6 ms·

In my experience talking to semiconductors folks, ARM is just not a concern anymore. The future is RISC-V, and ARM is already being seen as legacy tech. ARM's p

In my experience talking to semiconductors folks, ARM is just not a concern anymore. The future is RISC-V, and ARM is already being seen as legacy tech. ARM's progress in the server space has stalled, the ARM Windows ecosystem is dead, Android has laid the groundwork for a move to RISC-V, and ARM has never and will never touch the desktop market.

pnpnp 4y ago
> ARM has never and will never touch the desktop market That’s a bold statement as I type all day on an M1 Mac. My FT100 company just made the leap to them as dev machines.
- r00fus 4y ago
  My company has entire teams and regions that do NOT buy PCs and only Mac laptop for employees. Started with the M-series.
  - feanaro 4y ago
    I think you mean "Do not buy Windows computers". Macs are also PCs.
    - 314 4y ago
      To be fair that whole boat sailed with the "I'm a mac he is PC" series of adverts.
      - feanaro 4y ago
        Ah, I'm not in the US so I avoided those ads.
- BlueTankEngine 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - silisili 4y ago
    > It proves my point beautifully when the only response to my comment Your comment was beyond ignorant, and wrong. Most folks here are too smart, or busy, to reply to such nonsense. I am neither. ARM is by far the most shipped and used arch every year. AMZ is even going in heavier on it. It's not legacy tech at all. So a person decided to show you how wrong you were, by listing what's probably the most impressive chip in all of our lifetimes, and it's guess what, ARM. > Obviously I was referring to Linux/Windows workstations The creator of Linux is using an ARM machine as a workstation today, AFAIK. > if everyone was smart enough to pick up on that I wouldn't be paid as much as I am If you're making more than a burger flipper at Wendy's, the world just isn't fair.
    - ksec 4y ago
      The unwritten rule of HN: You do not criticise The Rusted Holy Grail and the Riscy Silver Bullet.
      - 314 4y ago
        ssshhhhhh, the Rust Evangelism Squad will hear you.
    - monocasa 4y ago
      The one viable server ARM CPU core is now tied up in a Qualcomm-ARM legal spat and probably won't see the light of day and made it pretty clear to anyone not grandfathered in like Apple that it's not worth designing your own ARM core. ARM itself has been hemorrhaging employees both because of better offers from Apple and the RISC-V stealths, and because since the SoftBank push to get their money back has simply been a worse and worse place to work. Their ability to execute is extremely compromised. Because if the long tail of the hardware industry, the writing can be on the wall long before it's clear based on what you can go out and buy off a shelf today.
      - klelatti 4y ago
        I get it that you want RISC-V to succeed - so do I - and to advocate for it but I really don’t understand why it needs this sort of comment about Arm. I see exaggerated criticism of the Arm ISA elsewhere from people who ought to know better too - it’s really CISC, it’s 5000 pages vs 2 for RISC-V etc. It’s just not necessary.
Xixi 4y ago
If RISC-V support by Microsoft is as bad as it has been for ARM, then I'm afraid RISC-V will never touch the desktop market, at all. Contrary to ARM, which is being pushed there with great success by Apple. Server-wise of course it's a different story...
- BlueTankEngine 4y ago
  If great success to you is that they put the M1 and M2 in a tower, I don't know what to tell you. Intel, AMD, and the x86 industrial complex don't care in the slightest what instruction set your Mac runs
  - swores 4y ago
    Might I suggest taking a step back, re-reading your first comment and all the replies under it, and asking yourself "is it possible I might not be 100% correct, and maybe other opinions have enough merit to be worth considering why people aren't agreeing with me, rather than just changing my argument to make sure I'm still the winner of this thread"?
  - Xixi 4y ago
    I’m not sure I expressed my point clearly. It wasn’t quite about Apple. So I will reformulate it here: the fate of any instruction set on the desktop is primarily decided by Microsoft. Do you have any information that Microsoft is planning to support RISC-V at least as well as x86/x64? (That is to say, not with something like Windows RT, or Windows CE) That would be tremendously good news, I shall add.
- KingLancelot 4y ago
  [dead]
klelatti 4y ago
Graviton, M1/M2, Ampere etc but I’m sure you’ll be able to explain why Arm is seen as ‘legacy’ tech when billions of smartphones are being shipped every year with Arm CPUs.
- BlueTankEngine 4y ago
  Oh look, you named 4 areas where ARM development has already peaked. Hyperscalers are already looking to evolve from ARM in the near future, just look at how much attention Ventana got at RISC-V Summit. M1/M2 are Apple ecosystem specific phenomenon that haven't inspired any copycat products. Ampere has been a massive disappointment to everyone in the industry, see the fact that Nuvia had their entire business dead-to-rights pre-acquisition. ARM simply isnt at the cutting edge of the semiconductor industry anymore. Just because Apple and Qualcomm use it to great effect doesn't mean ARM is making any major innovative strides relative to the competition.
  - klelatti 4y ago
    > ARM simply isnt at the cutting edge of the semiconductor industry anymore. What you really mean is Arm isn’t the hot new thing anymore. Well it hasn’t been that for 20 years. Meanwhile billions of arm devices in leading edge nodes are being shipped. Oh well.
  - datadeft 4y ago
    > Hyperscalers are already looking to evolve from ARM citation needed https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/08/5_percent_cloud_arm/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/08/5_percent_cloud_arm/ "5% of the cloud now runs on Arm as chip designer plans 2023 IPO" 5% does not seems to me as a position that you want to change to something else. ARM in every day computing outside of mobile phones and SBCs is just getting started as I see it.
Dalewyn 4y ago
>The future is RISC-V I hope this never comes to pass, because a RISC-V future is a Chinese future. A Chinese future will not be kind to western ideals that most of us hold dear.
- mort96 4y ago
  Huh? China has licenses for both the x86_64 and ARM ISAs. WhT about RISC-V makes it an advantage for Chinese companies?
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    RISC-V is free and open as in libre, by contrast to x86 and ARM which must be licensed from Intel/AMD and ARM and are thus subject to potential western economic sanctions. Now, yes, China will just espionage and kangaroo court their way through and around such legalities anyway, but nonetheless RISC-V is less effort for more reward for China if it becomes at least on par with x86 and ARM. Put more basically, it's a matter of national security. China can have an entire RISC-V ecosystem indigenously, unlike x86 and ARM.
    - mort96 4y ago
      Can Zhaoxin's x86 license, or the various Chinese companies's ARM licenses, just be revoked?
      - Dalewyn 4y ago
        If the US and/or UK place sanctions on exporting microprocessor technologies to China then that's that. Intel/AMD and ARM are subject to US and UK laws and regulations respectively. RISC-V by contrast is much, much harder for any given country to regulate because of its free and open nature. At most the US and UK can embargo individual developments made within their jurisdictions, but they can't regulate the entire architecture. RISC-V doesn't have a kill switch named Intel/AMD or ARM.
  - ksec 4y ago
ksec 4y ago
>In my experience talking to semiconductors folks, Most, if not all SemiCoductor “folks” I know are very pragmatic. As in how a Real Engineer should be, unlike software engineers. And in my experience, only HN and the Internet are suggesting ARM is dead. Everything will be RISC-V.
- adql 4y ago
  Yup, difference to the engineer is minuscule. It's getting traction coz chip companies don't want to pay ARM for licensing, not because it is particularly better at something.

