That web page is insane - normally I sympathise with the 'scrolljacking' bemoaners, but that's just so funny (maybe it would annoy me if I was actually shopping), not at all what I expected from the page, or Apple at all.
I run several “windows only” apps on it as well as native Mac apps. Parallels + Windows-for-arm + Microsoft’s x86 emulation isn’t as smooth as Rosetta 2, but it’s still very very usable.
Running Altium[1] as I type, with a reasonably complex PCB in design (8 layers, DDR3, FPGA, HDMI) and it’s indistinguishable from running on a high-end PC. Said PC has been powered down for several months now, I just haven’t felt the need to use it.
Running similar configuration Altium on Macbook Air M1 (16GB). Not smooth, but can get things done. Well, except some keys not working properly (Shift; and having to remap Delete)
Technically a laptop and not a desktop PC, but the strengths of ARM are much more apparent in power and heat constrained mobile settings. As long as ARM hasn't even gained a solid foothold in laptops (outside Apple), what's the point of putting it in a form factor where it will be even less attractive.
Searched for how performant these chips (Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SC8280XP) were and summary is that they're okay: similar to Intel's i5-1130G7, but no match for Apple's M1.[1]
An NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit can be used as a decent desktop PC, with 32 GB 256-bit LPDDR5, 12 Arm Cortex-A78 cores, a 2048 CUDA cores NVIDIA Ampere GPU, 10 Gb/s Ethernet and the other usual peripherals.
However, at $2000, it is very overpriced in comparison with a similar computer made with an Intel or AMD CPU.
In any case, this is far better than anything offered by Qualcomm and it is even better than most Apple offers at some of the features, e.g. the GPU.
For a ten times lower price, i.e. under $200, there are many desktop computers with Rockchip RK 3588 and 16 GB RAM, which have a quadruple Cortex-A76 CPU similar in performance with the Intel Jasper Lake CPUs and many times faster than Raspberry Pi or other computers using obsolete Arm cores.
As a professional, neither a Jasper Lake nor a Cortex-A76 based CPU would be acceptable for the daily work, but any such computer would be good enough for casual use, like Internet browsing, document editing or movie viewing.
Those CPU cores are pretty lame compared to the Apple M1.
It does however have more than a 128 bit wide memory interface, which is very rare. I can only think of the M1 pro (256 bit), m1 max (512 bit), and m1 ultra (1024 bit) that have wider interfaces and targeted at the normal desktop/laptop market.
The holdup has been that Qualcomm and Microsoft had a deal that ARM Windows would only run on Qualcomm hardware. That ended in March, but Microsoft still seems to be holding to it. Evidence: they will still not let me buy a license for ARM Windows for a Mac Studio VM. I am using a “Developer’s Preview” that is identical to x86 Windows 11
So the holdup is that until Qualcomm bought Nuvia, their own designs were not good. The Surface Pro X sucked. The Nuvia-Snapdragons should be the turning point, but also ARM is suing Qualcomm over that so who knows.
I have a Huawei Kunpeng 920 based ARM desktop/workstation running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It has 8 cores running at 2.6GHz. Picked the processor + motherboard combo up online for $300 USD, added a WD SN640 7.68T SSD and 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM, connected to my home network with a Mellanox-4 40G NIC. 7z benchmark shows it has comparable multicore performance with a intel 6770 4 cores processor.
There are 24 cores Kunpeng 920 boards available at roughly the same price. The problem is those boards only have two PCI-E slots rather 3 slots on mine.
Really happy with the one I got, as it gives me an inexpensive platform for building & testing ARM64 software, it also give me the ability to install SSDs/NICs that won't be supported by a Mac.
> why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available. What are the blockers?
Apple has shown what is possible with an ARM-based design, and everyone is now clamoring for M1/M2-level CPUs everywhere.
Somehow everyone forgot that it took Apple 15 or more years to get to M1/M2.
Their first custom CPU, the A4, appeared in 2010, and it takes anywhere from 4 to 6 years to design a new CPU. So it's quite likely Apple started designing their own CPUs... around the time they transitioned from PowerPC to Intel, since before the launch of the very first iPhone.
There. That is the answer to "why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available". You need to spend 15 years or more actually working on one, and the only people who have done it are Apple.
