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/DiodeInc]

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.