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Arm desktop pc, any future\hope?

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First post, by Nemo1985

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Lately I was watching those arm laptops and therefore wondering if there will be any arm desktop pc. The main strenght of the architecture is the low power consumption with good performance but it lacks the whole compatibility with x86(-64) instructions, from what I saw windows for Arm is not that bad and it offers some layer of compatibility, furthermore a desktop pc could push up the power consumption and then maybe have better performance compared to the cpus that we are used today?
What's your opinion about it? Do you think arm architecture will have a future on desktop computers without lose the compatibility we still have nowadays thanks to x86 architecture?

Reply 1 of 37, by RetroGamer4Ever

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Yes, ARM desktops are coming, with Windows and Android. No, they are nothing like traditional x86 desktops. x86 emulation is pretty well hammered out by now and pretty much all of the regular consumer software programs have ARM versions, so there's nothing for "most people" to get worked up over. CES 2025 and Computex 2025 will have a bunch of ARM stuff being shown off, though we don't know if the actual release of such products will be in late 2025 or early 2026, given how wonky the tech market is right now.

Reply 2 of 37, by Jo22

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Windows 11 (ARM) does work quite okay so far, I think. My old x86 32-Bit applications do run, as far as I can say.
I wouldn't mind working with ARM Desktop PCs in the future. It's not worse than using upcoming x86S PCs, at least. Rather contrary, as an architecture ARM is less being crippled.

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Reply 3 of 37, by RetroGamer4Ever

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The issues with ARM PCs are - based on what's currently being served up in the market and to devs - hardware designs that are "just good enough" for basic computing uses and not good enough for enthusiasts and power users, a focus on "everything integrated" (no expandability or performance increases potential), and pricing that is not competitive with x86. It's certainly possible to make x86-style system boards with ARM, but the philosophy in the industry is to just repurpose phone/tablet designs and put them in mini-PC type housing.

Reply 4 of 37, by Trashbytes

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RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2024-11-22, 13:17:

The issues with ARM PCs are - based on what's currently being served up in the market and to devs - hardware designs that are "just good enough" for basic computing uses and not good enough for enthusiasts and power users, a focus on "everything integrated" (no expandability or performance increases potential), and pricing that is not competitive with x86. It's certainly possible to make x86-style system boards with ARM, but the philosophy in the industry is to just repurpose phone/tablet designs and put them in mini-PC type housing.

I suspect the industry heavy weights dont want DIY PC users, they want a set standard they can feed to Lusers year over year with little to no innovation, this would lower production costs and support requirements. Cheap, nasty ARM garbage hardware that cant be repaired easily is cheap to produce and is considered throwaway, that they can force obsolescence on by simply stopping updates much like they do with current ARM garbage. Worse they can pull an Apple and you only get what they want you to have unless you are willing to pay 600 USD for a 1Tb SSD because its all proprietary and platform locked.

This is why ARM junk isn't exciting for the enthusiasts or power users . .even Linux guys dont want ARM garbage but they will force it on us none the less because this is what the industry wants. Both AMD and nVidia have seen this with both investing heavily into ARM tech . .especially nVidia who I suspect dont want end users to own top end GPU hardware. They want you to rent it from them via the cloud. Prices for 5000 series GPUs look to be astronomical significantly higher than the 4000 cards, they price the end users out of the market and then let you rent it from them instead via Geforce Now or other cloud services.

The truly scary part is they can control this ARM hardware remotely much like they do with mobile devices currently .. even when turned off its still listening and reporting location data because you the end user have zero control over it. Also . .all your data ends up in the cloud too, so they can farm it to make bank and push personalised ADDs to you. (This is being pushed hard right now by the likes of Microsoft and Apple, your data is useless to them on your personal PC)

Yes I dislike ARM hardware in its current form .. not because its inherently bad but because of what the industry truly wants to push to end users, ARM is easily controlled and X86-64 is not.

Call me crazy and claim none of this is happening .. but I'm old enough to have seen the free market PC industry be birthed and I'm going to be around to see it slowly die, because the Industry doesn't want the free market. They want locked down hardware eco systems they control with software they can use to make even more money from you the end user.

Last edited by Trashbytes on 2024-11-22, 14:59. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 5 of 37, by DosFreak

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Yeah for me to "upgrade" to it:
Compatibility same as current x86 both with and without emulation.
Minimum framerate same as current x86
Supports same current OS as current x86
Warranty same as current x86
Better driver and open source support than x86
Better BIOS and open source support than x86.
Upgradeable cpu, memory, storage and pcie slots. If not the price needs to be much much cheaper and with realistic usage, no 8/16gb of ram or 512/1tb crap and a shit cpu. 5yr enthusiast usage minimum but it needs to be usable for 10-15+

Last edited by DosFreak on 2024-11-22, 15:06. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 6 of 37, by Trashbytes

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DosFreak wrote on 2024-11-22, 14:59:
Yeah for me to "upgrade" to it: Compatibility same as current x86 both with and without emulation. Minimum framerate same as cur […]
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Yeah for me to "upgrade" to it:
Compatibility same as current x86 both with and without emulation.
Minimum framerate same as current x86
Supports same OS as current x86
Warranty same as current x86
Better driver and open source suppirt than x86
Better BIOS and open source support than x86.
Upgradeable cpu, memory, storage and pcie slots. If not the price needs to be much much cheaper and with realistic usage, no 8/16gb of ram or 512/1tb crap and a shit cpu. 5yr enthusiast usage minimum.

