ARM desktop cpus when?

[Kaustubh Tandon]

I have few questions about arm desktop cpu

1. I want to ask when can we expect arm desktop CPU?

2. What will the advantages and disadvantages of arm CPUs?

3. Is arm better than x86 and is there any possibility that intel and amd produce arm cpus?

Thank-you 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1. Depends on what you call a desktop, but now in things like the mac mini and iMac.

 

2. Lots of videos and articles out there, but for most uses, not too much of a change. You probably won't notice the difference in most uses.

 

3. Amd has made arm cpus before, but nether have performance chips currently.

[Kaustubh Tandon]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Depends on what you call a desktop, but now in things like the mac mini and iMac.

By desktop I mean consumer cpu that we can use in our build. Sorry I didn't clear it earlier.

Thank you for response!

[CerealExperimentsLain]

1 minute ago, Kaustubh Tandon said:

By desktop I mean consumer cpu that we can use in our build. Sorry I didn't clear it earlier.

Thank you for response!

And what operating system do you intend to use with this?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Kaustubh Tandon said:

By desktop I mean consumer cpu that we can use in our build. Sorry I didn't clear it earlier.

Thank you for response!

THe big issue now is windows on arm kinda sucks. Since most apps aren't native on arm your emulating them so there is a big performance hit, so any arm performance gains or efficiency gains are lost in emulation. And from the looks of it big programs aren't going to arm on windows any time soon.

[NineEyeRon]

2 minutes ago, Kaustubh Tandon said:

By desktop I mean consumer cpu that we can use in our build. Sorry I didn't clear it earlier.

Thank you for response!

What is the reason? Low power? Small form? 

 

What specific advantage would you need? 

 

Do these outweigh any disadvantages for you? What is the expected workload?

 

Give this a read https://www.androidauthority.com/arm-vs-x86-key-differences-explained-568718/

[mahyar]

Just now, CerealExperimentsLain said:

And what operating system do you intend to use with this?

windows on arm is really bad

macos is better but because of its closed nature it will be hard to run on a desktop

linux is a bit better but still lacks a lot of software 

so far linux is bit more promising than other OSs but time will tell

[Kaustubh Tandon]

3 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

And what operating system do you intend to use with this?

Maybe windows for arm get better by time.

[Kaustubh Tandon]

4 minutes ago, NineEyeRon said:

What is the reason? Low power? Small form? 

 

What specific advantage would you need? 

 

Do these outweigh any disadvantages for you? What is the expected workload?

 

Give this a read https://www.androidauthority.com/arm-vs-x86-key-differences-explained-568718/

Well, yeah low power means low heat output and as we saw in macbooks it performs better than most of the laptops out there in market. For example, in industries where air cooling can destroy computer components passive cooling from arm cpu can solve that problem.

and x86 has to replaced by something better in near future tho imo

[Chris Pratt]

It'll be a while for PC All in Ones to follow after Apple's iMacs. They'd probably love to, but there's no commercially viable desktop class ARM chip available to PC manufacturers yet. Microsoft and Qualcomm are working on it, but their efforts so far have been lackluster at best.

 

As far as full desktops go, probably not for a very long time. There's efforts with things like RISC-V to create a RISC architecture CPU with better performance than any CISC CPU can match, but they're still a ways off from anything commercially viable. The main draw to ARM and other RISC architectures, in general, is power efficiency, and that's simply not something that generally matters in the desktop space. Power is a virtually unlimited commodity for all intents and purposes, and more juice equals more perf.

 

You might eventually see some competition with business class machines, due to power efficiency standards coming online in various countries, but for a while, things like Alder Lake's upcoming big.LITTLE design will be sufficient enough for that, while still offering oomph when you need it.

[TetraSky]

14 minutes ago, Kaustubh Tandon said:

By desktop I mean consumer cpu that we can use in our build. Sorry I didn't clear it earlier.

Thank you for response!

I somehow doubt we will see ARM CPUs that we can DIY a PC out of. They are more likely to be available in a pre-built. Expect things like All-In-One form factor or more NUC sized computers.
That and I honestly doubt there much demand for custom ARM computers right now, considering there's no OSes for them, other than ChromeOS, some flavor of Linux and Windows on ARM, which we still can't buy a license for (Not including MacOS for obvious reasons)

[Kaustubh Tandon]

2 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

It'll be a while for PC All in Ones to follow after Apple's iMacs. They'd probably love to, but there's no commercially viable desktop class ARM chip available to PC manufacturers yet. Microsoft and Qualcomm are working on it, but their efforts so far have been lackluster at best.

 

As far as full desktops go, probably not for a very long time. There's efforts with things like RISC-V to create a RISC architecture CPU with better performance than any CISC CPU can match, but they're still a ways off from anything commercially viable. The main draw to ARM and other RISC architectures, in general, is power efficiency, and that's simply not something that generally matters in the desktop space. Power is a virtually unlimited commodity for all intents and purposes, and more juice equals more perf.

 

You might eventually see some competition with business class machines, due to power efficiency standards coming online in various countries, but for a while, things like Alder Lake's upcoming big.LITTLE design will be sufficient enough for that, while still offering oomph when you need it.

thank you for response!

So will x86 be replaced by something in near future? 

[Chris Pratt]

Just now, Kaustubh Tandon said:

thank you for response!

So will x86 be replaced by something in near future? 

