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It's amazing how quickly ARM has become adopted by so many mainstream companies (for ordinary "desktop" operating systems). My pet theory is that we can thank

It's amazing how quickly ARM has become adopted by so many mainstream companies (for ordinary "desktop" operating systems). My pet theory is that we can thank Chromebooks and SBCs like the Raspberry Pi. About 5 years ago, my preferred development machine was a 10" Chromebook with Crouton. The project gave you a full Linux chroot environment with shells and X windows surfaced as ChromeOS browser tabs. I loved it. I could run EDA tools while sitting in the middle of the woods, and the battery would always outlast the sun. It was tiny and light enough to fit in an inside pocket. And I never felt nervous taking them anywhere, because I could write a few of them off for the price of a "real" laptop. The only hurdle was the ARM SoCs. You could only run software that you could build from source, because almost nobody built proprietary applications for ARM ISAs. But the relevant tooling saw a lot of development and improvement during that time period, because suddenly a lot of people were giving them a workout. So 5 years ago, you still needed a backup x86/64 machine for proprietary applications. But the myriad benefits were clear, and I'm glad to see that these power-sipping RISC chips might finally get their day. And if you think this is exciting, just wait until more people start making RISC-V SoCs on modern process nodes!

pjc50 6y ago
> It's amazing how quickly ARM has become adopted by so many mainstream companies ARM is 35 years old and first appeared in mobiles in 1997.
timthorn 6y ago
And now you can run proprietary EDA tools natively on Arm systems.
mwcampbell 6y ago
Since you talked about ARM Chromebooks, I wonder why so many current Chromebooks, including Google's flagships, are still Intel-based.
- foolmeonce 6y ago
  I would prefer Arm, but it is basically Intel competing on its own turf in terms of the laptop format. As Arm improved Intel could bring it's celeron lines closer to i3, then manufacturers could switch to i3, i5, etc, for premium. A laptop maker that did an Arm was also doing a unique system as a whole instead of modifying the ROM of a windows laptop and they all know that format with Intel very well. Further, things like performance were even more mysterious to consumers when looking at some manufacturer brand and ghz. Really, Arm was more influential in that a second bid is influential, whatever an Arm could do became the floor. I think most vendors who did an Arm model were doing it for experience in working with Arm in a new format and consider if they want to make Android TV, etc, down the road.
vlovich123 6y ago
It’s mobile phones. They helped push the perf/watt needs and mass manufacture drove the price of this stuff down a lot. Without it we’d be stuck with m4 and that class which is where ARM is particularly well suited. they’ve always won on lowest absolute wattage and have only started being competitive for perf/watt in the past few years. then being able to scale that up has only been more recently with Apple being the clear standout on what they’ve achieved.

pjc50 6y ago

> It's amazing how quickly ARM has become adopted by so many mainstream companies ARM is 35 years old and first appeared in mobiles in 1997.

timthorn 6y ago

And now you can run proprietary EDA tools natively on Arm systems.

mwcampbell 6y ago

Since you talked about ARM Chromebooks, I wonder why so many current Chromebooks, including Google's flagships, are still Intel-based.

foolmeonce 6y ago
I would prefer Arm, but it is basically Intel competing on its own turf in terms of the laptop format. As Arm improved Intel could bring it's celeron lines closer to i3, then manufacturers could switch to i3, i5, etc, for premium. A laptop maker that did an Arm was also doing a unique system as a whole instead of modifying the ROM of a windows laptop and they all know that format with Intel very well. Further, things like performance were even more mysterious to consumers when looking at some manufacturer brand and ghz. Really, Arm was more influential in that a second bid is influential, whatever an Arm could do became the floor. I think most vendors who did an Arm model were doing it for experience in working with Arm in a new format and consider if they want to make Android TV, etc, down the road.

vlovich123 6y ago

It’s mobile phones. They helped push the perf/watt needs and mass manufacture drove the price of this stuff down a lot. Without it we’d be stuck with m4 and that class which is where ARM is particularly well suited. they’ve always won on lowest absolute wattage and have only started being competitive for perf/watt in the past few years. then being able to scale that up has only been more recently with Apple being the clear standout on what they’ve achieved.