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Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad
- hericium 5y agoWill it be equipped with Microsoft Pluton insecurity chip?
- pjmlp 5y agoARM has had trust zone for years now.
- PennRobotics 5y agoPluton is separate from TZ. Pluton is another core which is a security module---in this case, a Microsoft product. TZ splits data and instruction access into insecure and secure classes on the original core---letting a little information pass from one side to the other without revealing the inner functionality. There are plenty of Arm SoCs with Cortex-A cores plus an onboard Cortex-M-based trusted platform module (TPM). There are also already Arm chips using Pluton, such as the MediaTek MT3620.
- cf141q5325 5y agoTrustzone isnt a coprocessor though? Meaning you have to initialize it. As far as i understand it its a more fancy MMU?
- blibble 5y agobut does it run Linux?
- pjmlp 5y ago
- josteink 5y agoWhen people ask “Does it run Linux”, they typically don’t mean WSL (which in its current iteration is essentially just a VM).
- pjmlp 5y agoThat is the only usable way for Linux Desktop on laptops after 20 years going for it.
- blibble 5y agoit's worked out of the box on every ThinkPad I've ever purchased
- viraptor 5y agoI'm a happy native Linux desktop user for almost that long. Preferred it to windows. Let's not exaggerate about "only usable".
- pjmlp 5y agoMy experience with Linux since 1995, kind of proves otherwise, I lost track on hand holding Linux on laptops, including those sold with Linux pre-installed.
- fsflover 5y agoPerhaps you chose wrong models? My Librem 15 is flawless with Linux (suspend and everything else works in 100% cases).
- viraptor 5y agoYes, but this doesn't prove that Linux desktop is only usable as WSL any more than my experience proves that windows is only usable as wine. You didn't enjoy the experience - that's ok.
- mixedCase 5y ago
- viraptor 5y agoIf not now, likely soon. The chip itself is already supported and even its GPU is implemented since 5.15. Similar chips in other laptops don't fail entirely. https://forum.manjaro.org/t/samsung-book-s-with-8cx/52818/3 https://forum.manjaro.org/t/samsung-book-s-with-8cx/52818/3 I give it another 2 months and I'd bet someone boots the basics at least. (Assuming the laptop is reasonably powerful and has enough users / interest) They mostly need to make sure the device tree is correct.
- rbanffy 5y agoThere's little upside on this. The chip is not faster than an Intel equivalent, and the laptop isn't cheaper either.
- githubris 5y agoThat's barely even an encouraging sign. For example, where are the folks running linux on the previous gen 7cx devices?
- viraptor 5y ago> (Assuming the laptop is reasonably powerful and has enough users / interest) 7cx devices are not popular and I haven't seen anybody excited about them. M1 got serious reverse engineering work done because it's worth owning in the first place, but not every random Arm device will get that.
- josteink 5y agoIf these ARM-laptops supports the ServerReady platform, I guess it should be possible to just UEFI boot a plain Debian or Ubuntu Arm64 ISO on these machines, without need to tailor a specific image? If not, I'm going to be dissapointed. Edit: According to a reddit-comment[0], ARM ServerReady, UEFI and ACPI are all requirements for Windows on ARM, so if this thing runs Windows, we should be able to assume all those other things are in place too. Unless someone has locked the SecureBoot-settings, these laptops should be able to run Linux too without too much trouble. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/k3av65/when_will_arm_linux_become_the_mainstream_linux/ge33dxd/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/k3av65/when_will_arm...
- 2000UltraDeluxe 5y agoExcellent! I might just have to get me one of those.
- ihateolives 5y agoInteresting. I was recently looking to upgrade my personal T480s which I use for development, but didn't see anything in Lenovo lineup that were reasonably light/powerful/quiet/cool enough to make put in the order. I've grown so sick of laptops constantly hissing at me when I do something more complicated than browsing the web. My work issued Dell is basically unusable in a quiet room without headphones. So as an impulse buy I sidegraded to M1 Air instead just to see what the fuss is all about. Well, I'm not really wanting to go back to regular intel/amd laptops now, I have been spoiled.
