[0x202020]

I would love to see something akin to an M-based Mac as a dev board of sorts, but I’m fairly sure it would never happen. My home server has transitioned over time from various 4u rack mount options, to a 2u and an M1 Mac Mini, to a Mac Studio with a disk enclosure.

I even tried using a Snapdragon phone dev board for awhile for something more than an RPi

[rbanffy]

It's a bit annoying that (with the exception of Apple) ARM only exists in the low end and in the high-end cloud server space. There is no ARM equivalent to the Core i5 generally available.

[smoldesu]

My (non-professional) opinion is that Intel has invested a lot of money into making really good memory and I/O controllers. We need someone to do that in the ARM space as well, which is a really hard-sell. There are no manufacturers out there that want to pay the ARM licensing fee, period. Apple can eat the costs because they sell direct-to-consumer and like to control as much of their stack as possible. Other companies are probably groaning at the thought of fixing all of ARM's problems just so they can be treated as a second-class platform relative to Apple Silicon. Besides Nvidia or Qualcomm, I don't really think there are many companies poised to deliver this, much less an incentive to provide anything.

RISC-V on the other hand, seems like it could be ripe for rapid iteration. We're obviously still in the super-early days of the ISA, but the lack of oppressive licensing has already been a boon for the dozens of hobbyist boards we've seen released in the past few years. As long as Apple doesn't try to EEE the ISA like they're trying to do with ARM, I think the future is pretty bright for open architectures.

[my123]

I'd say that there's one: Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3.

(See the ThinkPad X13s)

[jeffbee]

The 8cx Gen 3 is better than Qualcomm's other stuff but it's still generations behind a current Core i5. They're about 20% slower than a last-gen Core i5.

[rbanffy]

Can one install other OS on that Thinkpad or is it doomed to run Windows forever?

[my123]

Linux support for the X13s is a work in progress. Booting and Wi-Fi connectivity work since a few months now for example.

[rbanffy]

This is great news. It's a good EUR 500 cheaper than a similarly outfitted M1 Macbook (although the performance is closer to Celeron than to M1)