Probably better to get a new Ryzen processor and motherboard for around the same price.
Desktop isn’t even the hot new thing anymore, mobile is (or, at least, was.) Ans as fate would have it, mobile platforms are dominated by ARM already. Many modern developers already deal with ARM as it is.
Going further down the rabbit hole, I’d argue that most applications aren’t even nearly CPU bound and would run just fine with emulation, and nobody will bat an eye. This isn’t really theoretical, considering there exists x86 emulation in ARM Windows 10.
And finally, most open source software already runs on many architectures, just look at how many architectures Debian supports.
It does increase load on developers, but not to a degree that would make the benefits to competition unworthy. I think a good amount of developers are capable enough to figure out how to cross compile.
Architectural splits are not new. Apple did it twice already with Mac, and while there’s no evidence of a third one on the horizon yet, it’s certainly not beyond them.
And hell, maybe in the future, developers largely won’t ship architecture-dependent binaries. It is yet to be seen what might happen with WebAssembly and similar technology.
How do you address the problem caused by the combinatorial explosion of adding a whole new ISA to the OS*distribution combination of platforms that need to be targetted, tested for, and debugged?
This is a pretty theoretical problem and wreaks of slippery slope fallacy. How many CPU architectures have even come close to desktop usability in the past 10 years? Even prospect wise I basically only see ARM and RISC-V on the horizon. A combinatoric explosion is unlikely, very unlikely.
I already kind of went over this, but I’ll reiterate:
WebAssembly is a good example of a technology that has the potential to kill two birds with one stone and unify both architectures and OSes. Web browsers are Not the only environment WebAssembly runs in.
Folks writing software in .NET, Python, Java, JS already don’t have to worry about this. They already aren’t dealing with architectures, mostly.
A lot can be done with emulation when performance is not a primary concern. Windows 10 already has x86 emulation for ARM. On Linux Qemu user mode is pretty mature (and is already used for things like setting up ARM chroots on x86 boxes.)
If you are working in a higher level language it's a total non-issue. You will not notice.
My workstation requires 4 4k output, both HDMI 2,0 and display-port, and decent OpenGL & other hardware accelelation support. There is no way I'm ever going to get this working out of the box with a fancy architecture. Yes, I'm using proprietary binary-only software, but I my line of work involve CAD+CAM, not re-invent the wheel.
Even industrial system I'm working on right now will use standard off-the shelf part (read x86 or rasppi-like sbc) and STANDARD interfaces, because I don't want to lock myself with a vendor. If the main system crash, I can replace it within 12h with a crappy old system and limit downtime.
> Brandishing "diversity" as the epitome of progress is close to nonsensical.
Man, it really sounds like you have some things you might want to talk about with a therapist. I haven’t even used the word “diversity” that I can find.
All I’m suggesting is maybe an instruction set design that has cruft going back decades might actually not be the global maximum of ISA design, and that there might be real gains by trying to apply modern high-performance processor engineering to a different application ISA.
That’s it. The market gets to decide if another ISA will hit critical mass. This is not especially likely for the most part, but I definitely support the research.
I’m sorry for all of the snark but really, I am blown away at some of the responses this has garnered. I hope you all realize that this machines existence is not a threat to basically anyone.
>Do we need 16-core PIC16 Mini ATX workstation too?
Now this is just garbage. I doubt you are really ignorant enough to believe modern ARM cores are effectively in the same class as PIC16.
But honestly, unless you have a vested interest in the failure of non-Intel-based architectures, then what do you care? Why the intellectual hostility? Why are we asking “why” instead of “why not?”
I like ARM. I would buy this machine.
If it were usable for my workloads (running *nix, basically), I would absolutely love that. ...I admit, I'm struggling to think how to scale PIC up that much, and IIRC doesn't it use Harvard architecture? That'd be a struggle. But anyways, yes, if we could make it work then that would be beautiful.
Indeed it does. PIC32, on the other hand, doesn't.