11 ms·

Ask HN: Where is the ARM desktop PC?

35 points by _448 4y ago

I was wondering, why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available. What are the blockers?

mritzmann 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand the question correctly. Apple has some on offer, doesn't it?
- _448 4y ago
  Apple has Mac[0] not PC ;) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfv6Ah_MVJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfv6Ah_MVJU
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    Possibly the ThinkPad X13s is what you're after? Or laptops don't count (I guess you did say desktop). If your definition of PC is "runs Windows" there's a business reason Apple silicon doesn't. It's rumoured to be because Microsoft made a deal with Qualcomm: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/22/microsoft-qualcomm-arm-windows-exclusive-deal/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/22/microsoft-qualcomm-arm-... So if you want to buy (or build...) an arm PC with Windows then as of today it had to come with a Qualcomm SOC. So I think the TL;DR answer for your question is really "because Qualcomm aren't super interested in the desktop market". I think there are now some "mini PCs" but they are not internally expandable etc. There are no major technical blockers to slapping a Qualcomm dev kit in a desktop case but the experience is not gonna be that great.
GreenBackBoogie 4y ago
He's probably referring to other products, but it seems he overlooked the SBC, which come in all forms and sizes and, generally, being low power devices, can't really do much besides hosting some not so demanding apps (looking at containers).
- _448 4y ago
  > but it seems he overlooked the SBC SBC is not a complete PC. I was talking about one which an end user who is not tech-savvy might use.
  - GreenBackBoogie 4y ago
    Again, you tend to overlook things that are already on the market, like https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400/ or the myriad of SBC-based computers like this. The only thing you should do is to install an OS, which is something everybody tends to do and succeed nowadays.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      I've bought into marketing, and bought myself a Pi 400. It's abysmally slow for everything. It feels like eeePCs of yesteryear. Underpowered and slow
      - GreenBackBoogie 4y ago
        I fully agree with you, but it's still a PC, although not envisioned for the power users, but for the people who just need to do the most basic of stuff (e-mails, maybe a few documents, etc.), that's what a ~6W CPU can deliver.
zeristor 4y ago
Well there were the Archimedes machines a while back
- zeristor 4y ago
  Actually I didn't know of this before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_(computer)
- Milner08 4y ago
  Yeah we were using ARM desktops back in primary school with Risc OS. Its quite fascinating that they are coming back.
- samwillis 4y ago
  Exactly, my family’s first PC was an ARM based Acorn Archimedes - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes Our school computer labs had BBC Micros, the predecessor to the Acorn Archimedes and all ARM processors. It’s funny to think back at how quickly that computer was out of date, we only had it a year or so before getting a Windows 95 PC. At about the same time we came back from a school break and all the BBCs were gone, Windows PCs in their place. Now we are all carrying around an ARM in our pockets. Being from the Cambridge UK area it’s amazing the heritage Acorn produced. About 10 years ago I worked on a project that was being run by the original lead developer of RISC OS. The connections are everywhere.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  And, according to a BYTE article from around the time of the launch, it could do FP math faster than a 386 with a 387 coprocessor.
panick21_ 4y ago
The blockers are that x86 AMD and Intel machine are hard to beat and software just works better on x86. With linux you might be partially ok, but with Windows you are not ok.
- kolinko 4y ago
  It's an issue with Windows, not ARM. On MacOS software works way better on ARM than it did on x86.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Yeah but a PC is a whole experience, software and hardware.
  - Rhedox 4y ago
    The problem is that Qualcomms CPUs are just a lot slower than what AMD and Intel offer. It's not the fault of the OS.
- ch_123 4y ago
  Running Windows 11 ARM in Parallels on my M1 MBP is a surprisingly smooth experience. Most x86 applications work well (both in terms of reliability and performance) using Microsoft's inbuilt emulation. I have not run any games or larger applications in the VM, but I suspect most Windows users could run on ARM and not notice the difference.
- Ancapistani 4y ago
  I bought my wife a Surface Pro X a while back, and once I realized that x86 emulation worked fine but x86_64 wasn’t a thing, I had no issues at all.
mhd 4y ago
It's a game of definitons, but for a proper desktop PC, wouldn't you need a socketable CPU? Mainboard, CPU and probably GPU as separate units doesn't seem to be something the ARM world is aiming at. (Neither does Apple, but they've been blurring the lines between laptops and desktops for a long time)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
RobotToaster 4y ago
I guess it depends on your definition of "PC". I always thought, by definition, it had to be intel 8088 compatible to be a PC.
- jen20 4y ago
  By whose definition? The term “personal computer” existed for several years before the IBM 5150.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    Common definition. And branding. Nobody calls a Mac a PC.
    - jen20 4y ago
      Plenty call a raspberry pi that, however.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  By that definition, unsurprisingly, no ARM pcs will ever exist.
mort96 4y ago
Here's the ARM desktop PC: https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/ https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/ The rest of the industry seems fine with what AMD and Intel has at the moment, or incapable of making strong ARM-based competitors.
- rvz 4y ago
  That (Mac Studio) and the iMac are also qualifying another ARM desktop PC (as in personal computer).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- OJFord 4y ago