Or perhaps other players don't have the incentive to do it? In addition to the development time and cost, you also need to make customers willing to buy it. For Apple, they have tight control over the ecosystem so they can make the transition really smooth, but for others this may not be that easy. The way I see this is that, customers already using Apple product will not give up using it if the switch is not too painful, while Windows users will not switch to using some new architecture unless there is some significant gain for them.
Our school computer labs had BBC Micros, the predecessor to the Acorn Archimedes and all ARM processors.
It’s funny to think back at how quickly that computer was out of date, we only had it a year or so before getting a Windows 95 PC. At about the same time we came back from a school break and all the BBCs were gone, Windows PCs in their place. Now we are all carrying around an ARM in our pockets.
Being from the Cambridge UK area it’s amazing the heritage Acorn produced. About 10 years ago I worked on a project that was being run by the original lead developer of RISC OS. The connections are everywhere.
It's a game of definitons, but for a proper desktop PC, wouldn't you need a socketable CPU? Mainboard, CPU and probably GPU as separate units doesn't seem to be something the ARM world is aiming at. (Neither does Apple, but they've been blurring the lines between laptops and desktops for a long time)
I’d say the blocker is Windows and the nonstandard SoC nature of the ARM ecosystem.
An OEM can't just take an ARM CPU, stick it omn a board together with a chipset with UFI on it, bundle a Windows CD and call it a day. The ARM ecosystem is full of weird hacks like the raspberry pi being bootstrapped by the GPU.
Add onto that the rumored Microsoft-Qualcomm exclusivity deal and it just makes the barrier to entry insurmountable. For what? You don't even care about battery life.
There are a number of mini-pcs with relatively powerful ARM processors from rockchip, such as the RK3588. These are capable of running desktop linux. Here's a video on one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUx5CQtRARs
What would be the benefit of having an ARM-based desktop computer? Most desktop computers are focused on business environments and PC gamers. Where mobility is not a major factor in the purchase decision. So I don't think it has any good benefits right now.
He's probably referring to other products, but it seems he overlooked the SBC, which come in all forms and sizes and, generally, being low power devices, can't really do much besides hosting some not so demanding apps (looking at containers).
[+] [-] mort96|3 years ago|reply
The rest of the industry seems fine with what AMD and Intel has at the moment, or incapable of making strong ARM-based competitors.
[+] [-] OJFord|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hulitu|3 years ago|reply
... and 2000 $
For this price a Bluray drive and some audio I/O would have been nice.
[+] [-] rvz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spacedcowboy|3 years ago|reply
I run several “windows only” apps on it as well as native Mac apps. Parallels + Windows-for-arm + Microsoft’s x86 emulation isn’t as smooth as Rosetta 2, but it’s still very very usable.
Running Altium[1] as I type, with a reasonably complex PCB in design (8 layers, DDR3, FPGA, HDMI) and it’s indistinguishable from running on a high-end PC. Said PC has been powered down for several months now, I just haven’t felt the need to use it.
[1] https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/
[+] [-] IndrekR|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wongarsu|3 years ago|reply
Technically a laptop and not a desktop PC, but the strengths of ARM are much more apparent in power and heat constrained mobile settings. As long as ARM hasn't even gained a solid foothold in laptops (outside Apple), what's the point of putting it in a form factor where it will be even less attractive.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/th...
[+] [-] rjzzleep|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kreetx|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-8cx-gen-3-intel-...
[+] [-] adrian_b|3 years ago|reply
However, at $2000, it is very overpriced in comparison with a similar computer made with an Intel or AMD CPU.
In any case, this is far better than anything offered by Qualcomm and it is even better than most Apple offers at some of the features, e.g. the GPU.
For a ten times lower price, i.e. under $200, there are many desktop computers with Rockchip RK 3588 and 16 GB RAM, which have a quadruple Cortex-A76 CPU similar in performance with the Intel Jasper Lake CPUs and many times faster than Raspberry Pi or other computers using obsolete Arm cores.
As a professional, neither a Jasper Lake nor a Cortex-A76 based CPU would be acceptable for the daily work, but any such computer would be good enough for casual use, like Internet browsing, document editing or movie viewing.