- Mashimo 5y agoI got the T14 Gen1, basically the direct successor of the T480. What I notice is when I put the power profile to balanced it's very quiet. But of course does not power up all the way. Fast enough for my needs, but of course might not be a solution for everyone.
- ihateolives 5y agoI was looking at T14, but I'm used to having slim laptop, s variants have been slightly powerful but lighter and with slimmer profile. The thing with M1 is that the difference with 8th gen i5 in my T480s is for some workloads 2x, if not more. And difference in some Lightroom tools is easily even more. M1 is amazing. Plus, it's quiet. I didn't know I missed silence so much. It's hard to go back now.
- Mashimo 5y agoIf you have a T480s now, why do you want to upgrade? It's quite modern.
- ihateolives 5y agoIt only takes maximum of 24GB RAM. Right now I'm ok with it but I'd like to have some future proofing at some point, everybody is going crazy with containers nowadays. I've been moving my work off the desktop and while I can upgrade NVMe as I please I'm stuck with memory limit.
- gigatexal 5y agoTomshardware is such a ad filled cess pool of a site. I refuse to go to any pages of theirs. I’ve blocked them in my DNS. The tech reporting is garbage anyway besides the ad filled pages. A better site for this info is: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/lenovo-announces-the-first-arm-based-thinkpad/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/lenovo-announces-the...
- xaerise 5y agoSetup piHole or AdGuard and remove the ads and tracking sites.
- viktorcode 5y agoWhy don't you use an ad blocker of your choice?
- fauigerzigerk 5y agoAnd Arstechnica insists on autoplaying the same utterly pointless video right next to absolutely every single article at all times.
- moonchrome 5y agoI like this trend, I'm currently looking at next gen Surface Pro X as a replacement for my 2018 MBP. I'm almost there with using remote development on super beefy Windows desktop (waiting for Rider remote development support) - I want a mobile device that's powerful enough for client apps - but I want to offload heavy lifting to a tower that I don't have to listen to whizzing next to my face. I'm not sure why they keep forcing the laptop form factor on this - tablet is much more flexible, you can add the keyboard folio if you want it but I prefer using dedicated keyboard/mouse when I'm using it for anything nontrivial, and tablet is more practical in most other scenarios.
- sohkamyung 5y ago> tablet is much more flexible, you can add the keyboard folio if you want it Maybe it's just me, but I have the first generation Microsoft Surface Go, which I mainly used as a tablet device, but occasionally attach the keyboard to it when I need to do more extensive typing. Over time, I discovered the connectivity between the keyboard and the tablet became worse, until it finally failed, and the tablet did not recognize the keyboard. Trying a new keyboard did not fix the problem, so I assume the problem is with the connector on the tablet. For now, I've bought a BT wireless keyboard, which I can use with the tablet. For that reason, I've soured on tablets with attachable keyboards, and looking for a small (13-14 inch) 2-in-1 laptop for working on the go.
- moonchrome 5y agoMy wife had a Yoga 2in1 and I've been underwhelmed with the experience, "tent mode" is cool but as a tablet it's too chunky, as a laptop it's underwhelming. In my experience - the only time I use attached keyboard/mouse is when I'm at the office and I need to join a call in the conference room or a call booth in co-working space - other than that I use external BT mouse and keyboard exclusively. For those use cases I think I could get away with using a touch screen, maybe if I needed to present - but I'd just pickup my keyboard/mouse in that scenario.
- mobilio 5y ago"The ThinkPad 13s will start at $1,099 when it comes out in May." It's too expensive for an ARM device.
- sschueller 5y agoBut Apple's aren't? I agree with you but they are pricing it relative to what they can get away with and Apple set the starting point for ARM based laptops.
- ianai 5y agoApple might still be selling Intel systems alongside ARM systems. But they’ve made it clear which side is the future. Their performance also isn’t a loss. Probably the biggest factor though is in Windows land cross architecture comparability will be a much much bigger issue. If your legacy app only works on intel then arm is useless.
