> but so far only the Apple M1 has shown that traditional x64-like performance is possible on laptop/desktop from ARM chips FWIW, ThunderX will sell you a 96 c

> but so far only the Apple M1 has shown that traditional x64-like performance is possible on laptop/desktop from ARM chips FWIW, ThunderX will sell you a 96 core arm64 desktop that definitely offers x64-like performance. And Ampere will sell you a 256 core arm64 2U server node that matches the performance of the fastest AMD Epyc Milan CPUs. AFAIK there is no desktop case that supports the motherboard of the latter, but there is no reason why you couldn't make one. These things are a bit niche, since the main benefit of arm64 is the reduced power demand at a given performance level, which desktop/workstation users seldom care much about. In the data center though they are killing it, I believe Azure is using the Ampere Altra stuff for their Graviton2-competitor.