arm is very primed to take a lot of market share of server market from intel. Amazon is already very committed on making their graviton arm cpu their main cpu, which they own a huge lion share of the server market on alone.
for consumers, arm adoption is fully reliant on the respective operating systems and compatibility to get ironed out.
Yeah, I manage the infrastructure for almost 150 WordPress sites, and I moved them all to ARM servers a while ago, because they’re 10% or 20% cheaper on AWS.
Websites are rarely bottlenecked by the CPU, so that power efficiency is very significant.
I really think that most people who think that they want ARM machines are wrong, at least given the state of things in 2024. Like, maybe you use Linux…but do you want to run x86 Windows binary-only games? Even if you can get 'em running, you’ve lost the power efficiency. What’s hardware support like? Do you want to be able to buy other components? If you like stuff like that Framework laptop, which seems popular on here, an SoC is heading in the opposite direction of that – an all-in-one, non-expandable manufacturer-specified system.
But yours is a legit application. A non-CPU-constrained datacenter application running open-source software compiled against ARM, where someone else has validated that the hardware is all good for the OS.
I would not go ARM for a desktop or laptop as things stand, though.
If you didn’t want to game on your laptop, would an ARM device not be better for office work? Considering they’re quiet and their battery lasts forever.
As long as the apps all work. So much stuff is browser based now, but something will always turns up that doesn’t work. Something like mandatory timesheet software, a bespoke tool etc.
ARM chips aren’t better at power efficiency compared to x84 above 10 or 15W or so. Apple is getting a lot out of them because TSMC 3nm; even the upcoming AMD 9000 series will only be on TSMC 4nm.
ARM is great for having more than one competent company in the market, though.
If you look at pfsense/OPNsense hardware recommendations, it’s almost all using chips like the Intel N5105 (10W TDP, though admittedly “TDP” is itself a messy term) or J4125 (also 10W TDP). Using ARM hardware is asked a lot in the community forums, and it’s one of those questions that will get you a flamed for not checking Google first. The power usage benefits for switching to ARM just aren’t there.
There is the Netgate 1100, which runs ARM on a proprietary build of pfsense. The community has largely ignored it in favor of Intel chips. There isn’t much of a price advantage, and the performance is lackluster.
That said, there’s lots that you can do with a sub-10W chip, and x86 has nothing modern there.
Personally, I cobbled together an OPNsense firewall out of some old desktop parts I had on hand. Power usage is a bit higher, but not so much that I care. I would like a more viable high-end ARM option, though, just because I don’t want x86 to be the only option.
RISC-V isn’t there yet, but it’s moving in the right direction. A completely open architecture is something many of us have wanted for ages. It’s worth keeping an eye on.
I hope so, I accidentally advised a client to snatch up a snapdragon surface (because they had to have a dog shit surface) and I hadn’t realized that a lot of shit doesn’t quite work yet. Most of it does, which is awesome, but it needs to pick up the pace
Depends on the desktop. I have a NanoPC T4, originally as a set top box (that’s what the RK3399 was designed for, has a beast of a VPU) now on light server and wlan AP duty, and it’s plenty fast enough for a browser and office. Provided you give it an SSD, that is.
Speaking of Desktop though the graphics driver situation is atrocious. There’s been movement since I last had a monitor hooked up to it but let’s just say the linux blob that came with it could do gles2, while the android driver does vulkan. Presumably because ARM wants Rockchip to pay per fucking feature per OS for Mali drivers.
Oh the VPU that I mentioned? As said, a beast, decodes 4k h264 at 60Hz, very good driver support, well-documented instruction set, mpv supports it out of the box, but because the Mali drivers are shit you only get an overlay, no window system integration because it can’t paint to gles2 textures. Throwback to the 90s.
Sidenote some madlads got a dedicated GPU running on the thing. M.2 to PCIe adapter, and presumably a lot of duct tape code.
GPU support is a real mess. Those ARM SOCs are intended for embeded systems, not PCs. None of the manufacturers want to release an open source driver and the blobs typically don’t work with a recent kernel.
For ARM on the desktop, I would want an ATX motherboard with a socketed 3+ GHz CPU with 8-16 cores, socketed RAM and a PCIe slot for a desktop GPU.
Almost all Linux software will run natively on ARM if you have a working GPU. Getting windows games to run on ARM with decent performance would probably be difficult. It would probably need a CPU that’s been optimized for emulating x86 like what Apple did with theirs.
ARM is only more power efficient below 10 to 15 W or so. Above that, doesn’t matter much between ARM and x86.
The real benefit is somewhat abstract. Only two companies can make x86, and only one of them knows how to do it well. ARM (and RISC V) opens up the market to more players.