  That web page is insane - normally I sympathise with the 'scrolljacking' bemoaners, but that's just so funny (maybe it would annoy me if I was actually shopping), not at all what I expected from the page, or Apple at all.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    It's at least as annoying as your initial impulse said it was...more so from the people who dictate UI down to a gnat's ass in every app we submit to their store, but somehow exempt themselves from even common courtesy when it comes to designing a page. I'm typing this on a mac, but for god's sake don't make excuses for them.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      I'm not making excuses for it, I'm typing this from a ThinkPad (work, and personally have a Framework & a desktop I built, Android phone), it just amused me.
  - Havoc 4y ago
    Yeah Apple site is borderline unusable at times. To much emphasis on looks and design at the cost of sane usability
dmitriid 4y ago
> why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available. What are the blockers? Apple has shown what is possible with an ARM-based design, and everyone is now clamoring for M1/M2-level CPUs everywhere. Somehow everyone forgot that it took Apple 15 or more years to get to M1/M2. Their first custom CPU, the A4, appeared in 2010, and it takes anywhere from 4 to 6 years to design a new CPU. So it's quite likely Apple started designing their own CPUs... around the time they transitioned from PowerPC to Intel, since before the launch of the very first iPhone. There. That is the answer to "why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available". You need to spend 15 years or more actually working on one, and the only people who have done it are Apple.
- pca006132 4y ago
  Or perhaps other players don't have the incentive to do it? In addition to the development time and cost, you also need to make customers willing to buy it. For Apple, they have tight control over the ecosystem so they can make the transition really smooth, but for others this may not be that easy. The way I see this is that, customers already using Apple product will not give up using it if the switch is not too painful, while Windows users will not switch to using some new architecture unless there is some significant gain for them.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    Very true. Apple could envision a path of "start with mobile CPUs and see if we can make them better and better, and then eventually laptops, and then maybe desktops". And they have their own OSes on those devices. Everybody else has only parts of the whole picture. Samsung is probably the only one that has all the hardware, and CPU expertise, but they control none of the OSes.
- Kuinox 4y ago
  > Apple has shown what is possible with an ARM-based design I'll repost my own comment in a previous thread: ARM outside of Macs are not beefy. Excluding apples cpus, x86_64 is ahead in perf/per watt. Remember that until 3 months ago, Apple was one CPU node ahead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization
rjsw 4y ago
I have an ARM-based desktop PC next to me right now. It contains an ATX motherboard [1] with a StrongARM SA110 CPU, NVIDIA NV1 graphics card, PCI network card, ATA hard disk. Mine runs NetBSD/cats. [1] http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/boards.html http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/boards.html
- pabs3 4y ago
  FYI it was mentioned on the Debian ARM IRC channel that support for that CPU will be removed from Linux in version 6.2. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc.git/commit/?h=boardfile-remove&id=181d1d9a3446 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc.git/...
  - rjsw 4y ago
    What part of "Mine runs NetBSD/cats" was unclear.
    - yokoprime 4y ago
      The NetBSD/cats part. Also runs.
    - magicalhippo 4y ago
      While it might not be relevant to you, it might be relevant to others who might consider picking up the hardware you mentioned. I get that the FYI directed it to you, but given the HN guidelines I read that more as PSA.
spacedcowboy 4y ago
I have a Mac studio. It’s awesome. I run several “windows only” apps on it as well as native Mac apps. Parallels + Windows-for-arm + Microsoft’s x86 emulation isn’t as smooth as Rosetta 2, but it’s still very very usable. Running Altium[1] as I type, with a reasonably complex PCB in design (8 layers, DDR3, FPGA, HDMI) and it’s indistinguishable from running on a high-end PC. Said PC has been powered down for several months now, I just haven’t felt the need to use it. [1] https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/ https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/
- IndrekR 4y ago
  Running similar configuration Altium on Macbook Air M1 (16GB). Not smooth, but can get things done. Well, except some keys not working properly (Shift; and having to remap Delete)
captainbland 4y ago
I don't think there are any technical blockers but there isn't much in the way of product market fit at this point. Desktop users tend to be less concerned with e.g perf/watt and are more concerned with perf/$ which Intel and AMD compete ferociously in. I think there's also a lack of incentive to come up with new desktop solutions specifically that might be a better fit as well because desktop PC is seen as a shrinking market. Why do a bunch of R&D to compete in a shrinking market along with the difficulty of breaking into the established market, along with all the software compatibility issues etc.?
wongarsu 4y ago
There's the Thinkpad X13s. Technically a laptop and not a desktop PC, but the strengths of ARM are much more apparent in power and heat constrained mobile settings. As long as ARM hasn't even gained a solid foothold in laptops (outside Apple), what's the point of putting it in a form factor where it will be even less attractive. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/thinkpad-x13s-(13-inch-snapdragon)/len101t0019 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/th...
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  That thing has less than half the single thread speed the M1 does for the same price. I'm not sure anyone should point to that SoC.
- kreetx 4y ago
  Searched for how performant these chips (Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SC8280XP) were and summary is that they're okay: similar to Intel's i5-1130G7, but no match for Apple's M1.[1] [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-8cx-gen-3-intel-apple-3068879/ https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-8cx-gen-3-intel-...
tjansen 4y ago
The blocker is Windows backward-compatibility. Macs are only sold with ARMs these days. Many (most?) Chromebooks are also using ARM. But one of the main reasons for Windows is backward-compatibility, and you won't get it with ARM.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Nothing prevents a rosetta2 like effort from happening on Windows too.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    Windows on ARM already has x86-64 emulation. It shipped in Windows 11: 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...
