Comment by scoopertrooper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scoopertrooper | Hacker News Reader

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> Is there anyone shipping an ARM motherboard and ARM chip? I think the "openness" is also defined by what the market offers. All I see are non-extendable notebooks.

The closest analogue to what you described in the ARM world would be plugging either a Computer-on-Module or System-on-Chip into a carrier board. Today's ARM deployments are presently largely focused on energy efficiency, so they make heavier use of integration than typical x86 deployments.

e.g. https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/apalis-arm-famil... https://www.toradex.com/support/partner-network/hardware https://www.toradex.com/products/carrier-board

> Also until you can run non-linux "desktop software" on one, it will always feel like a "tablet"

There are millions of linux users around the world that would challenge your assertion that desktop linux doesn't qualify as anything beyond a tablet. In any event, Windows already runs on ARM and some rapscallions have already got it up and running on a Raspberry Pi despite Microsoft's present prohibition on doing so. I'm sure Microsoft will free up the licensing in due time as market demand presents itself (if only to allow interoperability with M1 Mac VMs).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyLdAs_roIA

That’s the issue. Linux runs everywhere and is not a consumer product, that’s why I exclude it.

Until you can build your own general-purpose PC and can decide to make it ARM, it will not be considered an equivalent option, it will just be another tablet, “chromebook” or “board for hackers”

I honestly don't follow you at all. We're now at a point where every major consumer operating system now has an ARM version available.

You can build your own general purpose PC with ARM today. It's not done regularly because ARM chips historically tended to be less powerful, so the type of person that went out and built their own PC wouldn't want to build an ARM PC. This is now rapidly changing given chips like Apple's M1 and the upcoming Arm Cortex-X1 are surpassing their x86 competitors in performance orientated benchmarks.

Once Microsoft gets their act together with their own version of Rosetta 2 and we reach the X2 generation, you'll start to see a rapid shift towards ARM desktops with X1 chips in the mid-tier segment. Eventually the premium "gamer" tier will follow as M1 has proven that it's possible create an ARM SoC that surpasses top tier x86 single threaded performance at a fraction of the power budget and mountains of thermal headroom. This will be accelerated by the fact Nvidia is purchasing ARM and now has massive incentive to get Nvidia discrete graphics cards paired up with ARM SoCs.

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