As neat as this is....I have a few major pain points for ARM that will keep me away from them as a general purpose platform:
- Can I even install my own OS, or am I locked down?
- Can I use mainline linux, or some proprietary vendor kernel that will not be updated at all?
- Can I do a manual install, or is the actual install process going to be some maze of partially installing, figuring out where proprietary vendoor boot images go, and hoping that when I press power that it actually turns on? Or do I just have to resort to some .img file and have no control over encryption or how my partitions look?
Whoever designs the SoC/motherboard incorporating this CPU shall determine the answers to the above 3 questions...
Common reasons for proprietary kernel / vendor blobs are BT/WiFi, GPU, PMU. So, whether the end-users will have access to the source or ability to choose/customise, will depend on whether open or closed variants are chosen for each of these controllers in the final product.
See the recent announcement of Arm SystemReady SR and ES, which is a standard mandating UEFI across the board.
Yes, Secure Boot can be disabled on Windows on Arm systems in the same way as Windows on x86_64 systems.
For Windows on Arm laptops, you cannot quite use upstream kernels at this point w/ full functionality, see https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build. (being rebased continuously).
For other Arm machines, like servers, you can just use regular kernels though.
And over custom partitions and other things, it's just UEFI now, the firmware itself is in a secondary SPI flash or an UFS namespace.
* you might always need to run a script to extract firmware for the GPU/modem and such, which are OEM-signed on Qualcomm Windows/arm64 devices. That firmware is then put to /lib/firmware/.
+ You can install your own OS.
+ Mainline Linux boots, with some caveats.
+ There is an Ubuntu 18.04 patched installer that works as expected, but support for the platforms isn't in the main distro installers yet.
ARM itself only makes the cores and licenses IP, and doesn't even sell physical chips, so you can't really ask it directly, but rather the other companies who will produce SoCs with those cores.
My bet given the direction things have been heading in the computing industry, and ARM platforms in general, is that the answer to all of those questions will be some variant of "no". Even x86 and the PC is heading in that direction. It is unfortunate.
- Are these going into reasonable price/capability machines or just "premium ultra portables".
Look, I know you don't want to create a market perception that ARM = "cheap & slow" but I'm not paying $1500 for something as slow and limited as a Surface Pro X. I'm not even paying $900 for it, though some might.
Very sad that unlocked bootloader's have gone away. Those couple years where it was required to have unlocked bootloaders & alternative Android OS spins were getting popular were so neat.
There is a Server Base Boot Requirements specification that should make installing os'es much more normal, requiring acpi support & uefi, the x86 standards. Alas it has the word "server" in the spec. A pity. We can only hope consumer devices end up with similar user-respecting treatment.
I'm shocked to find that the maiome kernel situation is getting better. Few devices that, like x86, are general purpose computers that will let us install our own os or kernel, but kernel support has been getting much better.
The X1 core is indeed an upcoming larger core. This core is just a variant of the same A78 for upcoming phones with the interface to the rest of the system modified a bit to work better in laptops and servers.
Been using the Pinebook Pro which using an arm chip. The linux experience has been fine for the most part. VScode just finally released an arm port, and I think the only thing that I don't have that'd I want are desktop clients for Discord/Spotify
The writer implies it’s a processor competing with Qualcomm’s 8cx, but the branding and Arm’s slides point to it being a variant of the A78 core. If that’s the case there should be a chart showing exactly how it diverges.
Additionally, the author seems not to know much about the 8cx. Half of its Kryo 495 cores are variants of Arm’s A76 and the other half are A55s. They definitely aren’t all custom big cores as the author claims.
There are already benchmarks showing (sometimes, for certain workloads) mobile phones outperforming x86 laptops.
You can read claims like "Geekbench has the iPhone 7 beating the $6,500 12-core Mac Pro in single-thread" [1] and "new iPad Pros are faster than 92% of all laptops, tablets, and convertible PCs sold in the last year" [2]
Of course, I doubt that generalises to all workloads.
Almost certainly not. For you that might be a deal breaker, but for a lot of users, this isn't.
Especially since Microsoft is now "serious enough" about Windows on ARM, this is more about competing on price for low end machines. Think about all the devices sold that have an i3 or less. I'd bet that this processor is very competitive in terms of speed and power, so how much does it cost the OEM?
