to be far more realistic is AMD/Intel making a new chip where they expose a better ISA and Microsoft releasing a Windows that support that ISA. All while keeping the tried and tested x86/x64 running in parallel and slowly allow software to migrate to the new ISA, or perhaps invest in a recompilation of executables targeting x86-64 to take advantage of the new ISA. But getting Amd, Intel, and Microsoft to agree on a new ISA is a tall order.
    - gsnedders 6y ago
      Windows on non-x86 would need to have emulation similar to Rosetta 2 to be viable, IMO. Over the past couple decades, we've had both Windows on IA64 and Windows on ARM releases, but they've never had much compatibility with existing software.
      - hvidgaard 6y ago
        I'm not talking about a pure non-x86, but a hybrid chip that expose a legacy x86-64 ISA and a new and improved ISA for the future without all the baggage. Windows will have to target the new, and allow applications to use move to the new ISA at their own pace. With time they can make "Rosetta 2" style emulation with compilation to remove the old ISA all together. That said I seriously doubt that the ISA in and of itself is the reason the chips are slower. After all, underneath is a state of the art architecture. Until I see a independent true cross platform benchmark in e.g. in dotnet be significantly faster and more efficient, I remain skeptical of such incredible claims.
- jdub 6y ago
  Check out SolidRun's Honeycomb LX2K. All very normal: Mini ITX, PCIe x8, DDR4 SODIMMs, USB 3.0, M.2 for NVMe. Bonus: 4 10GbE SFP+ ports. Mine is a delight. https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-workstation/ https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-works...
fanf2 6y ago
Amazon AWS Graviton https://www.techradar.com/news/aws-graviton2-brings-major-performance-leap-to-amazon-eks https://www.techradar.com/news/aws-graviton2-brings-major-pe...
- bloody-crow 6y ago
  Yeah, this looks incredibly cool, but I was talking more about consumer-grade electronics. Stuff you can actually buy and build a PC with for work or games or whatever people currently do with computers at home.
scoopertrooper 6y ago
I would kill for a MacNano. Imagine a A14/M1 derived single-board-computer, flexible IO options, an IP rated enclosure, and Apple's hitherto unannounced IoTOS. It'd be the ultimate little edge machine! They could even do it like the MacPro and couple it with some whackadoodle system for connecting modules (like Raspberry Pi hats) without having to worry too much about how exactly they'll integrate.
- the_lucifer 6y ago
  A la the Apple I?
  - scoopertrooper 6y ago
    I know you're joking, but it's silly joke. Obviously, an underclocked A14 variant built on a 5mm process would still be significantly faster and more energy efficient than whatever is in the Apple I.
    - wtallis 6y ago
      I don't think that comment was intended as a joke. I think it was a perfectly serious and literal comparison to the Apple 1, which was a hackable extendable single board computer.
- samatman 6y ago
  Lovely though this would be, it's hard to imagine a less 'Apple' product which is still a computer.
nwallin 6y ago
ARM Chromebooks have been a thing for almost a decade now. They ship with Chrome OS but it's usually fairly easy to install a more standard linux distro on them. https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/08/all-chromebooks-with-arm-processors-in.html https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/08/all-chromebooks-wit...
- sxp 6y ago
  My recommendation is the Lenovo Duet: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/student-chromebooks/Lenovo-CT-X636/p/ZZICZCTCT1X https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/student-chromebo... It's a Chromebook/Android Tablet hybrid for $300. It's now my primary ereader and "laptop" when I'm away from home since it has decent Android and Linux support.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    For the same price I bought an Asus with Linux almost 10 years ago, which now has a SSD and 8 GB, with a DirectX 11/OpenGL 4.1 capable GPU. Chromebooks keep being overpriced for what they offer.
- jdub 6y ago
  Rockchip, Mediatek, and Qualcomm are not in the same ballpark as Apple Silicon. They're barely in the same sport.