- rbanffy 5y agoThe M1-based Macs are faster, lighter, offer seamless compatibility, run iOS software, have better screens and better battery life than modern comparable laptops. It's also faster than this Snapdragon chip. And starts from $999. It also runs a really good Unix OS. This laptop still won't run Linux out of the box.
- pjmlp 5y agoWSL2, as good as it gets.
- vladvasiliu 5y agoWhile I agree WSL2 is pretty good, and it's great that it's available on Windows, you still have to put up with the day-to-day annoyances of the OS. The general UX is the main reason why I don't use Windows. I actually gave it an honest try in 2020. I was pretty excited about Windows terminal, the inclusion of OpenSSH (I always hated Putty) and even went on the insider channel to test out WSL2, with Docker desktop and everything. And it was better that I had remembered. But I just gave up after a few months. The laggy search in the start menu, which I had to fix with some registry change to prevent it from searching the web (!?). The random "quick access" folders in the explorer, which also required registry wrangling to remove. Bonus points for all these reverting randomly after an update. The hidden taskbar, which would become permanently visible in case a window demanded attention, and no way (that I've found) to disable this behavior. However, it seems fixed on Windows 11. The windows which would look active, with a blinking cursor and everything, but wouldn't actually be active, and input would go to some other random window. New windows starting up behind the active window, etc. And my favorite: turning on the computer in the middle of the night for some reason if left in hibernation. I had set the GPO to NOT turn on to uninstall updates, so no idea what it was up to.
- kohlerm 5y agoIt is a shame this is based on X1 cores not X2 cores. Feels like they are trying to rip off people.
- boondaburrah 5y agoLenovo always seems to be about a half year behind the generation of chip you actually want.
- PennRobotics 5y agoI'm curious if they even considered the A78C, the variant with a similar cache (except L2) that replaces all LITTLE cores with big and possibly costs less to license as it's probably a roadmap core like the A78. It's chronologically a step behind but could unlock better performance (than A78+55) with a negligible/nonexistent hit to battery life.
- my123 5y agoSnapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is 4xX1 + 4xA78, with no A55s.
- PennRobotics 5y agoI eat my statement. That looks like a better configuration than an octa-A78C, but only if the licensing cost is the same or you REALLY have a need for the latest extensions.
- my123 5y agoSo, it actually is X1C and A78C. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2022/02/28/mwc-2022-the-next-microsoft-pluton-device-pac-technology/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2022/02/28/mwc-2... references PAC support, which is only in the C variant of those cores.
- PennRobotics 5y ago
- pdenton 5y agoBut do they run Linux? ThinkPads were always great for Linux and I've been happy with them ever since I can afford them (6 years now).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sandGorgon 5y agohttps://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/ https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/ Fedora 35: aarch64 DVD ISO should work. Just FYI, we run our entire production api on arm on AWS. Its pretty rock stable and mature. The stability of ARM on linux is pretty much a solved problem at this point.
- pantalaimon 5y agoAre there really no more model specific images required?
- sandGorgon 5y agogenerally not. unless Qualcomm is doing something very different. aarch64 works in all chromebooks - and also the AWS Graviton platform in production. there's a nice repo that AWS maintains for this - this should be very helpful. https://github.com/aws/aws-graviton-getting-started https://github.com/aws/aws-graviton-getting-started We are basically in the endgame here.
- pdenton 5y agoJust Fedora or any aarch64 distro? I thought aarch64 meant raspberries.
- arghwhat 5y agoaarch64 means 64-bit ARM, which apply to anything from server-grade hardware to smartphones to raspberry pi's.
- pelasaco 5y agoHow was the ARM take over settled down? https://semianalysis.com/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-century-arm-china-has-gone-completely-rogue-operating-as-an-independent-company-with-their-own-ip/ https://semianalysis.com/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-cent...
- einpoklum 5y agoHow about they announce ThinkPads with a decent keyboard for a change? :-(
- hef19898 5y agoThnikPads have propably the best keyboards around, definitly the best laptop keyboards I ever used.
