Technology

Don’t be conflicted. RISC-V or GTFO.

As a simple user of Linux, I totally understand what it means for me....less choice, more google-android-like shit hardware. No thanks 👍.

Standardized firmware isn't something that's specified in the ISA, is it? It's just shitty phone manufacturers.

Asus had some x86 phones a few years back. I haven't dug into them, but I doubt they had a full bios/efi.

pine64 arm devices have u-boot, while a bootloader does fullfil a subset of the uefi spec.

I think that there's a legitimate place for all-in-one "smartphone" SoC PCs. You can make them cheaper, smaller, and use less power.

It's just not really what I want for myself in a PC. I want the modularity and third-parties competing to provide components.

But I am pretty sure that there are plenty of people who don't care about that.

There has to be enough scale to support products like that, though. SoC systems might cannibalize enough to make scale hard.

sigh

Well, we'll see where things go.

I would like RISC-V to also get 'good enough', considering that it seems to be a shitton more open than ARM is.

Tbh I really want to get my hands on a snapdragon X laptop at some point just to play around with it. The energy efficiency alone makes me very curious.

I was under the impression that most of the issues around getting Linux to work on them was around driver support. As in: people are absolutely able to install an arbitrary OS, but the functionality is just super janky in most cases. Is that not accurate?

This! Exactly!

I don't want PCs to be like smartphones. I don't want locked bootloaders.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but since Microsoft made TPM mandatory for Windows 11+, locked down bootloader are on their way.

Basically, TPM allows (Windows) software to validate/verify the integrity of the OS and hardware. This also (could) include the bootloader/bios if Microsoft chooses to do so.

TPM is the equivalent of attestation on Android, which is the exact reason why your Banking App won't work on your rooted/custom Android Phone.

That being said, we should embrace ARM. X86/AMD has 30+ years worth of "history" baked into each ( CISC) chip. This complexity is why your PC draws soooo much power and generates soooo much heat.

Not all ARM chips are in phones, nor are they all locked down like one. There are several ARM devices and SBCs now where switching OSes is as easy as swapping out an SD card. Most do use uboot as a standard and some are even capable of utilizing UEFI.

And universal drivers are an issue in ARM, bad for Open Source.

This!

I have wondered for a long time when we'll hit that ceiling (ssd size, cpu power, ram, ...) and I think it's about right now. There are not many exciting PC hardware news nowadays is another sign IMO.

I also windered for a long time why I shouldn't have a mobile phone PC, or more like "where are they?", I have an old Xiaomi redmi note pro 9, 4+4 core with 6+2GB RAM (Whatever that +2 means), 128GB storage and, well, graphics. For not expencive.

It could be an OK home computer.

A little bit of interesting times ahead!

basic needs of the average office and home user

I mean, ARM chips have been at that level of performance for at least a decade by now. Normal people's most strenuous activity is watching Youtube, which every cellphone since what? 2005? could do.

power consumption in relation to computational power

The thing is that's very much not the actual situation for most people.

Only Apple really has high performance, very low power ARM chips you can't really outclass.

Qualcomm's stuff is within single-digit percentage points of the current-gen AMD and Intel chips both in power usage, performance, and battery life.

I mean, that's a FANTASTIC achievement for a 1st gen product, but like, it's not nearly as good as it should be.

The problem is that the current tradeoff is that huge amounts of the software you've been using just does not work, and a huge portion of it might NEVER work, because nobody is going to invest time in making it behave.

(Edit: assuming the software you need doesn't work in the emulation layer, of course.) You might get Photoshop, but you won't get that version of CS3 you actually own updated. You might get new games, but you probably won't get that 10 year old one you like playing twice a year. And so on.

The future might be ARM, but only Apple has a real hat in the ring, still.

(Please someone make better ARM chips than Apple, thanks.)___

Valve is currently working on some tech to let x86 games work on arm64.

Windows* runs on arm. Microsoft Surfaces user arm processors. Even with windows apps being emulated... It's basically enough already.

Windows* RT but Microsoft dropped the differentiator this time around.

The new Intel chips already addressed that, at least for notebook class devices.

Realistically, there wasn't really a reason for Intel and AMD to be super power efficient, simply because there wasn't any competition for quite a while. It took Apple Silicon to show how powerful arm can be and how easy the transition could be.

It seems that they're finally taking that seriously though so it's good to see. They never really had any incentive to put too much effort in making x86 more efficient for consumer devices since their server chips have much, much higher profit margins.

Lunar Lake and AMD's Z1 is a good start and it's interesting to see where this goes.

Agreed. I'd really like RISC-V to be where ARM is, but having some competition is a good thing since it keeps that door open.