I’ve been buying AMD for – holy shit – 25 years now, and have never once regretted it. I don’t consider myself a fanboi; I just (a) prefer having the best performance-per-dollar rather than best performance outright, and (b) like rooting for the underdog.
But if Intel keeps fucking up like this, I might have to switch on grounds of (b)!
spoiler
(Realistically I’d be more likely to switch to ARM or even RISCV, though. Even if Intel became an underdog, my memory of their anti-competitive and anti-consumer bad behavior remains long.)
Same here. I hate Intel so much, I won’t even work there, despite it being my current industry and having been headhunted by their recruiter. It was so satisfying to tell them to go pound sand.
I can see it might appear that way if you have no knowledge or experience with recruitment or recruiters. It’s especially common in my field as it can be hard to get qualified people.
I’ve had nothing but issues with some computers, laptops, etc… once I discovered the common factor was Intel, I haven’t had a single problem with any of my devices since. AMD all the way for CPUs.
Sorry but after the amazing Athlon x2, the core and core 2 (then i series) lines fuckin wrecked AMD for YEARS. Ryzen took the belt back but AMD was absolutely wrecked through the core and i series.
Source: computer building company and also history
tl:dr: AMD sucked ass for value and performance between core 2 and Ryzen, then became amazing again after Ryzen was released.
Buy AMD. Got it!
Yeah that’s pretty shitty to continue to sell a part that they know is defective.
ARM looking pretty good too these days
arm is very primed to take a lot of market share of server market from intel. Amazon is already very committed on making their graviton arm cpu their main cpu, which they own a huge lion share of the server market on alone.
for consumers, arm adoption is fully reliant on the respective operating systems and compatibility to get ironed out.
Yeah, I manage the infrastructure for almost 150 WordPress sites, and I moved them all to ARM servers a while ago, because they’re 10% or 20% cheaper on AWS.
Websites are rarely bottlenecked by the CPU, so that power efficiency is very significant.
I really think that most people who think that they want ARM machines are wrong, at least given the state of things in 2024. Like, maybe you use Linux…but do you want to run x86 Windows binary-only games? Even if you can get 'em running, you’ve lost the power efficiency. What’s hardware support like? Do you want to be able to buy other components? If you like stuff like that Framework laptop, which seems popular on here, an SoC is heading in the opposite direction of that – an all-in-one, non-expandable manufacturer-specified system.
But yours is a legit application. A non-CPU-constrained datacenter application running open-source software compiled against ARM, where someone else has validated that the hardware is all good for the OS.
I would not go ARM for a desktop or laptop as things stand, though.
If you didn’t want to game on your laptop, would an ARM device not be better for office work? Considering they’re quiet and their battery lasts forever.
As long as the apps all work. So much stuff is browser based now, but something will always turns up that doesn’t work. Something like mandatory timesheet software, a bespoke tool etc.
But isn’t there x86 emulation for those edge cases?
ARM chips aren’t better at power efficiency compared to x84 above 10 or 15W or so. Apple is getting a lot out of them because TSMC 3nm; even the upcoming AMD 9000 series will only be on TSMC 4nm.
ARM is great for having more than one competent company in the market, though.
Do you have a source for that? It seems a bit hard to believe.
If you look at pfsense/OPNsense hardware recommendations, it’s almost all using chips like the Intel N5105 (10W TDP, though admittedly “TDP” is itself a messy term) or J4125 (also 10W TDP). Using ARM hardware is asked a lot in the community forums, and it’s one of those questions that will get you a flamed for not checking Google first. The power usage benefits for switching to ARM just aren’t there.
There is the Netgate 1100, which runs ARM on a proprietary build of pfsense. The community has largely ignored it in favor of Intel chips. There isn’t much of a price advantage, and the performance is lackluster.
That said, there’s lots that you can do with a sub-10W chip, and x86 has nothing modern there.
Personally, I cobbled together an OPNsense firewall out of some old desktop parts I had on hand. Power usage is a bit higher, but not so much that I care. I would like a more viable high-end ARM option, though, just because I don’t want x86 to be the only option.
RISC-V isn’t there yet, but it’s moving in the right direction. A completely open architecture is something many of us have wanted for ages. It’s worth keeping an eye on.
It’s not quite there for desktop use yet, but it probably won’t be too much longer.
I hope so, I accidentally advised a client to snatch up a snapdragon surface (because they had to have a dog shit surface) and I hadn’t realized that a lot of shit doesn’t quite work yet. Most of it does, which is awesome, but it needs to pick up the pace
Depends on the desktop. I have a NanoPC T4, originally as a set top box (that’s what the RK3399 was designed for, has a beast of a VPU) now on light server and wlan AP duty, and it’s plenty fast enough for a browser and office. Provided you give it an SSD, that is.