- codethief 5y agoYou either have never tried a ThinkPad prior to the W530 (i.e. more than 10 years ago, when they significantly changed the keyboard for the first time) or you haven't used one of the "next-gen" models with "next-gen" keyboards that they have been building ever since and that get worse with every iteration.
- hef19898 5y agoI have used as far back as 15 years ago, have a back up one that is 5 years old (?), privately a X1 Extreme Gen 2 and a company L13. No significant difference in keyboards, all of those are, or were, great. Especially compared to HP or Dell. Not to speak about Asus...
- Beltalowda 5y agoI agree; the keyboards are fine. I do dislike the layout changes they've made compared to the "classic" keyboards, but it's still better than most layouts out there (and they fixed some design mistakes in the first iterations of it).
- bitwize 5y agoI have a T450 from 2014 or so. Its keyboard is worse than my T510 (old keyboard), but still quite a bit better than other laptop keyboards.
- asddubs 5y ago
- ksec 5y ago>The ThinkPad 13s will start at $1,099 This $1099 config better have 16GB Memory and 512GB by default. Otherwise it is a machine that cost about the same as MacBook Air M2, with lower Display Res, slower CPU and GPU and No Touch ID. This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price. With the scale of iPhone and iPad, Apple is now at a point where the whole PC industry can no longer compete. And that is excluding things like speakers, trackpad, and thunderbolt port. >A spokesperson told Ars Technica that its business customers are being more open to the aspect ratio. Biggest lie ever. People want 16:10, but for years the industry shove 16:9 to your customer because it was the cheaper panel. > Arm Cortex-X1 cores at up to 3 GHz For Context, the Single Core GB5 Scores Arm Cortex-X1 cores at up to 3 GHz = ~800 Apple M1 ( A14 Core+ ) = ~1700 For PC Laptop counterpart, a 800 GB5 score you are looking at something like AMD Ryzen 7 4700U if it was limited to run at ~10W. So not too bad. Apple is the outliner here.
- Synaesthesia 5y agoWell thankfully Apple charges so much for 512gb SSD that it isn't actually cheaper to buy the Macbook Air.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y agowould linux support be better this time around with ARM considering we have had years of raspberry pi and similar devices support? i would love to know if linux can shine on arm for desktop use out of the box
- marcodiego 5y agoThis is something that scares me. Since linux had a large dominance on ARM, it was common to vendors to make drivers for their devices. By making drivers, I mean get the driver properly mainlined. Of course, there always existed the mostly proprietary and closed board support package but it was to their disadvantage and there was a huge incentive to write drivers. My fear is that, with windows becoming popular on ARM, this incentive will disappear and linux support on these machine will be weak.
- francis-io 5y agoI know nothing about ARM, but I think it's time to learn. Am I right in saying you need to compile the OS and all applications to run on ARM? If so, I bet at least one thing I use daily wont work, and I don't want to commit to a laptop like this unless I know it will be a full replacement for my Intel machine. Whats the state of this in Ubuntu?
- ZiiS 5y agoApplications need recompiling to run nativly on ARM. However you can still emulate x86 for programs that need it (with a speed penalty). Ubuntu has great support for ARM. However the is an extra dimension that Arm laptops are also _much_ less standardised then x86; I would wait to see hardware compatability this this precise device.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- masklinn 5y ago> I know nothing about ARM, but I think it's time to learn Is it? Unless you’re routinely working with assembly it’s essentially irrelevant, unless you’re writing low-level multithreaded native code (aka you’re directly working with atomics and barriers). Though obviously if you assume customers are or may be switching hardware, it can be useful to test or bench on ARM to get some inkling as to their eventual experience, or make sure you’re not relying on ISA details. Don't get me wrong, ARM is neat and all, but your comment’s assertion that “it’s time to learn” doesn’t seem motivated by anything real, any more than “it’s time to learn” about RISCV or PPC. > Am I right in saying you need to compile the OS and all applications to run on ARM? Technically you could run emulated, although that has a non-trivial cost. > If so, I bet at least one thing I use daily wont work, and I don't want to commit to a laptop like this unless I know it will be a full replacement for my Intel machine. You could always get an ARM-based devboard (e.g. a raspberry pi or similar) to play around, that’s hardly a major investment, although obviously it is what it is. An other alternative is to use ARM-based “cloud” systems.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bayesian_horse 5y agoFor Germans: ARM ist arm, aber besser ARM drin als Arm ab!
