or will it stay x86 forever? ig if they switch to arm they could just not make a bios?
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RISC-V is also coming up.
Great question btw
What do you mean “make a bios”? A BIOS initialises hardware - whether its x86 x64 or ARM is irrelevant. The machine would need a bios to boot
To be fair the firmware situation ain’t great on arm. The second thing your computer does after it turns on is hands off from firmware to the OS and that process ain’t exactly great or super standardized on any ARM system.
Yes, Mac’s are ARM based with their M chips.
Most single board computers like Raspberry Pi are ARM based.
The 3 big cloud providers all offer ARM based platforms.With valve implementing an arm emulator, it feels to me like that’s going to really tip the scales going forward.
Valve is doing so much good work lately
Well Microsoft has been working on am ARM version of Windows for at least 10 years that I know of, probably longer.
But every time ARM seems so much better than x86, x86 improves to close the gap.
Power consumption has always been a big driver - laptops today now run all day on battery, or at least half a day, which competes with the ARM battery life advantage.
A keep difference is arm machines will get a full days worth of battery life and perform well. X86 machines only can get a day’s battery life.
X86 CPUs must race to idle to get decent battery life. If they don’t idle they’re guzzling power. Arm CPUs seem to handle the light but constantly active loads much better. My m1 MacBook gets me 10-15 hours of battery life no problem. My ThinkPad gets idk like 4 at best. Even factoring in the battery capacity difference they’re nowhere close.
My Thinkpad (4 years old) runs all day, no problem. I’ve often been shocked to look at the battery in the afternoon and see it’s at 30%.
Really depends.
ARM is still better on battery life but the difference isn’t as great as it was - and that’s enough to not trade the performance and flexibility for better battery life.
X86 doesn’t need the same battery life as ARM, just not the awful life it used to have. And that’s where we are. The difference in battery life from 10 years ago is staggering. Used to be 2-3 hours run time, now I get 6-8.