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  No it is not. I have Windows 11 on a test machine Samsung Galaxy Book with Snapdragon 7c and can run x86/x64 apps just fine. It is a fine device, but honestly it does not offer any killer feature compared to x86 notebooks.
ekianjo 4y ago
There is the Pythium from China (it can even run games with an AMD GPU: https://boilingsteam.com/you-can-now-run-steam-games-with-proton-on-an-arm-pc-thanks-to-progress-made-on-box86/ https://boilingsteam.com/you-can-now-run-steam-games-with-pr...)
dis-sys 4y ago
I have a Huawei Kunpeng 920 based ARM desktop/workstation running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It has 8 cores running at 2.6GHz. Picked the processor + motherboard combo up online for $300 USD, added a WD SN640 7.68T SSD and 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM, connected to my home network with a Mellanox-4 40G NIC. 7z benchmark shows it has comparable multicore performance with a intel 6770 4 cores processor. There are 24 cores Kunpeng 920 boards available at roughly the same price. The problem is those boards only have two PCI-E slots rather 3 slots on mine. Really happy with the one I got, as it gives me an inexpensive platform for building & testing ARM64 software, it also give me the ability to install SSDs/NICs that won't be supported by a Mac.
- kijiki 4y ago
  Where did you buy from? I can't seem to find any via the usual suspects (aliexpress/alibaba/ebay).
  - dis-sys 4y ago
    alibaba has an app called XianYu (2.taobao.com), bought mine there. you need to install that Chinese only app on your phone to use it.
lathiat 4y ago
Honeycomb LX2 https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/honeycomb-servers-workstation/ https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/h... Plus any apple machine and the thinkpad x13s And the raspberry pi
kalleboo 4y ago
I’d say the blocker is Windows and the nonstandard SoC nature of the ARM ecosystem. An OEM can't just take an ARM CPU, stick it omn a board together with a chipset with UFI on it, bundle a Windows CD and call it a day. The ARM ecosystem is full of weird hacks like the raspberry pi being bootstrapped by the GPU. Add onto that the rumored Microsoft-Qualcomm exclusivity deal and it just makes the barrier to entry insurmountable. For what? You don't even care about battery life.
mdasen 4y ago
It's not that there's one or two blockers that just need to get cleared out of the way. It's that ARM desktop PCs don't have solid momentum and commitment. When Apple announced they were moving to ARM, it was "this is happening and everyone needs to get on board or they're going to be left behind." Microsoft has ARM support in Windows including an x86 translation layer, but there's certainly no "get on board or you'll be left behind" ultimatum. Microsoft intends to keep supporting x86 and in fact x86 will continue to be the premier platform for Windows. That leaves desktop ARM without momentum. Some things in the world are about momentum and the commitments people are willing to make given the commitments of others. Every Mac developer knew that time invested in porting to ARM would pay off. Apple was committed to ARM. They'd spent a decade making their own chips. They weren't just going to abandon ARM a few years later. Developers knew that competing developers would port to Mac-ARM so they had to make that commitment as well. Developers knew that Mac buyers were going to be clamoring for the Mac-ARM machines. Does Microsoft care about Windows on ARM? Do Windows Developers? Do PC buyers? The answer to all three seems to be "no" (or at best "eh, a bit"). Given that no one is committing to Windows-ARM, everyone just takes a wait-and-see approach. Without the commitment and direction, others don't want to make those commitments. Would you buy an ARM PC knowing that everything will likely need to run through translation layers? Knowing that Microsoft's support for ARM doesn't even extend to flagship products like Visual Studio? Knowing that so many third-party devs won't see enough ARM users to justify the port? And if you're not going to commit to ARM, why should anyone else in the ecosystem. Apple solved that indecision/commitment issue by 1) saying unreservedly that it was moving to ARM and would be leaving Intel entirely; 2) offering chips that didn't just match Intel performance, but solidly beat it offering users a huge reason to want those new machines fast. Microsoft doesn't have either of those and Intel is making huge strides. They've released big-little architecture chips and started improving performance a lot. They're likely to start closing the gap on chip process either by renting TSMC or improving in-house fabs. Plus, "desktop" PC users (rather than laptop) often don't care about heat and form factor like Apple does - they aren't looking for a Mac mini or Mac Studio. They're happy with a tower that they can stick a giant graphics card in and that can accommodate a 100W CPU. Beyond the issue of commitment, as others have pointed out, Apple is just farther ahead on ARM performance than anyone else. Qualcomm is trying to make their own custom chips to improve performance, but right now Intel has better performance and Intel seems recommitted to maintaining their performance advantage (against non-Apple chips and at least wants to bluster about beating Apple). Given this environment, it's hard to be the one willing to invest the money to break the logjam. Maybe Qualcomm will if it can leverage its investment in mobile CPUs for desktops. However, it's hard for a chip startup to want to take on Intel when users, developers, and Microsoft aren't enthusiastic about Windows-ARM. It's hard for a user to want an ARM PC when performance isn't dramatically better, developers don't care, etc. It's hard for developers to care without users caring. But I don't think even Qualcomm can break the logjam. I think they like their margins too high to want to price their chips at a level that might see people clamoring for their processors and I think Intel's 12th-gen (and successive generation) chips will make it hard to beat them on performance. Apple just controlled enough of the ecosystem to offer the amount of commitment necessary - and is a company that doesn't mind telling users to leave their comfort area. Microsoft likes to tell users "don't worry, that program from 1995 will still run" and in some ways that's awesome. A 1995 Mac program wouldn't work multiple times