- tiku 5y agoAt what point will there come laptops that have a slot for an extra battery like an 18650 or 26650 battery that can sustain a full workday extra? That would be nice, just to carrey a small spare battery.
- plantain 5y agoEvery USB-C laptop has this - charge it like you would charge your phone on the go, from a powerbank.
- mjlee 5y agoWhat's the efficiency of doing this over being able to change the laptop battery? I've done it a few times for my M1 Macbook Air and feel like it can't be much better than 50%-75% but it would be nice to know.
- throwaway984393 5y agoI would not take that wager. Just because it has a USB-C port doesn't necessarily mean it has support for anything other than basic USB device support.
- AuthorizedCust 5y agoHuh? How else would you charge this device?
- rovr138 5y agoThere are laptops with USB C that still have a separate power port to charge.
- hansel_der 5y agoHP Elitebook G3 for one is not happy with power from a phone charger, idk don't have a powerbank to test.
- deleted 5y ago
- chrisjc 5y agoI think I'll always associate anything that runs on Qualcomm (thought it's not just them) as temporary due to its short lifespan and lack of vendor support based on my experience of buying Android phones, tablets and media devices. I think this is already true of some (all?) Chromebooks that actually have expiration dates. This is probably not a fair comparison since it's a laptop and windows-based, but it would take a lot to win me back with how much money, time and effort i have lost over the years with these products... not to mention the amount of ewaste has been generated. Even more true with my experience with Motorola (Lenovo); $600+ phone stops getting support/updates after 6 months of ownership... trade-in value of $28. Never again. Then again, seeing Intel with some serious competition warms me up a little bit. Also the thought of an ecosystem of blossoming Linux distros for ARM laptops/desktops makes me excited.
- pinephoneguy 5y agoI stopped buying Qualcomm smartphones years ago. There's no way I'd by a laptop with one of their chips. What an unfortunate choice by Lenovo.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>What an unfortunate choice by Lenovo. Well they didn't have much choice here. MediaTek, Samsung, and the rest are equally bad. The ARM SoC market is flooded with chips designed to have the shortest SW support lifespan possible. Maybe Nvidia can get its shit together and put out a competitive ARM chip.
- pinephoneguy 5y agoThe fundamental problem is the refusal to publish driver source. Nvidia is one of the last companies on earth I'd expect to do that.
- userbinator 5y agoMTK has the advantage of somewhat available (leaked) design information and source code, and there's a pretty thriving Chinese developer community --- at least around their phones/tablets.
- andi999 5y agoWho needs 28 hours of battery? I mean the big step is that you can run a an extended working day, lets say 12hours, but at least after 16 hours you should be able to plug it in, shouldnt you; best next to the bed you are resting then.
- jpe90 5y agoSure, but if the battery continues to last for an extended work day after many years of use without a replacement, that’s extremely appealing to me.
- andi999 5y agoYes, long life battery, or lighter laptop, that is important. So the logic is, if it lasts 28h when new it will probably last 12h when old?
- nathanasmith 5y ago>Who needs 28 hours of battery? A nice advantage is in a few years when the battery wears down some you'll still have fantastic all day battery life compared to most other laptops.
- fomine3 5y agoMost people don't need real 28h, but the number is just a regulated measurement. You may get 14h.
- uhsgeuevh4 5y ago
- eunos 5y agoVery interesting that we see shift to ARM system from uniquely X86 system. I hope that in the future there will be also shift to RISC-V
- UltraViolence 5y agoWhy are they doing this? Windows RT laptops flopped almost a decade ago due to the lack of software, and the landscape hasn't changed all that much AFAIK.