[+] [-] sliken|3 years ago|reply
It does however have more than a 128 bit wide memory interface, which is very rare. I can only think of the M1 pro (256 bit), m1 max (512 bit), and m1 ultra (1024 bit) that have wider interfaces and targeted at the normal desktop/laptop market.
[+] [-] TradingPlaces|3 years ago|reply
So the holdup is that until Qualcomm bought Nuvia, their own designs were not good. The Surface Pro X sucked. The Nuvia-Snapdragons should be the turning point, but also ARM is suing Qualcomm over that so who knows.
More here on ARM v QCOM: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4541671-getting-chippy-arm-...
[+] [-] rjsw|3 years ago|reply
It contains an ATX motherboard [1] with a StrongARM SA110 CPU, NVIDIA NV1 graphics card, PCI network card, ATA hard disk. Mine runs NetBSD/cats.
[1] http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/boards.html
[+] [-] pabs3|3 years ago|reply
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc.git/...
[+] [-] mritzmann|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _448|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfv6Ah_MVJU
[+] [-] dis-sys|3 years ago|reply
There are 24 cores Kunpeng 920 boards available at roughly the same price. The problem is those boards only have two PCI-E slots rather 3 slots on mine.
Really happy with the one I got, as it gives me an inexpensive platform for building & testing ARM64 software, it also give me the ability to install SSDs/NICs that won't be supported by a Mac.
[+] [-] kijiki|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmitriid|3 years ago|reply
Apple has shown what is possible with an ARM-based design, and everyone is now clamoring for M1/M2-level CPUs everywhere.
Somehow everyone forgot that it took Apple 15 or more years to get to M1/M2.
Their first custom CPU, the A4, appeared in 2010, and it takes anywhere from 4 to 6 years to design a new CPU. So it's quite likely Apple started designing their own CPUs... around the time they transitioned from PowerPC to Intel, since before the launch of the very first iPhone.
There. That is the answer to "why ARM-based complete desktop PCs are not available". You need to spend 15 years or more actually working on one, and the only people who have done it are Apple.
[+] [-] pca006132|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kuinox|3 years ago|reply
I'll repost my own comment in a previous thread:
ARM outside of Macs are not beefy. Excluding apples cpus, x86_64 is ahead in perf/per watt. Remember that until 3 months ago, Apple was one CPU node ahead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#Commercialization
[+] [-] sys_64738|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes
[+] [-] zeristor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samwillis|3 years ago|reply
Our school computer labs had BBC Micros, the predecessor to the Acorn Archimedes and all ARM processors.
It’s funny to think back at how quickly that computer was out of date, we only had it a year or so before getting a Windows 95 PC. At about the same time we came back from a school break and all the BBCs were gone, Windows PCs in their place. Now we are all carrying around an ARM in our pockets.
Being from the Cambridge UK area it’s amazing the heritage Acorn produced. About 10 years ago I worked on a project that was being run by the original lead developer of RISC OS. The connections are everywhere.
[+] [-] zeristor|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_(computer)
[+] [-] Milner08|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] RobotToaster|3 years ago|reply
I always thought, by definition, it had to be intel 8088 compatible to be a PC.
[+] [-] jen20|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinus_hn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdsanchez|3 years ago|reply
The argument that ARM based computers aren’t PC’s because they aren’t like x86 machines is self-fulfilling.
[+] [-] rbanffy|3 years ago|reply
OTOH, it's the only RISC Unix workstation you can easily get.
[+] [-] kalleboo|3 years ago|reply
An OEM can't just take an ARM CPU, stick it omn a board together with a chipset with UFI on it, bundle a Windows CD and call it a day. The ARM ecosystem is full of weird hacks like the raspberry pi being bootstrapped by the GPU.
Add onto that the rumored Microsoft-Qualcomm exclusivity deal and it just makes the barrier to entry insurmountable. For what? You don't even care about battery life.
[+] [-] rbanffy|3 years ago|reply
https://secure.raptorcs.com/
Not as pretty as the Macs, but a 2-socket 44-core, 176-thread deskside that's 100% Windows-proof is still quite impressive.
[+] [-] janef0421|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ppjim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drcongo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GreenBackBoogie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _448|3 years ago|reply
SBC is not a complete PC. I was talking about one which an end user who is not tech-savvy might use.