pnpnp 4y ago

> ARM has never and will never touch the desktop market That’s a bold statement as I type all day on an M1 Mac. My FT100 company just made the leap to them as dev machines.

r00fus 4y ago
My company has entire teams and regions that do NOT buy PCs and only Mac laptop for employees. Started with the M-series.
- feanaro 4y ago
  I think you mean "Do not buy Windows computers". Macs are also PCs.
  - 314 4y ago
    To be fair that whole boat sailed with the "I'm a mac he is PC" series of adverts.
    - feanaro 4y ago
      Ah, I'm not in the US so I avoided those ads.
BlueTankEngine 4y ago
[flagged]
- silisili 4y ago
  > It proves my point beautifully when the only response to my comment Your comment was beyond ignorant, and wrong. Most folks here are too smart, or busy, to reply to such nonsense. I am neither. ARM is by far the most shipped and used arch every year. AMZ is even going in heavier on it. It's not legacy tech at all. So a person decided to show you how wrong you were, by listing what's probably the most impressive chip in all of our lifetimes, and it's guess what, ARM. > Obviously I was referring to Linux/Windows workstations The creator of Linux is using an ARM machine as a workstation today, AFAIK. > if everyone was smart enough to pick up on that I wouldn't be paid as much as I am If you're making more than a burger flipper at Wendy's, the world just isn't fair.
  - ksec 4y ago
    The unwritten rule of HN: You do not criticise The Rusted Holy Grail and the Riscy Silver Bullet.
    - 314 4y ago
      ssshhhhhh, the Rust Evangelism Squad will hear you.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    The one viable server ARM CPU core is now tied up in a Qualcomm-ARM legal spat and probably won't see the light of day and made it pretty clear to anyone not grandfathered in like Apple that it's not worth designing your own ARM core. ARM itself has been hemorrhaging employees both because of better offers from Apple and the RISC-V stealths, and because since the SoftBank push to get their money back has simply been a worse and worse place to work. Their ability to execute is extremely compromised. Because if the long tail of the hardware industry, the writing can be on the wall long before it's clear based on what you can go out and buy off a shelf today.
    - klelatti 4y ago
      I get it that you want RISC-V to succeed - so do I - and to advocate for it but I really don’t understand why it needs this sort of comment about Arm. I see exaggerated criticism of the Arm ISA elsewhere from people who ought to know better too - it’s really CISC, it’s 5000 pages vs 2 for RISC-V etc. It’s just not necessary.

