Arm machines that are repairable to compete with Apple would be very cool in my opinion. Maybe team up with an integrator like sys76. Could be very cool. I’d personally line up to buy.
I was thinking about ARM at one point, but you’ve got a couple of major drawbacks.
Most ARM devices are SoC, and where they get some of their cost and power savings. That’s kinda the opposite of modular.
ARM running ARM binaries can be more-power-efficient than x86 running x86 binaries. An ARM platform can run x86 binaries via x86 emulation, but then your power benefits go away (probably get worse power efficiency). For Windows, I assume that there’s some form of OS-level emulation, but you’ve got a lot of binary software out there. For Linux, if you’re using all open-source software that can be rebuilt for ARM, and assuming that you have ARM driver support, then you could maybe run only ARM binaries. But if you want to, for example, use Steam, then you are going to be using binary-only x86 software. Now, okay, that depends a lot on your use case, but that may be a real drawback if you play games on the thing.
That also sounds kind of like compatibility is still limited – they’re saying that some ARM platforms can’t do 32-bit x86 binaries, at least two years ago. Dunno if that’s still an issue.
I mean, what is the difference between the current SoC and the soldered CPU? Sure you can save on upgrading RAM, but then what else? Especially if the SoC has PCIe. They can make a daughter board for the SoC to make it simpler to upgrade if they want, alà pi compute module.
its not that simple. high performamce parts are high performamce because the devices that need the fastest speeds have the shortest traces from CPU to said device. its for instance, why the ram slots, and the fastest m.2/slot as well as pci-e lanes are nearest to the cpu, else youd have to resort to adding a south bridge.
the pi compute module works that way because the ram is already on board making it not a problem, and latency to whatever it gets mounted on isnt of highest priority for performance.
its why sodimm for instance has hit a peak speed limit, while lpdde hasnt, and why dell pitched the camm form factor for ram. distance of components to the cpu and its stability is cruicial for performance.
Arm machines that are repairable to compete with Apple would be very cool in my opinion. Maybe team up with an integrator like sys76. Could be very cool. I’d personally line up to buy.
Would love it if they just had a shell that takes single board PCs
I was thinking about ARM at one point, but you’ve got a couple of major drawbacks.
Most ARM devices are SoC, and where they get some of their cost and power savings. That’s kinda the opposite of modular.
ARM running ARM binaries can be more-power-efficient than x86 running x86 binaries. An ARM platform can run x86 binaries via x86 emulation, but then your power benefits go away (probably get worse power efficiency). For Windows, I assume that there’s some form of OS-level emulation, but you’ve got a lot of binary software out there. For Linux, if you’re using all open-source software that can be rebuilt for ARM, and assuming that you have ARM driver support, then you could maybe run only ARM binaries. But if you want to, for example, use Steam, then you are going to be using binary-only x86 software. Now, okay, that depends a lot on your use case, but that may be a real drawback if you play games on the thing.
googles
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/tqem55/you_can_now_run_steam_games_with_proton_on_an_arm/
That also sounds kind of like compatibility is still limited – they’re saying that some ARM platforms can’t do 32-bit x86 binaries, at least two years ago. Dunno if that’s still an issue.
I mean, what is the difference between the current SoC and the soldered CPU? Sure you can save on upgrading RAM, but then what else? Especially if the SoC has PCIe. They can make a daughter board for the SoC to make it simpler to upgrade if they want, alà pi compute module.
its not that simple. high performamce parts are high performamce because the devices that need the fastest speeds have the shortest traces from CPU to said device. its for instance, why the ram slots, and the fastest m.2/slot as well as pci-e lanes are nearest to the cpu, else youd have to resort to adding a south bridge.
the pi compute module works that way because the ram is already on board making it not a problem, and latency to whatever it gets mounted on isnt of highest priority for performance.
its why sodimm for instance has hit a peak speed limit, while lpdde hasnt, and why dell pitched the camm form factor for ram. distance of components to the cpu and its stability is cruicial for performance.