over (when Mac OS X eliminated Classic support, when Apple moved to Intel, when Apple eliminated Carbon, when Apple eliminated 32-bit support, and when Apple moved to ARM). Some of those had translation layers, but some didn't (and often the translation layers died along the way). The blocker is that no one is committed to Windows-ARM and Desktop-Linux-ARM. I can't even download an Ubuntu desktop ISO for ARM. I have to download the server version and then install the desktop. Without someone standing up and saying "this will be the way forward even if it is uncomfortable and the past will be left behind" it's hard to get people to move. To put it another way, when Google shows a lack of commitment to things, it means we inevitably see comments here saying "it'll be killed in 2 years." I'm not accusing Microsoft of abandoning anything, but it does feel like Windows-ARM isn't likely to get traction and while they might keep it alive, they probably aren't going to continue to invest the money to really make it thrive beyond what is already offered (which isn't bad). However, the lack of a coordinated direction between Microsoft, developers, and users means that there isn't momentum in that direction. No one wants to waste their money on Windows-ARM.
ep1cman 4y ago
https://www.ipi.wiki/products/ampere-altra-developer-platform https://www.ipi.wiki/products/ampere-altra-developer-platfor... Does this fit the bill? I have one sitting on my desk and it is a pretty capable machine if you are a linux user.
ksec 4y ago
I thought this is a poorly phrased question. That has a lot of people guessing what the question really meant.
- meepmorp 4y ago
  I think you've hit on an important point. What does PC mean? Obviously not "something in the lineage of the IBM PC," since we're talking about an ARM desktop PC. And we're not talking about off the shelf computers that have ARM chips, because we have the Mac and Chromebooks. I'm guessing it probably means something like - why isn't there the equivalent of the x86 hardware world, but using ARM? Why can't I buy a CPU and motherboard with modern standard interconnects that I can use for a video card, SSD, etc; or maybe get a beige box computer, but it's ARM-based?
throwaway81523 4y ago
Raspberry Pi 400 is not hard to find these days, unlike the smaller models.
tdsanchez 4y ago
Seems to me Macs, Chromebooks, Raspberry Pis, iOS and Android devices are all based on ARM and easily available. The argument that ARM based computers aren’t PC’s because they aren’t like x86 machines is self-fulfilling.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  It's hard to say an ARM-based Mac isn't a PC. OTOH, it's the only RISC Unix workstation you can easily get.
Kukumber 4y ago
3 blockers: - Microsoft for making an inefficient OS - Intel because of politics - Qualcomm because of mediocrity Apple annihilates the competition, i went with a mac mini personally, that thing is a beast
rbanffy 4y ago
Another option for those who feel disgusted by the x86 ISA is the Raptor Engineering Talos series, but they don't have a POWER10 model at the moment. https://secure.raptorcs.com/ https://secure.raptorcs.com/ Not as pretty as the Macs, but a 2-socket 44-core, 176-thread deskside that's 100% Windows-proof is still quite impressive.
TradingPlaces 4y ago
The holdup has been that Qualcomm and Microsoft had a deal that ARM Windows would only run on Qualcomm hardware. That ended in March, but Microsoft still seems to be holding to it. Evidence: they will still not let me buy a license for ARM Windows for a Mac Studio VM. I am using a “Developer’s Preview” that is identical to x86 Windows 11 So the holdup is that until Qualcomm bought Nuvia, their own designs were not good. The Surface Pro X sucked. The Nuvia-Snapdragons should be the turning point, but also ARM is suing Qualcomm over that so who knows. More here on ARM v QCOM: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4541671-getting-chippy-arm-versus-qualcomm https://seekingalpha.com/article/4541671-getting-chippy-arm-...
adrian_b 4y ago
An NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit can be used as a decent desktop PC, with 32 GB 256-bit LPDDR5, 12 Arm Cortex-A78 cores, a 2048 CUDA cores NVIDIA Ampere GPU, 10 Gb/s Ethernet and the other usual peripherals. However, at $2000, it is very overpriced in comparison with a similar computer made with an Intel or AMD CPU. In any case, this is far better than anything offered by Qualcomm and it is even better than most Apple offers at some of the features, e.g. the GPU. For a ten times lower price, i.e. under $200, there are many desktop computers with Rockchip RK 3588 and 16 GB RAM, which have a quadruple Cortex-A76 CPU similar in performance with the Intel Jasper Lake CPUs and many times faster than Raspberry Pi or other computers using obsolete Arm cores. As a professional, neither a Jasper Lake nor a Cortex-A76 based CPU would be acceptable for the daily work, but any such computer would be good enough for casual use, like Internet browsing, document editing or movie viewing.
- sliken 4y ago
  Those CPU cores are pretty lame compared to the Apple M1. It does however have more than a 128 bit wide memory interface, which is very rare. I can only think of the M1 pro (256 bit), m1 max (512 bit), and m1 ultra (1024 bit) that have wider interfaces and targeted at the normal desktop/laptop market.
chunk_waffle 4y ago
I have one of these for Windows Arm testing: https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/windows-on-snapdragon/snapdragon-developer-kit https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/windows-on-snapdrago... I left it hooked up to the TV for quite a while for web browsing and youtube. Not bad at all aside from being windows.
tomjen3 4y ago
There is the mac mini, there is the mac studio, and there is the laptops that are spending almost all their time on desks.
sys_64738 4y ago
I've been using one for 35 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes
xony 4y ago
ppjim 4y ago
What would be the benefit of having an ARM-based desktop computer? Most desktop computers are focused on business environments and PC gamers. Where mobility is not a major factor in the purchase decision. So I don't think it has any good benefits right now.
- drcongo 4y ago
  Reduced energy usage?
janef0421 4y ago
There are a number of mini-pcs with relatively powerful ARM processors from rockchip, such as the RK3588. These are capable of running desktop linux. Here's a video on one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUx5CQtRARs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUx5CQtRARs
compsciphd 4y ago
no one remembers the Corel NetWinder?