Speaking of Desktop though the graphics driver situation is atrocious. There’s been movement since I last had a monitor hooked up to it but let’s just say the linux blob that came with it could do gles2, while the android driver does vulkan. Presumably because ARM wants Rockchip to pay per fucking feature per OS for Mali drivers.
Oh the VPU that I mentioned? As said, a beast, decodes 4k h264 at 60Hz, very good driver support, well-documented instruction set, mpv supports it out of the box, but because the Mali drivers are shit you only get an overlay, no window system integration because it can’t paint to gles2 textures. Throwback to the 90s.
Sidenote some madlads got a dedicated GPU running on the thing. M.2 to PCIe adapter, and presumably a lot of duct tape code.
GPU support is a real mess. Those ARM SOCs are intended for embeded systems, not PCs. None of the manufacturers want to release an open source driver and the blobs typically don’t work with a recent kernel.
For ARM on the desktop, I would want an ATX motherboard with a socketed 3+ GHz CPU with 8-16 cores, socketed RAM and a PCIe slot for a desktop GPU.
Almost all Linux software will run natively on ARM if you have a working GPU. Getting windows games to run on ARM with decent performance would probably be difficult. It would probably need a CPU that’s been optimized for emulating x86 like what Apple did with theirs.
hmm. not really. I can’t beat AMD. Only in power-consumption, sure, but not in real performance.
This is where I need it to beat the others
even then, strix will look to compete with apple silicon in perf/watt
ARM is only more power efficient below 10 to 15 W or so. Above that, doesn’t matter much between ARM and x86.
The real benefit is somewhat abstract. Only two companies can make x86, and only one of them knows how to do it well. ARM (and RISC V) opens up the market to more players.
Smells like a future class action lawsuit to me.
You mean the type where the lawyers get eight figure payouts and you get a ten dollar check?
uber eats voucher*
I understood that reference.
There are reports that the vouchers handed out were canceled before anyone could use them.
I’ve been buying AMD for – holy shit – 25 years now, and have never once regretted it. I don’t consider myself a fanboi; I just (a) prefer having the best performance-per-dollar rather than best performance outright, and (b) like rooting for the underdog.
But if Intel keeps fucking up like this, I might have to switch on grounds of (b)!
spoiler
(Realistically I’d be more likely to switch to ARM or even RISCV, though. Even if Intel became an underdog, my memory of their anti-competitive and anti-consumer bad behavior remains long.)
I hate the way Intel is going, but I’ve been using Intel chips for over 30 years and never had an issue.
So your statement is kind of pointless, since it’s such a small data set, it’s irrelevant and nothing to draw any conclusion from.
Same here. I hate Intel so much, I won’t even work there, despite it being my current industry and having been headhunted by their recruiter. It was so satisfying to tell them to go pound sand.
…ummblrag…
I can see it might appear that way if you have no knowledge or experience with recruitment or recruiters. It’s especially common in my field as it can be hard to get qualified people.
…assssssholeeeee…
It’s good to feel proud of where you work. I’m not too sure on whether or not Intel treats their workers good though, do they?
I’ve had nothing but issues with some computers, laptops, etc… once I discovered the common factor was Intel, I haven’t had a single problem with any of my devices since. AMD all the way for CPUs.
I’ve been on AMD and ATi since the Athlon 64 days on the desktop.
Laptops are always Intel, simply because that’s what I can find, even if every time I scour the market extensively.
Honestly I was and am, an AMD fan but if you went back a few years you would not have wanted and AMD laptop. I had one and it was truly awful.
Battery issues. Low processing power. App crashes and video playback issues. And this was on a more expensive one with a dedicated GPU…
And then Ryzen came out. You can get AMD laptops now and I mean that like they exist, but also, as they actually are nice. (Have one)
But in 2013 it was Intel or you were better off with nothing.
© upgradability and not having motherboards be disposable on purpose
Sorry but after the amazing Athlon x2, the core and core 2 (then i series) lines fuckin wrecked AMD for YEARS. Ryzen took the belt back but AMD was absolutely wrecked through the core and i series.
Source: computer building company and also history
tl:dr: AMD sucked ass for value and performance between core 2 and Ryzen, then became amazing again after Ryzen was released.
AMD “bulldozer” architecture CPUs were indeed pretty bad compared to Intel Core 2, but they were also really cheap.
I’m with you on all this. Fuck Intel.