You will get what they give you and you'll be happy to get even that much and you had better be happy they dont change the bargain with no notice. Wait you accepted their TOS and EULA by using their hardware . .well you are shit out of luck I guess.

/s

You can see this happening right now.

Reply 8 of 37, by DaveDDS

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With todays emphasis (by the "masses") on phones and tablets much more than
traditional PCs, I wouldn't be surprised at all it such a thing came available.

I wouldn't mind it mydelf if a low-cost ARM desktop were available.

I'm never going to give up my DOS machines, I still do a LOT of quick-and-dirty
tools with my own Micro-C/PC compiler which is DOS.

I do have some winblows PCs, mainly to access the internet and (up till Win32)
they ran DOS code quite well.

After windows went mainly Win64, no more 16-bit/DOS code... So I use DosBox
quite a bit, and also created my own DVM (Dunfield Virtual Machine) that
implements a processor I designed back-in-the day which is both very simple
(virtually no condition-flags, one of the hardest things to emulate in a
portable language like C) and an ideal target for my C compiler.

This let me just re-compile almost all of my DOS "stuff", runs much faster than
DosBox under Win64, and giving my "stuff" full access to the PC - But obviously
any "stuff" that uses inline 80x86 assembly, or relies on hardware I didn't
want to take the time to fully emulate in DVM can't transition, but a LOT of my
little tools work well. So it's mostly still working well for me.

but... I'm also someone who doesn't like my systems to change on other peoples
whims... and that's pretty much impossible in todays environments.

---
So, I've switched mainly to Chromebooks for accessing the internet. Yes, they
update constantly, but I accept that as it help minimize security risks on the
system I used to access "the world", and I don't use them as my "daily driver".

It would be nice if such a system could be available as a desktop!
I use KVM switches to make multiple systems easily accessible from one keyboard
and display, and although the Chromebook will support an external keyboard,
mouse and display.. it would be nice if I could just have another little
desktop system tucked in my system rack instead of having to get out a laptop.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Reply 9 of 37, by Trashbytes

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Babasha wrote on 2024-11-22, 15:34:

Apple M1-M4 Macs are ARM's))))

We know, Apple has been arm since they ditched Intel, their phones have been Arm longer than that.

More specifically they are not 100% ARM since Apple silicon adds a lot of extra stuff that ARM doesn't have.

Reply 10 of 37, by Jasin Natael

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RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2024-11-22, 13:17:

The issues with ARM PCs are - based on what's currently being served up in the market and to devs - hardware designs that are "just good enough" for basic computing uses and not good enough for enthusiasts and power users, a focus on "everything integrated" (no expandability or performance increases potential), and pricing that is not competitive with x86. It's certainly possible to make x86-style system boards with ARM, but the philosophy in the industry is to just repurpose phone/tablet designs and put them in mini-PC type housing.

This is what we are going to see. Just ultra low end cheapo laptop motherboard in a desktop case systems.
They will probably retail for about $225 USD and replace what has in the past been built with Atom class CPUs.

They will technically exist as "ARM Desktops" but they won't be modular in form or likely upgradeable in any significant way.
That's not to say they won't eventually get there as a full fledged desktop offering, but it's going to take some time.
The enthusiast market is what drives that innovation, and right now ARM can't compete in that segment....and no Apple silicon Macs don't count.

Reply 11 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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As long as AMD and Intel are committed to x86, there won't be any significant ARM desktop options. And no, Apple is not a solution, they don't have a large footprint in OEM.

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Reply 12 of 37, by the3dfxdude

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Given the news I'd guess the closest what one could eventually try is do another attempt of a nettop, similar to netbook and tablet computing, running windows, yet again. Desktop x86 is tied into business and workstations and servers, and that aint going away. Though consumer desktop is being cannibalized into the gaming ecosystem, which is quite tacky, they'll continue to be able to piggy back off of where business is headed. Can't see any adopters for the ARM PC from here.

Intel has made some grave mistakes in their product offering, but at worst, the business only went to AMD x86. That doesn't mean people are ready to ditch x86.

Reply 13 of 37, by leileilol

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With regards to x86 compatibility, there's at least this thing (not to be confused with the cursed thing and this makes less sense as it's not really a box but more of a shim.)

apsosig.png
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Reply 14 of 37, by Nemo1985

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I think it's going to be hard or impossible to reach the full compatibility with the x86 programs and integrate those instructions to have hardware compatibility would make useless all the pro of arm architecture.