35 points by _448 4y ago

I was wondering, why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available. What are the blockers?

mritzmann 4y ago

I'm not sure I understand the question correctly. Apple has some on offer, doesn't it?

_448 4y ago
Apple has Mac[0] not PC ;) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfv6Ah_MVJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfv6Ah_MVJU
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  Possibly the ThinkPad X13s is what you're after? Or laptops don't count (I guess you did say desktop). If your definition of PC is "runs Windows" there's a business reason Apple silicon doesn't. It's rumoured to be because Microsoft made a deal with Qualcomm: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/22/microsoft-qualcomm-arm-windows-exclusive-deal/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/22/microsoft-qualcomm-arm-... So if you want to buy (or build...) an arm PC with Windows then as of today it had to come with a Qualcomm SOC. So I think the TL;DR answer for your question is really "because Qualcomm aren't super interested in the desktop market". I think there are now some "mini PCs" but they are not internally expandable etc. There are no major technical blockers to slapping a Qualcomm dev kit in a desktop case but the experience is not gonna be that great.

GreenBackBoogie 4y ago

He's probably referring to other products, but it seems he overlooked the SBC, which come in all forms and sizes and, generally, being low power devices, can't really do much besides hosting some not so demanding apps (looking at containers).

_448 4y ago
> but it seems he overlooked the SBC SBC is not a complete PC. I was talking about one which an end user who is not tech-savvy might use.
- GreenBackBoogie 4y ago
  Again, you tend to overlook things that are already on the market, like https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400/ or the myriad of SBC-based computers like this. The only thing you should do is to install an OS, which is something everybody tends to do and succeed nowadays.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    I've bought into marketing, and bought myself a Pi 400. It's abysmally slow for everything. It feels like eeePCs of yesteryear. Underpowered and slow
    - GreenBackBoogie 4y ago
      I fully agree with you, but it's still a PC, although not envisioned for the power users, but for the people who just need to do the most basic of stuff (e-mails, maybe a few documents, etc.), that's what a ~6W CPU can deliver.

zeristor 4y ago

Well there were the Archimedes machines a while back

zeristor 4y ago
Actually I didn't know of this before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_(computer)
Milner08 4y ago
Yeah we were using ARM desktops back in primary school with Risc OS. Its quite fascinating that they are coming back.
samwillis 4y ago
Exactly, my family’s first PC was an ARM based Acorn Archimedes - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes Our school computer labs had BBC Micros, the predecessor to the Acorn Archimedes and all ARM processors. It’s funny to think back at how quickly that computer was out of date, we only had it a year or so before getting a Windows 95 PC. At about the same time we came back from a school break and all the BBCs were gone, Windows PCs in their place. Now we are all carrying around an ARM in our pockets. Being from the Cambridge UK area it’s amazing the heritage Acorn produced. About 10 years ago I worked on a project that was being run by the original lead developer of RISC OS. The connections are everywhere.
rbanffy 4y ago
And, according to a BYTE article from around the time of the launch, it could do FP math faster than a 386 with a 387 coprocessor.

panick21_ 4y ago

The blockers are that x86 AMD and Intel machine are hard to beat and software just works better on x86. With linux you might be partially ok, but with Windows you are not ok.

kolinko 4y ago
It's an issue with Windows, not ARM. On MacOS software works way better on ARM than it did on x86.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Yeah but a PC is a whole experience, software and hardware.
- Rhedox 4y ago
  The problem is that Qualcomms CPUs are just a lot slower than what AMD and Intel offer. It's not the fault of the OS.
ch_123 4y ago
Running Windows 11 ARM in Parallels on my M1 MBP is a surprisingly smooth experience. Most x86 applications work well (both in terms of reliability and performance) using Microsoft's inbuilt emulation. I have not run any games or larger applications in the VM, but I suspect most Windows users could run on ARM and not notice the difference.
Ancapistani 4y ago
I bought my wife a Surface Pro X a while back, and once I realized that x86 emulation worked fine but x86_64 wasn’t a thing, I had no issues at all.

mhd 4y ago

It's a game of definitons, but for a proper desktop PC, wouldn't you need a socketable CPU? Mainboard, CPU and probably GPU as separate units doesn't seem to be something the ARM world is aiming at. (Neither does Apple, but they've been blurring the lines between laptops and desktops for a long time)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

RobotToaster 4y ago

I guess it depends on your definition of "PC". I always thought, by definition, it had to be intel 8088 compatible to be a PC.

jen20 4y ago
By whose definition? The term “personal computer” existed for several years before the IBM 5150.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Common definition. And branding. Nobody calls a Mac a PC.
  - jen20 4y ago
    Plenty call a raspberry pi that, however.
tinus_hn 4y ago
By that definition, unsurprisingly, no ARM pcs will ever exist.

mort96 4y ago

Here's the ARM desktop PC: https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/ https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/ The rest of the industry seems fine with what AMD and Intel has at the moment, or incapable of making strong ARM-based competitors.