Skunkleton 6y ago

> I wonder if other vendors are looking at this and contemplating transitioning to ARM as well. Perhaps, but with what hardware? The PC era was defined by mostly open hardware that had a high degree of interoperability. ARM does not bring the same.

wmf 6y ago
ARM devices being closed is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The SystemReady program is working towards an open PC-like ecosystem.
scoopertrooper 6y ago
The ARM ecosystem is way more open that the PC ecosystem. Think about it, instead of having a single (AMD barely counted till recently) CPU manufacturer designing and manufacturing the chips, you now have a company that publishes reference designs and several other companies build an array of interesting implementations. The only reason why ARM seems more closed is that you primarily interact with ARM chips on highly restrictive platforms. The M1 chip will go along way to changing that perception as consumers will now be able to use an ARM based platform as they normally would a regular computer. But, that's not the only way, you can buy a wide array of ARM based devices with recent-generation ARM designs and very flexible IO. e.g. https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/ https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/
- anuila 6y ago
  Is there anyone shipping an ARM motherboard and ARM chip? I think the "openness" is also defined by what the market offers. All I see are non-extendable notebooks. Also until you can run non-linux "desktop software" on one, it will always feel like a "tablet"
  - scoopertrooper 6y ago
    > Is there anyone shipping an ARM motherboard and ARM chip? I think the "openness" is also defined by what the market offers. All I see are non-extendable notebooks. The closest analogue to what you described in the ARM world would be plugging either a Computer-on-Module or System-on-Chip into a carrier board. Today's ARM deployments are presently largely focused on energy efficiency, so they make heavier use of integration than typical x86 deployments. e.g. https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/apalis-arm-family/nxp-imx-8 https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/apalis-arm-famil... https://www.toradex.com/support/partner-network/hardware https://www.toradex.com/support/partner-network/hardware https://www.toradex.com/products/carrier-board https://www.toradex.com/products/carrier-board > Also until you can run non-linux "desktop software" on one, it will always feel like a "tablet" There are millions of linux users around the world that would challenge your assertion that desktop linux doesn't qualify as anything beyond a tablet. In any event, Windows already runs on ARM and some rapscallions have already got it up and running on a Raspberry Pi despite Microsoft's present prohibition on doing so. I'm sure Microsoft will free up the licensing in due time as market demand presents itself (if only to allow interoperability with M1 Mac VMs). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyLdAs_roIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyLdAs_roIA
    - anuila 6y ago
      That’s the issue. Linux runs everywhere and is not a consumer product, that’s why I exclude it. Until you can build your own general-purpose PC and can decide to make it ARM, it will not be considered an equivalent option, it will just be another tablet, “chromebook” or “board for hackers”
      - scoopertrooper 6y ago
        I honestly don't follow you at all. We're now at a point where every major consumer operating system now has an ARM version available. You can build your own general purpose PC with ARM today. It's not done regularly because ARM chips historically tended to be less powerful, so the type of person that went out and built their own PC wouldn't want to build an ARM PC. This is now rapidly changing given chips like Apple's M1 and the upcoming Arm Cortex-X1 are surpassing their x86 competitors in performance orientated benchmarks. Once Microsoft gets their act together with their own version of Rosetta 2 and we reach the X2 generation, you'll start to see a rapid shift towards ARM desktops with X1 chips in the mid-tier segment. Eventually the premium "gamer" tier will follow as M1 has proven that it's possible create an ARM SoC that surpasses top tier x86 single threaded performance at a fraction of the power budget and mountains of thermal headroom. This will be accelerated by the fact Nvidia is purchasing ARM and now has massive incentive to get Nvidia discrete graphics cards paired up with ARM SoCs.
- qayxc 6y ago
  You have a curious definition of openness there. Most ARM SoCs are the opposite of open - they're proprietary to the max and don't even support an open boot process. > The M1 chip will go along way to changing that perception as consumers The M1-chip will change nothing w.r.t. to perception of "openness" - consumers don't care about the CPU inside their devices. What consumers see is a machine that'll last longer on battery, is much quieter and performs outstandingly well. Openness is important to developers and enthusiasts who want to use the hardware as more than just a commodity. Apple Silicon will kill the ability to upgrade your Apple device - no more RAM expansion slots, no more external GPU support, no more upgrading of internal storage, no more 3rd party repairs. Apple Silicon turns laptops and Macs into consoles: closed ecosystems in terms of software and hardware. I wouldn't call that "openness" at all. The RK3399 inside the Pinebook Pro is also not exactly "open" from a hardware point of view: still no open source drivers for the GPU for example (other than reverse-engineered volunteer efforts).
  - kzrdude 6y ago
    Raspberry Pi has gradually made their broadcom soc platform more open - I believe they support open boot loaders now?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bloody-crow 6y ago
Essentially what's missing right now is AMD or Intel or maybe some other company releasing an ARM chipset/motherboard spec and a CPU combo that an average consumer can buy and install into a normal ATX tower. Also, different Linux distros committing to shipping ARM images. Windows also somewhat supports it already, although not very well for now. It would seem that ARM has a much higher potential performance ceiling than already relatively optimized x86 and derivatives and so once we have enough viable ARM options for desktop or high-performance laptops, the industry won't have a choice but move along with it. If you're building software and your competitor releases ARM support and suddenly their product performs better than yours, users will go to them. If videogame makers realize that they can push more performance on ARM, they will start releasing ARM-optimizing games or even shift to ARM-first in time.
- hvidgaard 6y ago
  Windows and x86-64 has way too much momentum for that to happen any time soon. What is going to be far more realistic is AMD/Intel making a new chip where they expose a better ISA and Microsoft releasing a Windows that support that ISA. All while keeping the tried and tested x86/x64 running in parallel and slowly allow software to migrate to the new ISA, or perhaps invest in a recompilation of executables targeting x86-64 to take advantage of the new ISA. But getting Amd, Intel, and Microsoft to agree on a new ISA is a tall order.
  - gsnedders 6y ago
    Windows on non-x86 would need to have emulation similar to Rosetta 2 to be viable, IMO. Over the past couple decades, we've had both Windows on IA64 and Windows on ARM releases, but they've never had much compatibility with existing software.
    - hvidgaard 6y ago
      I'm not talking about a pure non-x86, but a hybrid chip that expose a legacy x86-64 ISA and a new and improved ISA for the future without all the baggage. Windows will have to target the new, and allow applications to use move to the new ISA at their own pace. With time they can make "Rosetta 2" style emulation with compilation to remove the old ISA all together. That said I seriously doubt that the ISA in and of itself is the reason the chips are slower. After all, underneath is a state of the art architecture. Until I see a independent true cross platform benchmark in e.g. in dotnet be significantly faster and more efficient, I remain skeptical of such incredible claims.
jdub 6y ago
Check out SolidRun's Honeycomb LX2K. All very normal: Mini ITX, PCIe x8, DDR4 SODIMMs, USB 3.0, M.2 for NVMe. Bonus: 4 10GbE SFP+ ports. Mine is a delight. https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-workstation/ https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-works...

