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Comment by smiley1437 | Hacker News Reader

Are there examples of Arm designs OTHER than the M1 which are suitable for consumers? Yes, the M1 is a remarkable product and it will certainly make inroads against x86 on the desktop but it is from a single company. Will Apple M1 (2, 3 etc) replace all x86 devices in a decade? That’s hard to swallow. Now, if we see another Arm product released that ALSO kicks x86 butt, from another player, then maybe I’d believe a change is happening

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Qualcomm is also entering the laptop segment with its 8cx platform [1]. While not a serious contender to M1 yet, it is comparable to an Intel i5 [2].

Samsung is also planning to release an Exynos laptop [3].

[1] https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-8cx-gen-2-5g-co...

[2] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/snapdragon-8cx-vs-co...

[3] https://www.engadget.com/samsung-exynos-amd-2200-windows-10-...

So what? Microsoft SQ1 has been there for a while [1]. Without a software support they are just a fancy stones that can't run desktop software.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Pro_X

This is a very late reply, but Windows 10 has its own x64 on ARM emulator [1]. It's not production ready as Rosetta but we'll see how it goes.

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introdu...

Qualcomm are terrible, though; rather than doing an M1 and competing on performance, they rely on cornering the mobile market with a patent portfolio.

They also have (fortunately) zero control over the downstream software, so they can't do Apple-style vertically integrated improvements.

Qualcomm tried so many times, it is actually a strong argument against ARM dominance, if Apple is the only one who can make it work but there are two companies that can make x86 work then the answer is pretty obvious which architecture is better.

if you are not using an apple phone, your smartphone likely uses an ARM-licensed chip, and chromebooks/windows RT devices ran ARM cores

the only thing holding back wider adoption is legacy x86 software

The smartphone ARM and chromebook ARM processors are nowhere near the M1 or x86 CPU in terms of performance. You need an M1 kind performance in these devices outside of Apple.

Also Raspberry Pi’s are ARM.

ARM Macs run x86 software great (my experience) and ARM Windows machines run x86 software adequately (I have read). Don’t know how well QEmu works on Linux - haven’t tried it but know it’s available.

Apple's Rosetta 2 that allows x86 code to run on M1 is a different beast than QEmu though. It translates x86 machine code to ARM code. That's why it is much faster than VM solutions.

QEmu also translates x86 machine code to ARM code, or vice-versa, or many other combinations. It's more optimised for portability and ease of adding translation support for new architectures than performance though but it's a really nifty bit of engineering.

Gaming is still x86 territory and that includes 2 of the 3 main competing gaming consoles isn't? Hard to think of a PS5 as legacy stuff.

Is not the majority of gaming occurring on mobile ARM devices, not dedicated consoles or rigs?

“Mobile gaming has fast become the largest gaming market in the world with industry revenue expected to hit $76.7 Billion by the end of 2020 and 2.2 million mobile gamers worldwide. It’s become so popular that 72.3% of mobile users in the US are also mobile phone gamers. To put this into perspective when compared with the wider video game market, by 2022 the global game market is set to reach $196 Billion, and the mobile gaming market will account for $95.4 Billion of that alone.”

https://www.wepc.com/statistics/mobile-gaming/

>Is not the majority of gaming occurring on mobile ARM devices, not dedicated consoles or rigs?

Yes, the "I'm taking a 5 minute toilet break" gaming or the "I'm sitting in a bus and I have nothing else to do" gaming.

It's making money off of whales who like that there is f2p plankton to gobble up.

I played a bunch of mobile games in 2014 and they were all trash or cash grabs. Often with grinds worse than MMORPGs.

That's only because no one other than Apple has put up a serious competition in ARM CPU space.

Earlier consoles used a boatload of different CPU and GPU architectures (PowerPC, SuperH, IBM Cell, other proprietary stuff, x86), nowadays consoles have converged to essentially a locked down, glorified x86 PC on one side (Xbox One, Xbox S/X, PS4, PS5) and ruggedized ARM-based tablets (Nintendo Switch) on the other side.

On the mobile gaming space, ARM already has achieved utter dominance with Switch + iPhone + Android... all it needs for ARM to conquer the console market is for someone to tape out an extremely powerful chip and actually sell it - Apple won't.

Is the dominance of x86 due to any inherent properties of x86, or historical legacy?

I think the xbox-s/x and ps5's choice of CPU vendor was driven more by business factors and the integrated graphics, than the virtues of x86 per se. The Switch does pretty well despite the less powerful CPU in the tegra.

Lots of software have been ported to ARM architecture in the last half year, so the clock started ticking for great ARM based Windows laptops. But it's clear that ARM's memory ordering has won.

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