rvz 4y ago
That (Mac Studio) and the iMac are also qualifying another ARM desktop PC (as in personal computer).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
OJFord 4y ago
That web page is insane - normally I sympathise with the 'scrolljacking' bemoaners, but that's just so funny (maybe it would annoy me if I was actually shopping), not at all what I expected from the page, or Apple at all.
- noduerme 4y ago
  It's at least as annoying as your initial impulse said it was...more so from the people who dictate UI down to a gnat's ass in every app we submit to their store, but somehow exempt themselves from even common courtesy when it comes to designing a page. I'm typing this on a mac, but for god's sake don't make excuses for them.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    I'm not making excuses for it, I'm typing this from a ThinkPad (work, and personally have a Framework & a desktop I built, Android phone), it just amused me.
- Havoc 4y ago
  Yeah Apple site is borderline unusable at times. To much emphasis on looks and design at the cost of sane usability

dmitriid 4y ago

> why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available. What are the blockers? Apple has shown what is possible with an ARM-based design, and everyone is now clamoring for M1/M2-level CPUs everywhere. Somehow everyone forgot that it took Apple 15 or more years to get to M1/M2. Their first custom CPU, the A4, appeared in 2010, and it takes anywhere from 4 to 6 years to design a new CPU. So it's quite likely Apple started designing their own CPUs... around the time they transitioned from PowerPC to Intel, since before the launch of the very first iPhone. There. That is the answer to "why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available". You need to spend 15 years or more actually working on one, and the only people who have done it are Apple.

pca006132 4y ago
Or perhaps other players don't have the incentive to do it? In addition to the development time and cost, you also need to make customers willing to buy it. For Apple, they have tight control over the ecosystem so they can make the transition really smooth, but for others this may not be that easy. The way I see this is that, customers already using Apple product will not give up using it if the switch is not too painful, while Windows users will not switch to using some new architecture unless there is some significant gain for them.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  Very true. Apple could envision a path of "start with mobile CPUs and see if we can make them better and better, and then eventually laptops, and then maybe desktops". And they have their own OSes on those devices. Everybody else has only parts of the whole picture. Samsung is probably the only one that has all the hardware, and CPU expertise, but they control none of the OSes.
Kuinox 4y ago
> Apple has shown what is possible with an ARM-based design I'll repost my own comment in a previous thread: ARM outside of Macs are not beefy. Excluding apples cpus, x86_64 is ahead in perf/per watt. Remember that until 3 months ago, Apple was one CPU node ahead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization

rjsw 4y ago

I have an ARM-based desktop PC next to me right now. It contains an ATX motherboard [1] with a StrongARM SA110 CPU, NVIDIA NV1 graphics card, PCI network card, ATA hard disk. Mine runs NetBSD/cats. [1] http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/boards.html http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/boards.html

pabs3 4y ago
FYI it was mentioned on the Debian ARM IRC channel that support for that CPU will be removed from Linux in version 6.2. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc.git/commit/?h=boardfile-remove&id=181d1d9a3446 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc.git/...
- rjsw 4y ago
  What part of "Mine runs NetBSD/cats" was unclear.
  - yokoprime 4y ago
    The NetBSD/cats part. Also runs.
  - magicalhippo 4y ago
    While it might not be relevant to you, it might be relevant to others who might consider picking up the hardware you mentioned. I get that the FYI directed it to you, but given the HN guidelines I read that more as PSA.

spacedcowboy 4y ago

I have a Mac studio. It’s awesome. I run several “windows only” apps on it as well as native Mac apps. Parallels + Windows-for-arm + Microsoft’s x86 emulation isn’t as smooth as Rosetta 2, but it’s still very very usable. Running Altium[1] as I type, with a reasonably complex PCB in design (8 layers, DDR3, FPGA, HDMI) and it’s indistinguishable from running on a high-end PC. Said PC has been powered down for several months now, I just haven’t felt the need to use it. [1] https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/ https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/

IndrekR 4y ago
Running similar configuration Altium on Macbook Air M1 (16GB). Not smooth, but can get things done. Well, except some keys not working properly (Shift; and having to remap Delete)

captainbland 4y ago

I don't think there are any technical blockers but there isn't much in the way of product market fit at this point. Desktop users tend to be less concerned with e.g perf/watt and are more concerned with perf/$ which Intel and AMD compete ferociously in. I think there's also a lack of incentive to come up with new desktop solutions specifically that might be a better fit as well because desktop PC is seen as a shrinking market. Why do a bunch of R&D to compete in a shrinking market along with the difficulty of breaking into the established market, along with all the software compatibility issues etc.?

wongarsu 4y ago

There's the Thinkpad X13s. Technically a laptop and not a desktop PC, but the strengths of ARM are much more apparent in power and heat constrained mobile settings. As long as ARM hasn't even gained a solid foothold in laptops (outside Apple), what's the point of putting it in a form factor where it will be even less attractive. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/thinkpad-x13s-(13-inch-snapdragon)/len101t0019 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/th...

rjzzleep 4y ago
That thing has less than half the single thread speed the M1 does for the same price. I'm not sure anyone should point to that SoC.
kreetx 4y ago
Searched for how performant these chips (Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SC8280XP) were and summary is that they're okay: similar to Intel's i5-1130G7, but no match for Apple's M1.[1] [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-8cx-gen-3-intel-apple-3068879/ https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-8cx-gen-3-intel-...

tjansen 4y ago

The blocker is Windows backward-compatibility. Macs are only sold with ARMs these days. Many (most?) Chromebooks are also using ARM. But one of the main reasons for Windows is backward-compatibility, and you won't get it with ARM.

ekianjo 4y ago
Nothing prevents a rosetta2 like effort from happening on Windows too.
- pavlov 4y ago
  Windows on ARM already has x86-64 emulation. It shipped in Windows 11: 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...
TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
No it is not. I have Windows 11 on a test machine Samsung Galaxy Book with Snapdragon 7c and can run x86/x64 apps just fine. It is a fine device, but honestly it does not offer any killer feature compared to x86 notebooks.