Reply 15 of 37, by VivienM

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Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-11-23, 04:24:

I think it's going to be hard or impossible to reach the full compatibility with the x86 programs and integrate those instructions to have hardware compatibility would make useless all the pro of arm architecture.

But... here's the thing, the x86 programs are slowly being replaced by web-based garbage running on Chrome/Electron/etc. That's what all the custom/specialized/etc business stuff written in the past 15 years uses.

Hell, look at what Microsoft is trying to do with the "new Outlook" - replace a mature code base with a sorry piece of garbage developed using web technologies that's missing most of the functionality.

And guess what... Chrome/Electron/etc runs just as badly on ARM as on x64.

Reply 16 of 37, by jakethompson1

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DaveDDS wrote on 2024-11-22, 15:43:
So, I've switched mainly to Chromebooks for accessing the internet. Yes, they update constantly, but I accept that as it help mi […]
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So, I've switched mainly to Chromebooks for accessing the internet. Yes, they
update constantly, but I accept that as it help minimize security risks on the
system I used to access "the world", and I don't use them as my "daily driver".

It would be nice if such a system could be available as a desktop!
I use KVM switches to make multiple systems easily accessible from one keyboard
and display, and although the Chromebook will support an external keyboard,
mouse and display.. it would be nice if I could just have another little
desktop system tucked in my system rack instead of having to get out a laptop.

They do... Chromebox 😁

Reply 17 of 37, by VivienM

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To answer the original question. I think desktop PCs generally are shrinking, under attack from laptops, smartphones, Macs, everything. Have been shrinking for over a decade.

Microsoft is making another push for Windows-on-ARM with this Copilot+ Qualcomm stuff. I think they're getting closer to success - if you have Chrome, security software (e.g. EDR solutions like SentinelOne), and MS Office running natively on ARM, that's enough for a good number of business users. Add good-enough x86/x64 emulation. Add the fact that a lot of old-fashioned business Windows software is run on Citrix-type remote desktops anyways, and you don't need x86 (or Windows) to connect to one of those.

I do think that the 'smartphone economy' has been driving semiconductors for close to a decade. It is now eating up x86land and that trend will only accelerate. (Same as how the 'PC economy'/x86/etc ate everything in the 1990s/early 2000s, and the survivors like IBM z series survived in part by leveraging the 'PC economy' in various ways) Whether that means AMD using TSMC fabs that smartphones paid for to make x86 chips, or whether it means more commonality between the surviving PCs and smartphones (which is what Apple is doing with their ARM stuff), who knows.

But the old days of the PCs of the 1990s, the open PC architecture, the magazines/web sites full of innovative parts/upgrades/etc, that's all dead. Even in x86 land - look at what AMD is doing about permanently tying processors to motherboards. And look at what Microsoft has been doing with Intune, Autopilot, etc, and secure boot before that - completely inconsistent with the old PC ways...

Reply 18 of 37, by Nemo1985

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VivienM wrote on 2024-11-23, 23:00:
But... here's the thing, the x86 programs are slowly being replaced by web-based garbage running on Chrome/Electron/etc. That's […]
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Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-11-23, 04:24:

I think it's going to be hard or impossible to reach the full compatibility with the x86 programs and integrate those instructions to have hardware compatibility would make useless all the pro of arm architecture.

But... here's the thing, the x86 programs are slowly being replaced by web-based garbage running on Chrome/Electron/etc. That's what all the custom/specialized/etc business stuff written in the past 15 years uses.

Hell, look at what Microsoft is trying to do with the "new Outlook" - replace a mature code base with a sorry piece of garbage developed using web technologies that's missing most of the functionality.

And guess what... Chrome/Electron/etc runs just as badly on ARM as on x64.

You are right, personally I stopped using Outlook when I upgraded from XP to Windows 7, then I began to use gmail from the website but I did the same with other email providers. For office things I stick to programs (libreoffice to be precise) despite again google offers some sort of integrated we apps. I think some programs won't be changed for the web based counterpart but there is definitely a push in such direction.

VivienM wrote on 2024-11-23, 23:13:

[...] And look at what Microsoft has been doing with Intune, Autopilot, etc, and secure boot before that - completely inconsistent with the old PC ways...

All useless stuff if you ask me, I watched the review about arm laptops from LTT, with the so called integrated ai stuff, it's a useless and just marketing feature.

Reply 19 of 37, by VivienM

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Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-11-23, 23:29:
VivienM wrote on 2024-11-23, 23:13:

[...] And look at what Microsoft has been doing with Intune, Autopilot, etc, and secure boot before that - completely inconsistent with the old PC ways...

All useless stuff if you ask me, I watched the review about arm laptops from LTT, with the so called integrated ai stuff, it's a useless and just marketing feature.

Autopilot is not 'Copilot' the AI thing. Autopilot is a cloud-based management system - your Windows machine talks to the Microsoft cloud, gets the corporate settings/restrictions/etc from the cloud, if you wipe the drive, reinstall the OS, the instant it talks to the cloud, it gets its corporate settings again, etc. Basically, smartphone-style MDM for PC.