Xixi 4y ago

If RISC-V support by Microsoft is as bad as it has been for ARM, then I'm afraid RISC-V will never touch the desktop market, at all. Contrary to ARM, which is being pushed there with great success by Apple. Server-wise of course it's a different story...

BlueTankEngine 4y ago
If great success to you is that they put the M1 and M2 in a tower, I don't know what to tell you. Intel, AMD, and the x86 industrial complex don't care in the slightest what instruction set your Mac runs
- swores 4y ago
  Might I suggest taking a step back, re-reading your first comment and all the replies under it, and asking yourself "is it possible I might not be 100% correct, and maybe other opinions have enough merit to be worth considering why people aren't agreeing with me, rather than just changing my argument to make sure I'm still the winner of this thread"?
- Xixi 4y ago
  I’m not sure I expressed my point clearly. It wasn’t quite about Apple. So I will reformulate it here: the fate of any instruction set on the desktop is primarily decided by Microsoft. Do you have any information that Microsoft is planning to support RISC-V at least as well as x86/x64? (That is to say, not with something like Windows RT, or Windows CE) That would be tremendously good news, I shall add.
KingLancelot 4y ago
[dead]

klelatti 4y ago

Graviton, M1/M2, Ampere etc but I’m sure you’ll be able to explain why Arm is seen as ‘legacy’ tech when billions of smartphones are being shipped every year with Arm CPUs.

BlueTankEngine 4y ago
Oh look, you named 4 areas where ARM development has already peaked. Hyperscalers are already looking to evolve from ARM in the near future, just look at how much attention Ventana got at RISC-V Summit. M1/M2 are Apple ecosystem specific phenomenon that haven't inspired any copycat products. Ampere has been a massive disappointment to everyone in the industry, see the fact that Nuvia had their entire business dead-to-rights pre-acquisition. ARM simply isnt at the cutting edge of the semiconductor industry anymore. Just because Apple and Qualcomm use it to great effect doesn't mean ARM is making any major innovative strides relative to the competition.
- klelatti 4y ago
  > ARM simply isnt at the cutting edge of the semiconductor industry anymore. What you really mean is Arm isn’t the hot new thing anymore. Well it hasn’t been that for 20 years. Meanwhile billions of arm devices in leading edge nodes are being shipped. Oh well.
- datadeft 4y ago
  > Hyperscalers are already looking to evolve from ARM citation needed https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/08/5_percent_cloud_arm/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/08/5_percent_cloud_arm/ "5% of the cloud now runs on Arm as chip designer plans 2023 IPO" 5% does not seems to me as a position that you want to change to something else. ARM in every day computing outside of mobile phones and SBCs is just getting started as I see it.

Dalewyn 4y ago

>The future is RISC-V I hope this never comes to pass, because a RISC-V future is a Chinese future. A Chinese future will not be kind to western ideals that most of us hold dear.

mort96 4y ago
Huh? China has licenses for both the x86_64 and ARM ISAs. WhT about RISC-V makes it an advantage for Chinese companies?
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  RISC-V is free and open as in libre, by contrast to x86 and ARM which must be licensed from Intel/AMD and ARM and are thus subject to potential western economic sanctions. Now, yes, China will just espionage and kangaroo court their way through and around such legalities anyway, but nonetheless RISC-V is less effort for more reward for China if it becomes at least on par with x86 and ARM. Put more basically, it's a matter of national security. China can have an entire RISC-V ecosystem indigenously, unlike x86 and ARM.
  - mort96 4y ago
    Can Zhaoxin's x86 license, or the various Chinese companies's ARM licenses, just be revoked?
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      If the US and/or UK place sanctions on exporting microprocessor technologies to China then that's that. Intel/AMD and ARM are subject to US and UK laws and regulations respectively. RISC-V by contrast is much, much harder for any given country to regulate because of its free and open nature. At most the US and UK can embargo individual developments made within their jurisdictions, but they can't regulate the entire architecture. RISC-V doesn't have a kill switch named Intel/AMD or ARM.
- ksec 4y ago

ksec 4y ago

>In my experience talking to semiconductors folks, Most, if not all SemiCoductor “folks” I know are very pragmatic. As in how a Real Engineer should be, unlike software engineers. And in my experience, only HN and the Internet are suggesting ARM is dead. Everything will be RISC-V.

adql 4y ago
Yup, difference to the engineer is minuscule. It's getting traction coz chip companies don't want to pay ARM for licensing, not because it is particularly better at something.