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I got an ARM Windows 11 laptop (Lenovo X13s) because I wanted a lightweight travel laptop with long batter life. I was expecting a big compromise, but it's actu

I got an ARM Windows 11 laptop (Lenovo X13s) because I wanted a lightweight travel laptop with long batter life. I was expecting a big compromise, but it's actually wonderful! I'm a giant Intel fanboy, but I think they have a real challenge here.

acdha 3y ago
Intel definitely has a challenge – having gone through both of Apple’s PowerPC migrations, this was the smoothest yet because we’re in a much better place with open source software dominating and internet distribution being the norm. I remember things being held up by proprietary compilers or needing to port hand rolled assembly but this time around we’re using higher level languages & frameworks a lot more and it’s been mostly transparent. Similarly, back then getting hardware to build and test was a chore; now it’s a checkbox in the EC2 launch options. Thinking about it, I knew that Intel not landing the first iPhone contract was a big loss on mobile but I don’t think anyone expected it to savage their traditional strongholds like this because that paved the way for so many tools not just being ported but heavily optimized for ARM. They’re certainly still doing a ton of business but now there’s a cap on how much profit they can take even if AMD completely founders.
- seltzered_ 3y ago
  The funny thing is that roughly a decade ago AMD literally was prototyping an ARM CPU presumably for server use. I recall hearing about 2014 - AMD Opteron A1100: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.anandtech.com/show/8362/amds-big-bet-on-arm-powered-servers-a1100-revealed https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.anandtech.com/show/... The startup Calxeda (2008-2013) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calxeda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calxeda Intel also had the 'xscale' ARM chips back in the late 2000s
  - acdha 3y ago
    I don’t want to say it’s all the iPhone but I do think it’s not a coincidence that things are very different now that we have robust tools like Clang and over a decade of compatibility patches throughout the open source world. In 2008 even Java developers tended to be antsy about running on non-x86 hardware. A decade later it’s close to a non-issue for a staggering amount of stuff.
    - seltzered_ 3y ago
      I'm not a backend expert, but I'd also speculate abother big change was containerization becoming popular - Docker came out in 2013.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Definitely - both for making it easy to manage isolated services independently and for forcing everything to have a known build process.
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    x86 lock-in benefits AMD greatly, just as it does Intel. It is my belief that they started looking at ARM cores when they thought they would never be able to be competitive with Intel in x86 (pre-Zen was a bad time for AMD). And when it became clear that actually their new cores would do very well against Intel, they dropped ARM plans. They don't want to move off x86 if they don't have to. Intel Xscale were a different beast. They got that through StrongARM from DEC as part of some law suit wheeling and dealing. They never seemed to really want to push it, preferring instead to try competing in mobile with a string of failed x86 cores.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > I knew that Intel not landing the first iPhone contract was a big loss on mobile Funnily enough Intel also had the best/most competitive ARM cores with XScale in the early 2000s which seemed like the default option for most high-end devices at the time. I wouldn't have been surprised if Apple would've just went with that (even if not x86) if Intel hadn't decided to can it without actually having any viable x86 SoC to replace it...

acdha 3y ago

Intel definitely has a challenge – having gone through both of Apple’s PowerPC migrations, this was the smoothest yet because we’re in a much better place with open source software dominating and internet distribution being the norm. I remember things being held up by proprietary compilers or needing to port hand rolled assembly but this time around we’re using higher level languages & frameworks a lot more and it’s been mostly transparent. Similarly, back then getting hardware to build and test was a chore; now it’s a checkbox in the EC2 launch options. Thinking about it, I knew that Intel not landing the first iPhone contract was a big loss on mobile but I don’t think anyone expected it to savage their traditional strongholds like this because that paved the way for so many tools not just being ported but heavily optimized for ARM. They’re certainly still doing a ton of business but now there’s a cap on how much profit they can take even if AMD completely founders.

seltzered_ 3y ago
The funny thing is that roughly a decade ago AMD literally was prototyping an ARM CPU presumably for server use. I recall hearing about 2014 - AMD Opteron A1100: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.anandtech.com/show/8362/amds-big-bet-on-arm-powered-servers-a1100-revealed https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.anandtech.com/show/... The startup Calxeda (2008-2013) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calxeda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calxeda Intel also had the 'xscale' ARM chips back in the late 2000s
- acdha 3y ago
  I don’t want to say it’s all the iPhone but I do think it’s not a coincidence that things are very different now that we have robust tools like Clang and over a decade of compatibility patches throughout the open source world. In 2008 even Java developers tended to be antsy about running on non-x86 hardware. A decade later it’s close to a non-issue for a staggering amount of stuff.
  - seltzered_ 3y ago
    I'm not a backend expert, but I'd also speculate abother big change was containerization becoming popular - Docker came out in 2013.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Definitely - both for making it easy to manage isolated services independently and for forcing everything to have a known build process.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  x86 lock-in benefits AMD greatly, just as it does Intel. It is my belief that they started looking at ARM cores when they thought they would never be able to be competitive with Intel in x86 (pre-Zen was a bad time for AMD). And when it became clear that actually their new cores would do very well against Intel, they dropped ARM plans. They don't want to move off x86 if they don't have to. Intel Xscale were a different beast. They got that through StrongARM from DEC as part of some law suit wheeling and dealing. They never seemed to really want to push it, preferring instead to try competing in mobile with a string of failed x86 cores.
qwytw 3y ago
> I knew that Intel not landing the first iPhone contract was a big loss on mobile Funnily enough Intel also had the best/most competitive ARM cores with XScale in the early 2000s which seemed like the default option for most high-end devices at the time. I wouldn't have been surprised if Apple would've just went with that (even if not x86) if Intel hadn't decided to can it without actually having any viable x86 SoC to replace it...