3 ms·

In contrast, i'd be surprised if x86 were to disappear in 5 or 10 years from the mainstream. Personally, i think that there's too much similarly old software th

In contrast, i'd be surprised if x86 were to disappear in 5 or 10 years from the mainstream. Personally, i think that there's too much similarly old software that's build first and foremost for x86, porting which would take bunches of time and effort. Furthermore, ARM is only big in the consumer markets as a part of SoC designs, which are bad for a variety of reasons, notably, limited upgrade possibilities. For example, i cannot go to an Internet store within my country and purchase an ARM-compatible motherboard and buy an ARM CPU separately. As for Apple's M1 offering - i think it's a good start to demonstrate the feasibility of ARM, but i'd say that ARM will most likely remain popular mostly for phones and tablets. I'd bet on maybe another 20-40 years as the timeframe for ARM to replace x86 and for the latter to become irrelevant.

Turing_Machine 5y ago
> Personally, i think that there's too much similarly old software that's build first and foremost for x86, porting which would take bunches of time and effort. I just got an M1 iMac this week. So far I haven't found any of my old x86 stuff that won't run. I'm positive that such software exists, but nothing I use on a regular basis. While I haven't done any formal benchmarks, most of it feels faster under emulation than it did on my previous iMac (which, to be fair, was a few years old).
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Then why does Windows lag behind with its x86 emulation capabilities when running on ARM? For example: https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performance/page2.html https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performa... and https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/03/27/windows-10-on-arm-benchmarked-both-natively-and-with-x86-emulation/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/03/27/windows-10-on-arm-b... (disclaimer: these are from a few years back, because seemingly there isn't a lot of interest in the topic) I feel like there's more to Apple's success, in part because of them having full control over the whole ecosystem, from the hardware, to the OS, to the languages that they'd like to support within their platform. Doing that for near-arbitrary hardware (e.g. everything for server hardware, to regular workstations, to budget off-brand laptops) would be far less likely to succeed on such a scale. Unless everyone ditches Windows in favour for other OSes that would play nicely with ARM, or unless Windows manages to make leaps in regards to emulation technology, i don't see ARM going mainstream for the kind of personal computing that people do on their PCs (as opposed to mobile devices, where ARM clearly dominates). Plus, there's an argument to be made that we shouldn't even need emulation in the first place, just software that's sufficiently portable to be compiled for a new target, or written in a platform-agnostic enough way that it can be easily ported over to a new architecture.

Turing_Machine 5y ago

> Personally, i think that there's too much similarly old software that's build first and foremost for x86, porting which would take bunches of time and effort. I just got an M1 iMac this week. So far I haven't found any of my old x86 stuff that won't run. I'm positive that such software exists, but nothing I use on a regular basis. While I haven't done any formal benchmarks, most of it feels faster under emulation than it did on my previous iMac (which, to be fair, was a few years old).

KronisLV 5y ago
Then why does Windows lag behind with its x86 emulation capabilities when running on ARM? For example: https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performance/page2.html https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performa... and https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/03/27/windows-10-on-arm-benchmarked-both-natively-and-with-x86-emulation/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/03/27/windows-10-on-arm-b... (disclaimer: these are from a few years back, because seemingly there isn't a lot of interest in the topic) I feel like there's more to Apple's success, in part because of them having full control over the whole ecosystem, from the hardware, to the OS, to the languages that they'd like to support within their platform. Doing that for near-arbitrary hardware (e.g. everything for server hardware, to regular workstations, to budget off-brand laptops) would be far less likely to succeed on such a scale. Unless everyone ditches Windows in favour for other OSes that would play nicely with ARM, or unless Windows manages to make leaps in regards to emulation technology, i don't see ARM going mainstream for the kind of personal computing that people do on their PCs (as opposed to mobile devices, where ARM clearly dominates). Plus, there's an argument to be made that we shouldn't even need emulation in the first place, just software that's sufficiently portable to be compiled for a new target, or written in a platform-agnostic enough way that it can be easily ported over to a new architecture.