fanf2 6y ago

Amazon AWS Graviton https://www.techradar.com/news/aws-graviton2-brings-major-performance-leap-to-amazon-eks https://www.techradar.com/news/aws-graviton2-brings-major-pe...

bloody-crow 6y ago
Yeah, this looks incredibly cool, but I was talking more about consumer-grade electronics. Stuff you can actually buy and build a PC with for work or games or whatever people currently do with computers at home.

scoopertrooper 6y ago

I would kill for a MacNano. Imagine a A14/M1 derived single-board-computer, flexible IO options, an IP rated enclosure, and Apple's hitherto unannounced IoTOS. It'd be the ultimate little edge machine! They could even do it like the MacPro and couple it with some whackadoodle system for connecting modules (like Raspberry Pi hats) without having to worry too much about how exactly they'll integrate.

the_lucifer 6y ago
A la the Apple I?
- scoopertrooper 6y ago
  I know you're joking, but it's silly joke. Obviously, an underclocked A14 variant built on a 5mm process would still be significantly faster and more energy efficient than whatever is in the Apple I.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    I don't think that comment was intended as a joke. I think it was a perfectly serious and literal comparison to the Apple 1, which was a hackable extendable single board computer.
samatman 6y ago
Lovely though this would be, it's hard to imagine a less 'Apple' product which is still a computer.

nwallin 6y ago

ARM Chromebooks have been a thing for almost a decade now. They ship with Chrome OS but it's usually fairly easy to install a more standard linux distro on them. https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/08/all-chromebooks-with-arm-processors-in.html https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/08/all-chromebooks-wit...

sxp 6y ago
My recommendation is the Lenovo Duet: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/student-chromebooks/Lenovo-CT-X636/p/ZZICZCTCT1X https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/student-chromebo... It's a Chromebook/Android Tablet hybrid for $300. It's now my primary ereader and "laptop" when I'm away from home since it has decent Android and Linux support.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  For the same price I bought an Asus with Linux almost 10 years ago, which now has a SSD and 8 GB, with a DirectX 11/OpenGL 4.1 capable GPU. Chromebooks keep being overpriced for what they offer.
jdub 6y ago
Rockchip, Mediatek, and Qualcomm are not in the same ballpark as Apple Silicon. They're barely in the same sport.