ekianjo 4y ago

There is the Pythium from China (it can even run games with an AMD GPU: https://boilingsteam.com/you-can-now-run-steam-games-with-proton-on-an-arm-pc-thanks-to-progress-made-on-box86/ https://boilingsteam.com/you-can-now-run-steam-games-with-pr...)

dis-sys 4y ago

I have a Huawei Kunpeng 920 based ARM desktop/workstation running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It has 8 cores running at 2.6GHz. Picked the processor + motherboard combo up online for $300 USD, added a WD SN640 7.68T SSD and 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM, connected to my home network with a Mellanox-4 40G NIC. 7z benchmark shows it has comparable multicore performance with a intel 6770 4 cores processor. There are 24 cores Kunpeng 920 boards available at roughly the same price. The problem is those boards only have two PCI-E slots rather 3 slots on mine. Really happy with the one I got, as it gives me an inexpensive platform for building & testing ARM64 software, it also give me the ability to install SSDs/NICs that won't be supported by a Mac.

kijiki 4y ago
Where did you buy from? I can't seem to find any via the usual suspects (aliexpress/alibaba/ebay).
- dis-sys 4y ago
  alibaba has an app called XianYu (2.taobao.com), bought mine there. you need to install that Chinese only app on your phone to use it.

lathiat 4y ago

Honeycomb LX2 https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/honeycomb-servers-workstation/ https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/h... Plus any apple machine and the thinkpad x13s And the raspberry pi

kalleboo 4y ago

I’d say the blocker is Windows and the nonstandard SoC nature of the ARM ecosystem. An OEM can't just take an ARM CPU, stick it omn a board together with a chipset with UFI on it, bundle a Windows CD and call it a day. The ARM ecosystem is full of weird hacks like the raspberry pi being bootstrapped by the GPU. Add onto that the rumored Microsoft-Qualcomm exclusivity deal and it just makes the barrier to entry insurmountable. For what? You don't even care about battery life.

mdasen 4y ago

It's not that there's one or two blockers that just need to get cleared out of the way. It's that ARM desktop PCs don't have solid momentum and commitment. When Apple announced they were moving to ARM, it was "this is happening and everyone needs to get on board or they're going to be left behind." Microsoft has ARM support in Windows including an x86 translation layer, but there's certainly no "get on board or you'll be left behind" ultimatum. Microsoft intends to keep supporting x86 and in fact x86 will continue to be the premier platform for Windows. That leaves desktop ARM without momentum. Some things in the world are about momentum and the commitments people are willing to make given the commitments of others. Every Mac developer knew that time invested in porting to ARM would pay off. Apple was committed to ARM. They'd spent a decade making their own chips. They weren't just going to abandon ARM a few years later. Developers knew that competing developers would port to Mac-ARM so they had to make that commitment as well. Developers knew that Mac buyers were going to be clamoring for the Mac-ARM machines. Does Microsoft care about Windows on ARM? Do Windows Developers? Do PC buyers? The answer to all three seems to be "no" (or at best "eh, a bit"). Given that no one is committing to Windows-ARM, everyone just takes a wait-and-see approach. Without the commitment and direction, others don't want to make those commitments. Would you buy an ARM PC knowing that everything will likely need to run through translation layers? Knowing that Microsoft's support for ARM doesn't even extend to flagship products like Visual Studio? Knowing that so many third-party devs won't see enough ARM users to justify the port? And if you're not going to commit to ARM, why should anyone else in the ecosystem. Apple solved that indecision/commitment issue by 1) saying unreservedly that it was moving to ARM and would be leaving Intel entirely; 2) offering chips that didn't just match Intel performance, but solidly beat it offering users a huge reason to want those new machines fast. Microsoft doesn't have either of those and Intel is making huge strides. They've released big-little architecture chips and started improving performance a lot. They're likely to start closing the gap on chip process either by renting TSMC or improving in-house fabs. Plus, "desktop" PC users (rather than laptop) often don't care about heat and form factor like Apple does - they aren't looking for a Mac mini or Mac Studio. They're happy with a tower that they can stick a giant graphics card in and that can accommodate a 100W CPU. Beyond the issue of commitment, as others have pointed out, Apple is just farther ahead on ARM performance than anyone else. Qualcomm is trying to make their own custom chips to improve performance, but right now Intel has better performance and Intel seems recommitted to maintaining their performance advantage (against non-Apple chips and at least wants to bluster about beating Apple). Given this environment, it's hard to be the one willing to invest the money to break the logjam. Maybe Qualcomm will if it can leverage its investment in mobile CPUs for desktops. However, it's hard for a chip startup to want to take on Intel when users, developers, and Microsoft aren't enthusiastic about Windows-ARM. It's hard for a user to want an ARM PC when performance isn't dramatically better, developers don't care, etc. It's hard for developers to care without users caring. But I don't think even Qualcomm can break the logjam. I think they like their margins too high to want to price their chips at a level that might see people clamoring for their processors and I think Intel's 12th-gen (and successive generation) chips will make it hard to beat them on performance. Apple just controlled enough of the ecosystem to offer the amount of commitment necessary - and is a company that doesn't mind telling users to leave their comfort area. Microsoft likes to tell users "don't worry, that program from 1995 will still run" and in some ways that's awesome. A 1995 Mac program wouldn't work multiple times over (when Mac OS X eliminated Classic support, when Apple moved to Intel, when Apple eliminated Carbon, when Apple eliminated 32-bit support, and when Apple moved to ARM). Some of those had translation layers, but some didn't (and often the translation layers died along the way). The blocker is that no one is committed to Windows-ARM and Desktop-Linux-ARM. I can't even download an Ubuntu desktop ISO for ARM. I have to download the server version and then install the desktop. Without someone standing up and saying "this will be the way forward even if it is uncomfortable and the past will be left behind" it's hard to get people to move. To put it another way, when Google shows a lack of commitment to things, it means we inevitably see comments here saying "it'll be killed in 2 years." I'm not accusing Microsoft of abandoning anything, but it does feel like Windows-ARM isn't likely to get traction and while they might keep it alive, they probably aren't going to continue to invest the money to really make it thrive beyond what is already offered (which isn't bad). However, the lack of a coordinated direction between Microsoft, developers, and users means that there isn't momentum in that direction. No one wants to waste their money on Windows-ARM.