Who knows what the future holds? I imagine it's going to stay competitive for a very long time. It's not really about x86, though. It's about RISC vs CISC. I don't think CISC architecture will really ever go away, but I could see RISC becoming at least a competitive alternative, depending on the workload, or maybe even some future hybrid architecture.

[Kaustubh Tandon]

3 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

Who knows what the future holds? I imagine it's going to stay competitive for a very long time. It's not really about x86, though. It's about RISC vs CISC. I don't think CISC architecture will really ever go away, but I could see RISC becoming at least a competitive alternative, depending on the workload, or maybe even some future hybrid architecture.

Future is exciting!

[NineEyeRon]

43 minutes ago, Kaustubh Tandon said:

thank you for response!

So will x86 be replaced by something in near future? 

 

Yes, it is looooong in the tooth.

 

Not next year, not by 2030 but a time after that it will be.

[igormp]

People need to stop caring about the ISA, what matters is the underlying µArch.

 

7 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

Who knows what the future holds? I imagine it's going to stay competitive for a very long time. It's not really about x86, though. It's about RISC vs CISC. I don't think CISC architecture will really ever go away, but I could see RISC becoming at least a competitive alternative, depending on the workload, or maybe even some future hybrid architecture.

I wouldn't even consider high-performance ARM cores to be RISC at this point, their decoders are way too complex and they add instructions with no proper benefits other than making it easier for compilers.

[A51UK]

I do not see x86-64 been replace with anything for a long long time. To be true fully they a lot of hype on ARM, and it just hype. There no need for desktop to ever change from x86-64 to ARM. Also note that ARM is not new but very old. It bit like big small core thing, it great for mobile and laptop but pointless in desktop. There just too much software that work only on x86-64 for people to move to ARM. 

[Kronoton]

Well, "RISC" is in some ways just a marketing term and in that you could even go back 40years and call the 6502 "RISC" when compared to Z80 or early Intel.

But it also means stuff like same length opcodes which makes decoding easier and that is one reason why RISC is superior when all other things are equal.

 

Apple has to more specific advantages, ditching 32Bit and having exclusive use of TMSC's 5nm.

 

X86 (AMD64 for real) does have the advantage that almost unlimited resources have been poured into what should have been a dead horse 2 decades ago.

But in the end, it never was or stopped being competitive in most markets. No x86 smartphones, no real tablets, no automotive and no IoT. Only Windows and gaming consoles.

 

 

[Donut417]

On 5/31/2021 at 1:20 PM, Kaustubh Tandon said:

I have few questions about arm desktop cpu

1. I want to ask when can we expect arm desktop CPU?

2. What will the advantages and disadvantages of arm CPUs?

3. Is arm better than x86 and is there any possibility that intel and amd produce arm cpus?

Thank-you 

 

 Its going to be a while before we see something. I mean technically there is a Surface Tablet that runs on a Snapdraggon CPU. The issue is, Qualcomm is no Apple. Their CPU's are not really built for desktop use like the M1. And seeing how Apple is unlikely going to share its silicone with anyone we have to wait for a company to recreate what Apple did for the PC's. I personally dont think Qualcomm cares enough to really want to be competitive in the desktop market. I mean many phones and tablets already use their silicone and they really have no reason to care about the desktop market, when they pretty much own a good chunk of the mobile market. Now keep in mind that Nvidia has their Tegra ARM CPU which is used in the Nintendo Switch. And I guess AMD is developing its own ARM CPU, AMD does have CPU design under their belt, so maybe in a generation or two they might have a good contender. 

 

The other side of the coin is Windows and Windows software was developed for X86. No one is going to go back and rewrite a lot of this old software. The fact is the market share Microsoft does have is really only due to the legacy support that Windows has. While a lot of stuff has moved to the cloud, there are still companies out their using old outdated software because why fix what's not broke. Some of that said software was developed in house and they dont want to pay to update it. While there is emulation you can do to run x86 on ARM, Microsofts implementation is not that great, as in no where close to Apple's Rossetta 2. Even then emulation has its limits. 

 

For Microsoft to move to ARM it would have to give up on legacy support. While they could do short term legacy support like Apple is doing with Rossetta 2, they would be stuck if they did it long term. I would say a good portion of their customers are their customers due to legacy support. So while Microsoft wants to have ARM computers, they have to treat them like a secondary project because their customers dont want change. 

 

Keep in mind the backlash they got when Windows XP got cut. Because a lot of especially old people where like "You will have to drag my Windows XP out of my cold dead hands". 

 

 

[Kronoton]

On 6/2/2021 at 12:33 AM, Donut417 said:

The issue is, Qualcomm is no Apple. Their CPU's are not really built for desktop use like the M1.

 

I think you overstate the M1 "being build for desktop", in the end it's just the "x" version of last years iPhone chip with some rather minor tweaks (read more I/O) to make it suitable. 99% of the magic is done in the SW and the control Apple has over the platform (and exercised in the past years to prepare for this).

 

On 6/2/2021 at 12:33 AM, Donut417 said:

While a lot of stuff has moved to the cloud, there are still companies out their using old outdated software because why fix what's not broke

 

Sure but most of that legacy SW runs just fine on legacy HW hence you find many (mostly smaller companies) running on 10 year old PCs. The big corps with their IT department might still be on a 3 year update cycle but its only a matter of time till the realize that a <100$ rPi-style Atom-based board will do just as good the 1000$ Dells. And they for sure won't have anybody with those old SW on Laptop while in the field.

So the number of CPUs sold and the margins of them being sold will go down for what still needs to be x86.