- ColonelPhantom 5y agoI'm quite certain it has. I believe Windows on ARM now ships with x86 emulation, allowing it to run any program (albeit more slowly). I'm not sure about the state of WSL on ARM, but Linux on ARM in general is a nearly indistinguishable experience from Linux on x86, with the exception of proprietary software which is for the most part relatively rare on that platform.
- GeekyBear 5y ago>I believe Windows on ARM now ships with x86 emulation The last time I saw this tested, it was more likely to fail than work for any particular bit of modern 64 bit Windows software.
- yyyk 5y agox86_64 support didn't exist due to Intel patents. That issue was resolved: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introducing-x64-emulation-in-preview-for-windows-10-on-arm-pcs-to-the-windows-insider-program/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introdu...
- GeekyBear 5y agoThat doesn't fix the problem of Microsoft adding it to Windows in a non-functional state.
- chaosharmonic 5y agoThe difference is that, relative to the days of Windows 8, they've significantly diversified the ways you can target Windows, directly and otherwise: - IE is finally dead, and shipping a downstream Chrome build in the form of Edge gives Win10/11 not only a revamped WebView but platform-level support for PWAs (I cannot stress enough how much of an impact there is here just from how much the Web has evolved as a platform, and as a Linux user this cuts both ways tbh) - To this same point there's also a first-party React Native build, allowing devs that are already shipping mobile apps to extend those to target desktops - .NET has since been open-sourced, gone cross-platform, and picked up native ARM support - Windows Subsystem for Linux, and now Windows Subsystem for Android, let you reach outside the Windows ecosystem entirely (the latter of which, interestingly, should also compound over time with the various efforts that Google is finally making again to make large form factors viable on Android) - Project Reunion exists now, for the stated purpose of providing a common set of APIs that Windows developers can access That last one alone, btw, makes the landscape inherently different from WinRT, which removed Win32 support entirely and only allowed you to run UWP apps.
- llampx 5y agoI will definitely wait for the next generation for this product. I am still not convinced MS and Lenovo will support ARM long-term.
- GeekyBear 5y agoHas Windows gotten any better at running x86-64 Windows software on ARM hardware? The last time I saw this tested, it was more likely to fail than succeed, but it's been a while. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA
- userbinator 5y agoUnfortunately I don't think Lenovo has the market dominance and/or desire that IBM had in the early 80s with the PC to make their ARM platform the de-facto standard, which means this is going to be yet another of many proprietary platforms whose only thing in common is the instruction set. This is no doubt going to be very different from Apple's ARM platform, for example. Even the next model or revision might have some things completely different. I still remember the days when "IBM PC compatible" meant (at the very least, a desire to) something. If Lenovo releases the schematics and detailed architecture reference like IBM did with the PC, they might start another PC revolution; but I doubt they will.
- rayiner 5y agoX1 cores? ARM launched the X2 core back in May of last year. It's already in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Interesting to see why Qualcomm would sandbag the laptop chips with last-generation cores.
- numpad0 5y agoHow does this compare to X1 Nano? I'd been looking for a laptop, and the Nano seemed to fit my hand like nothing else. This one feels like a modified T line or a lineage of detachables rather than X series machines, is that the case?
- xg15 5y agoWas confused about "ARM" written in lower case for a second and was imagining some futuristic device embedded in an elbow sleeve or bracelet. I'm disappointed.
- zoobab 5y agoPeople want RISC-V, and no proprietary hardware.
- kats 5y agoSome people want that but actually they are a really small percent of people overall. On CrowdSupply the Librem and Novena laptop projects did not have more than 1k orders. Although it is a huge credit to both of those projects to develop new hardware products and be so successful to begin with. In fact, this laptop goes in the opposite direction, it's not intended to be modified as much by the user. It's one that runs Windows 11 with some feature called "S mode" ('S' as in Secure). In S mode there is some kind of secure boot and apps can only be installed through the Windows Store. A user with admin rights can disable S-mode but it can then never be re-enabled after that. So actually this laptop is not intended to be open at all, it is marketed for business where the environment can be more locked down and secure.
- nunez 5y agoFrom that angle (and the angle in Tom’s Hardware) the screen panel doesn’t look very high quality :(