ep1cman 4y ago

https://www.ipi.wiki/products/ampere-altra-developer-platform https://www.ipi.wiki/products/ampere-altra-developer-platfor... Does this fit the bill? I have one sitting on my desk and it is a pretty capable machine if you are a linux user.

ksec 4y ago

I thought this is a poorly phrased question. That has a lot of people guessing what the question really meant.

meepmorp 4y ago
I think you've hit on an important point. What does PC mean? Obviously not "something in the lineage of the IBM PC," since we're talking about an ARM desktop PC. And we're not talking about off the shelf computers that have ARM chips, because we have the Mac and Chromebooks. I'm guessing it probably means something like - why isn't there the equivalent of the x86 hardware world, but using ARM? Why can't I buy a CPU and motherboard with modern standard interconnects that I can use for a video card, SSD, etc; or maybe get a beige box computer, but it's ARM-based?

throwaway81523 4y ago

Raspberry Pi 400 is not hard to find these days, unlike the smaller models.

tdsanchez 4y ago

Seems to me Macs, Chromebooks, Raspberry Pis, iOS and Android devices are all based on ARM and easily available. The argument that ARM based computers aren’t PC’s because they aren’t like x86 machines is self-fulfilling.

rbanffy 4y ago
It's hard to say an ARM-based Mac isn't a PC. OTOH, it's the only RISC Unix workstation you can easily get.

Kukumber 4y ago

3 blockers: - Microsoft for making an inefficient OS - Intel because of politics - Qualcomm because of mediocrity Apple annihilates the competition, i went with a mac mini personally, that thing is a beast

rbanffy 4y ago

Another option for those who feel disgusted by the x86 ISA is the Raptor Engineering Talos series, but they don't have a POWER10 model at the moment. https://secure.raptorcs.com/ https://secure.raptorcs.com/ Not as pretty as the Macs, but a 2-socket 44-core, 176-thread deskside that's 100% Windows-proof is still quite impressive.

TradingPlaces 4y ago

The holdup has been that Qualcomm and Microsoft had a deal that ARM Windows would only run on Qualcomm hardware. That ended in March, but Microsoft still seems to be holding to it. Evidence: they will still not let me buy a license for ARM Windows for a Mac Studio VM. I am using a “Developer’s Preview” that is identical to x86 Windows 11 So the holdup is that until Qualcomm bought Nuvia, their own designs were not good. The Surface Pro X sucked. The Nuvia-Snapdragons should be the turning point, but also ARM is suing Qualcomm over that so who knows. More here on ARM v QCOM: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4541671-getting-chippy-arm-versus-qualcomm https://seekingalpha.com/article/4541671-getting-chippy-arm-...

adrian_b 4y ago

An NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit can be used as a decent desktop PC, with 32 GB 256-bit LPDDR5, 12 Arm Cortex-A78 cores, a 2048 CUDA cores NVIDIA Ampere GPU, 10 Gb/s Ethernet and the other usual peripherals. However, at $2000, it is very overpriced in comparison with a similar computer made with an Intel or AMD CPU. In any case, this is far better than anything offered by Qualcomm and it is even better than most Apple offers at some of the features, e.g. the GPU. For a ten times lower price, i.e. under $200, there are many desktop computers with Rockchip RK 3588 and 16 GB RAM, which have a quadruple Cortex-A76 CPU similar in performance with the Intel Jasper Lake CPUs and many times faster than Raspberry Pi or other computers using obsolete Arm cores. As a professional, neither a Jasper Lake nor a Cortex-A76 based CPU would be acceptable for the daily work, but any such computer would be good enough for casual use, like Internet browsing, document editing or movie viewing.

sliken 4y ago
Those CPU cores are pretty lame compared to the Apple M1. It does however have more than a 128 bit wide memory interface, which is very rare. I can only think of the M1 pro (256 bit), m1 max (512 bit), and m1 ultra (1024 bit) that have wider interfaces and targeted at the normal desktop/laptop market.

chunk_waffle 4y ago

I have one of these for Windows Arm testing: https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/windows-on-snapdragon/snapdragon-developer-kit https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/windows-on-snapdrago... I left it hooked up to the TV for quite a while for web browsing and youtube. Not bad at all aside from being windows.

tomjen3 4y ago

There is the mac mini, there is the mac studio, and there is the laptops that are spending almost all their time on desks.

sys_64738 4y ago

I've been using one for 35 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

xony 4y ago

ppjim 4y ago

What would be the benefit of having an ARM-based desktop computer? Most desktop computers are focused on business environments and PC gamers. Where mobility is not a major factor in the purchase decision. So I don't think it has any good benefits right now.

drcongo 4y ago
Reduced energy usage?

janef0421 4y ago

There are a number of mini-pcs with relatively powerful ARM processors from rockchip, such as the RK3588. These are capable of running desktop linux. Here's a video on one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUx5CQtRARs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUx5CQtRARs

compsciphd 4y ago

no one remembers the Corel NetWinder?