[+] [-] kop316|5 years ago|reply
- Can I even install my own OS, or am I locked down?
- Can I use mainline linux, or some proprietary vendor kernel that will not be updated at all?
- Can I do a manual install, or is the actual install process going to be some maze of partially installing, figuring out where proprietary vendoor boot images go, and hoping that when I press power that it actually turns on? Or do I just have to resort to some .img file and have no control over encryption or how my partitions look?
[+] [-] cvs268|5 years ago|reply
Whoever designs the SoC/motherboard incorporating this CPU shall determine the answers to the above 3 questions...
Common reasons for proprietary kernel / vendor blobs are BT/WiFi, GPU, PMU. So, whether the end-users will have access to the source or ability to choose/customise, will depend on whether open or closed variants are chosen for each of these controllers in the final product.
BTW, have you checked-out the Pinebook? https://pine64.com/product/14%e2%80%b3-pinebook-pro-linux-la...
[+] [-] my123|5 years ago|reply
Yes, Secure Boot can be disabled on Windows on Arm systems in the same way as Windows on x86_64 systems.
For Windows on Arm laptops, you cannot quite use upstream kernels at this point w/ full functionality, see https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build. (being rebased continuously).
For other Arm machines, like servers, you can just use regular kernels though.
And over custom partitions and other things, it's just UEFI now, the firmware itself is in a secondary SPI flash or an UFS namespace.
* you might always need to run a script to extract firmware for the GPU/modem and such, which are OEM-signed on Qualcomm Windows/arm64 devices. That firmware is then put to /lib/firmware/.
[+] [-] rhenwood|5 years ago|reply
+ You can install your own OS. + Mainline Linux boots, with some caveats. + There is an Ubuntu 18.04 patched installer that works as expected, but support for the platforms isn't in the main distro installers yet.
[+] [-] userbinator|5 years ago|reply
My bet given the direction things have been heading in the computing industry, and ARM platforms in general, is that the answer to all of those questions will be some variant of "no". Even x86 and the PC is heading in that direction. It is unfortunate.
[+] [-] mastax|5 years ago|reply
Look, I know you don't want to create a market perception that ARM = "cheap & slow" but I'm not paying $1500 for something as slow and limited as a Surface Pro X. I'm not even paying $900 for it, though some might.
[+] [-] rektide|5 years ago|reply
There is a Server Base Boot Requirements specification that should make installing os'es much more normal, requiring acpi support & uefi, the x86 standards. Alas it has the word "server" in the spec. A pity. We can only hope consumer devices end up with similar user-respecting treatment.
I'm shocked to find that the maiome kernel situation is getting better. Few devices that, like x86, are general purpose computers that will let us install our own os or kernel, but kernel support has been getting much better.
[+] [-] rektide|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symmetry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MivLives|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skavi|5 years ago|reply
The writer implies it’s a processor competing with Qualcomm’s 8cx, but the branding and Arm’s slides point to it being a variant of the A78 core. If that’s the case there should be a chart showing exactly how it diverges.
Additionally, the author seems not to know much about the 8cx. Half of its Kryo 495 cores are variants of Arm’s A76 and the other half are A55s. They definitely aren’t all custom big cores as the author claims.
[+] [-] yhersk0vitz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelt|5 years ago|reply
You can read claims like "Geekbench has the iPhone 7 beating the $6,500 12-core Mac Pro in single-thread" [1] and "new iPad Pros are faster than 92% of all laptops, tablets, and convertible PCs sold in the last year" [2]
Of course, I doubt that generalises to all workloads.
[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/14/geekbench-andro... [2] https://www.howtogeek.com/393139/mobile-cpus-are-now-as-fast...
[+] [-] Symmetry|5 years ago|reply
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16214/amd-zen-3-ryzen-deep-di...
That is to say, not great on the single threaded performance but not unusable.
[+] [-] fulafel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OldHand2018|5 years ago|reply
Almost certainly not. For you that might be a deal breaker, but for a lot of users, this isn't.
Especially since Microsoft is now "serious enough" about Windows on ARM, this is more about competing on price for low end machines. Think about all the devices sold that have an i3 or less. I'd bet that this processor is very competitive in terms of speed and power, so how much does it cost the OEM?