Unlike POWER[1] and Itanium, you can very easily pick up ARM systems for experimenting with. That means there's way less of a burden to experimenting with new

Unlike POWER[1] and Itanium, you can very easily pick up ARM systems for experimenting with. That means there's way less of a burden to experimenting with new architecture. There's also ARM based Chromebooks and all sorts of devices, and you can also get ARM based servers for pennies per hour. ARM's dominance in the cell phone market means it is ample popular enough, got lots of eyes on it, and increasing amounts of software is picking up dedicated optimisations for it. I'm not sure what else you're really expecting. The hardware is there. The software is there. Very likely you could switch to ARM without noticing. [1] Last time I mentioned this to someone involved in POWER architecture, they told me there were going to be cheap POWER based systems coming out to meet the "home hackers" market. I'm not paying particularly close attention, but I haven't seen anything yet?