Arm Portable Console

[joshfrog]

Hi All

 

With all the talk about Arm and Nvidia using Arm, Apple using Arm chips and Microsoft potentially making an Arm versions of windows hardware and software (again), the success of SteamDeck.

How long do you think it would be until there is an Arm based SteamDeck version? Following Apples path with rosetta 2 being able to run x86/x64 bit software on Arm and given SteamDeck already needs to use Proton for many Windows games to run on it, Valve is already working with emulating/virtualizing software.

 

Another consideration is Arm being able to use AMD or Nvidia or Intel graphics for better gaming performance and comparability with games that currently exist and work with those graphics cards, APU or iGPU.

Arm, Intel, AMD and Nvidia are all members of the UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) i understand that doesn't mean Valve could just take an Arm CPU and glue on graphics from Intel, AMD or Nvidia but in a hypothetical device being able to have an Arm CPU for high performance and low power draw with a glued on GPU on a single package for much faster die to die communication and gaming performance.

 

I'm talking about a device for playing games on the local device not a "cloud" steaming device like the Logitech G Cloud. 

 

If it could run a Linux version to get away from Windows, IMO would be better then having to deal with all the shit from Microsoft.

 

Is this just wishful thinking...

[CerealExperimentsLain]

Emulating x86 on ARM is never going to match the efficiency of ARM on ARM or x86 on x86.  This is basically 'a bad idea'.  Like strapping a diesel-eclectic generator to your EV and calling it 'Green'.

[joshfrog]

Oh i agree emulating x86 on arm would suck but until newer games could run native on arm the only games that would need to run emulated would be older games that don't have native support for arm or other software that doesn't at launch.

I wouldn't want to be limited to only native games on arm as it would mean only new games could run on it and you would be cutting off so many gamers and so much other software that people would want to use.

If it didn't have emulation support it would make it much harder for people to justify buying an arm device over a x86 device.

[Doug2000]

I believe in the future you talk of. Unfortunately right now the market is quite segmented. Mobile games run on Arm all the time! The problem is that you aim for the market's hardware and the hardware is phones.

 

It is a more efficient and portable future and one that I desperately want, but x86 is the soul of the high end gaming industry and has first player advantage in the gaming space by a long shot.

 

That is not to say its impossible.

 

The Nintendo switch runs on an ARM processor, from a certain point of view it is the arm gaming future is already here. The problem is what you mean by gaming.

I don't go to Nintendo to play high frame-rate and resolution gaming. I go for the titles, portability, and overall experience.  It is ARM, but that is not why I would buy it.

 

Nintendo has the AA game market in its hands, almost as much as PC in my completely uninformed and unsubstantiated opinion. So the time is now for Arm gaming.

 

Emulation of games on other platforms well... You know the jokes about creating a universal standard for conversion. Instead of combining 14 competing standards you create the 15th competing standard.

 

Proton is a great thing and the cure to operation systems woes. Rosetta 2 really, really benefits from apples vertical integration. Something that a snapdragon or a media-tech just can't at this time.

 

Future oh heck yeah I would like to see media-tech bring out a handheld. Or Snapdragon. I don't think its their goal though.

 

ARM at this point seams to either be Vertical integrator game, or a low end computing option like raspberry pi.

 

I do think it's the future though. I just want to say like 10-20 years before it is any good. Gut-feeling completely uninformed.

[LAwLz]

12 hours ago, joshfrog said:

Is this just wishful thinking...

Sadly it is, for a few reasons.

 

1) Apple's CPU hardware is fantastic. It really is. The Arm cores from other companies aren't all that great though. Arm has some advantages compared to x86 (one of the big ones being the fixed length instructions, especially as the number of instructions scales up like on x86).

For comparison, Apple's old A15 processor was about 20% faster than the Cortex-X3 cores which are currently the highest-performing consumer Arm cores. Apple's cores are somewhere between 2 and 3 generations ahead of what others are making with Arm cores.

The Cortex-X4 that will launch in phones early next year might be able to match Apple's Soc from 2021 in terms of performance, and maybe efficiency.

Point is, people should stop looking at Apple and going "I want that on PCs", because what we will get for PCs won't be as good. With a bit of luck Nuvia (a company acquired by Qualcomm to develop high-performance Arm cores) might help, but I will remain skeptical until that launches.

 

2) A lot of Windows programs, especially games, have about a 0 percent chance of getting ported. There is just no money in doing the work necessary to port it. Hell, a lot of times developers can't even port their stuff because their closed-source stuff (that only they can port) relies on other closed-source components (which only those developers can port), and those things might depend on other closed-source components. It's a constant shifting of who to blame and who should take responsibility, and the end result is that nobody does anything.

And if we are going to emulate things then neither the performance nor efficiency will be that great. 

 

3) It becomes a chicken and egg problem. Why would consumers buy a platform that doesn't perform that great at the time of purchase? And if no consumers buys it, why should developers spend time, money and energy creating software for it? This is what happened with Windows Phone, Windows RT, and now Windows on Arm.

 

4) The DRM that many games use (to prevent piracy) would probably freak out because it is very sensitive to those things. Intel even had issues with getting games working on their P and E cores, and those run the same instruction sets. 

