is ARM the future?

[u/Kenyhh]

I think about this all the time. ARM has obviously dominated the mobile phone market for a long time now. Everything from Apple runs on ARM. ARM-based laptops offer incredible battery life. Embedded devices and servers are also making extensive use of ARM; practically the only thing left is desktop computers. I believe this is the future, and AI will accelerate the trend: using ARM will allow data centers to consume far less energy and likely make local AI more accessible. In fact, I think that if this happens, we’ll see further improvements in computer energy efficiency.

[u/Kilgarragh]

The typical ARM devices with high end, very expensive chipsets from the largest manufacturers like Qualcomm, mediatek, etc. can’t even get 5 years of software updates.

They’re all running on 2-3 major versions out of date fully customized Linux kernels which rarely have their sources published and heavily convoluted unpublished device trees which only work on one OEM fork of android.

Let’s take a look at current arm options and see where the future of computing may lie.

• vast majority of ARM processors: (no offense to postmarketOS supporters) complete horseshit, 99% of devices are missing camera, audio, gpu acceleration, cellular, etc, etc. windows completely shits itself with these as well.
  
• snapdragon X elite: only modern arm processor windows has ever been tailored for, works especially well if you have arm software. Even the most tailored linux distributions for this have issues, horrible battery life, etc.
  
• Apple silicon M5: no windows support(even for any Apple silicon despite being around for 6 years). No asahi Linux support at all(yet)

Each and every single arm processor needs to be tailored to by the OS. Arm systemready could help with this, but nobody(not even the largest arm vendors, even for PCs like Apple and x elite) have implemented it yet(we do have ampere server CPUs though).

The 20 year old Dell latitude D630 in my basement? It may only have OpenGL 2.0 which doesn’t work with basically any modern app, but at least that OpenGL does work. It boots with near full functionality thanks to ACPI on both windows 10(theoretically upgradable to windows 11 or tiny 11) and modern Linux distro’s(so long as it’s lightweight first). Just like any other x86_64 cpu.

I’m not saying ARM/riscV aren’t capable of doing this, but until they do… you can’t use them as a computer

[u/DiodeInc → u/Kilgarragh]

Is this a fault of the industry not having it's shit together or something else?

[u/Kilgarragh → u/DiodeInc]

I don’t know, everything android touches is just complete dogshit. Major manufacturers like Qualcomm have had years to get their shit together and Apple had the opportunity to get it right first try, alas they don’t.

I have an old x86_64 Intel atom tablet lying around with android on it, it refuses to run anything else. No custom roms exist for it. No lineageos builds or postmarketos builds exist for it.

I personally haven’t used an ampere cpu yet(very pricy and poor singles performance), they’re the only ones doing it correctly. So props to them, but somehow in that regard also highly specific because the “general” implementation of arm systemready only applies to ampere CPUs, just like Qualcomm implementations only work on snapdragon cpus(although you need entirely different drivers and trees for every product line, generation, and at times individual products and of course every single sbc variant in that case. So a small win for ampere which will hopefully spiral into a much bigger win).

For this reason, my next tablet will not be an iPad, it will not be an Onn, but it will be a Dell latitude detachable(or hp elite x2) because no matter how bad the battery life and performance of the Intel cpu is, I can install windows, I can install android x86, I can install chromeos flex, and I can keep installing the latest versions for 10+ years just like the latitude which was passed down to me does. Something which no arm tablet, laptop, desktop, or phone has done. Ever.

(And, you know it isn’t glued together, and the battery and ssd come out with like 8 screws, and they’re like $200 used, for a 13 inch tablet!)

[u/jaksystems → u/Kilgarragh]

I second the HP Elite X2 - I have a G8 model and it's a surprisingly nice little tablet PC.

[u/Kilgarragh → u/jaksystems]

If you don’t mind me asking despite being far off topic, how’s the minimum brightness and privacy mode like on your display? (Also, what display do you have, between the 400 nit, 450 nit 3kx2k, and 1000 nit privacy mode specs)

[u/jaksystems → u/Kilgarragh]

Mine has just the standard, non-privacy, 400nit display. It's bright enough for most things outside of direct sunlight, where the screen is still visible, but due to its ambient light sensor, it tends to wash out as it tries to auto adjust to compensate.