 

 

I'd love for Arm devices to take off on Windows machines because they have the potential to shake up the landscape and offers some benefits, but I don't actually see it happening. Apple has the advantage of ruling their platform with an iron fist, and developers follow their vision and orders. Linux has the advantage of being mostly open source programs and as a result programs can get ported with ease. Android has the advantage of its software being bytecode and thus can be compiled to whatever architecture the runtime supports

[kumicota]

57 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Sadly it is, for a few reasons.

Another reason for it that people doesn't know or ignores that is very important is the lack of a hardware standardization in ARM space(I know they have in server space but it was done out of necessity and not free will).

 

While ARM sells entire motherboard designs to manufactures, their main source of income is selling their Core(ISA, GPU and a few other things) this let's to the manufacturer to create how the kernel will talk to ram, display, pci-e, which subsets of pcie(rebar for example) it will support and more.

 

This leads to a thing where every processor works in a different way with peripherics, which makes that every processor needs a special kernel, full of blobs, patches and more for every single ARM processor. This is why OS compatibility on ARM is very hit or miss.

 

Also companies uses that to do planned obsolescence, like how qualcomm stops supporting processors after 3 years but because the kernel blobs are proprietary, companies can't upgrade the android version to newer ones as they can't guarantee that it will work fine, because if something related to the kernel breaks, they can't fix it.

 

While there's problems with this standardization on Intel and AMD side, this is why you can guarantee that every computer with a x86 processor, can run any x86 OS. You may need drives for things like GPU and Network but those drivers doesn't need to be baked in the kernel for that.

[LAwLz]

10 minutes ago, kumicota said:

Another reason for it that people doesn't know or ignores that is very important is the lack of a hardware standardization in ARM space(I know they have in server space but it was done out of necessity and not free will).

 

While ARM sells entire motherboard designs to manufactures, their main source of income is selling their Core(ISA, GPU and a few other things) this let's to the manufacturer to create how the kernel will talk to ram, display, pci-e, which subsets of pcie(rebar for example) it will support and more.

 

This leads to a thing where every processor works in a different way with peripherics, which makes that every processor needs a special kernel, full of blobs, patches and more for every single ARM processor. This is why OS compatibility on ARM is very hit or miss.

 

Also companies uses that to do planned obsolescence, like how qualcomm stops supporting processors after 3 years but because the kernel blobs are proprietary, companies can't upgrade the android version to newer ones as they can't guarantee that it will work fine, because if something related to the kernel breaks, they can't fix it.

 

While there's problems with this standardization on Intel and AMD side, this is why you can guarantee that every computer with a x86 processor, can run any x86 OS. You may need drives for things like GPU and Network but those drivers doesn't need to be baked in the kernel for that.

That's all true as well, but realistically Microsoft could force whoever makes the Arm hardware to follow their specifications. They could demand support for UEFI or BBR for example.

It is an issue, but I think it is solvable.

 

I am not sure how Microsoft handles it right now, but I am not aware of any issues with Windows on Arm devices not getting updated because of the way Arm devices handle booting. Not sure if they solved it through some standard, or if they talked to Qualcomm about it.

[igormp]

15 hours ago, joshfrog said:

Proton

Btw, projects to run ARM stuff on x86 on linux are a thing for some time and work quite well:

https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX

https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover

https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86

 

But yeah, such a device for gaming is still a long way in the future.

[Paul Thexton]

In reality I think the closest you'll get to an ARM powered equivalent to the SteamDeck would be the Nintendo Switch successor.  I'm not even sure though that Nintendo would go for a performance profile that matches even what the current deck can do? I don't think they've ever tried to get their consoles to be the "best" hardware, they just need it to be good enough to deliver the games they want to develop.

 

Hardware wise I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible, but in terms of software support, especially if you're looking for equivalent steam library support, it just doesn't seem likely to happen.

 

The dev working on Linux GPU drivers for the Asahi Linux project has recently gotten x86 translation (not Rosetta2, using FEX if I remember correctly) plus proton rendering Portal/2 on an M1 Mac Mini at anywhere between 60 ish to over 120 FPS depending on what's being rendered at any given moment. Video timestamp link below, if the time link didn't work you'll want to jump to around 3:31:30

 

In reality that's nothing earth shattering, it's quite an old game afterall... but it's also kind of cool at the same time.

 

 

[maplepants]

Other users have already made good points about how emulating x86 isn't something you want your ARM processor to do all the time, and the progress already being made by the Asahi team's OpenGL work on Apple's M1/M2 machines. But those are really focused on a kind of mobile desktop experience.

 

I think another aspect of this is that two portable ARM gaming platforms with good hardware already exist: Android and iOS. I play games like Dead Cells, Terraria, Stardew Valley, and Limbo on phone using a controller, as well as amazing touch games like supertype, and Plague Inc. On top of that, I can use Steam Link very reliably on my home wifi.

 

So an ARM powered Steam Deck 2 would be handicapping itself by having to emulate x86 all the time, and even when running ARM native code it would have a much worse library than an iPad or the phone already in people's pockets.