[ad-astra]

Is there any solid argument for the value of x86 in desktop computing? My watch, phone, laptop, and Mac Pro are all running ARM/RISC and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

I have a Ryzen workspace that I pull out to play Doom Eternal every now and then, but is there any significant value proposition besides compatibility?

Performance is often stated as an advantage of x86, but performance per what? Per Watt? Hour? Dollar? Chip size?

[linguae]

One of the things I appreciate about x86 isn’t the instruction set itself, but the relatively open PC platform that developed around it. I like being able to purchase processors, motherboards, RAM, and other components off the shelf, and I also like the relative openness of PCs. ARM’s ecosystem is rather fragmented, and there are many proprietary, un(der)documented systems. While I don’t mind letting go of the x86-64 instruction set, I would be saddened if our future choices for personal computers are less open. I wouldn’t mind using a powerful ARM or RISC-V workstation that is open.

[rbanffy]

There are some ARM and RISC-V boards that boot with an UEFI environment.

This is one: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/motherboards/worl...

[orionblastar]

I too like to build my PC and swap out the CPU for something faster in the X86-X64 area.

If Intel goes ARM, I might go Raspberry Pi.

[ad-astra]

Agreed

[sliken]

PCs are all about customization/flexibility, control, performance, and value (perf/$).

On your watch, phone, or Mac desktop you generally have no choice on OS, not much control on ram, storage, GPU performance, etc. You can't have ECC, you can't expand the ram, can't have 4x M.2 drives, and often can't repair them. Sure you can max out a M2 ultra's ram, but it's going to be pricey.

Do you want Linux (Asahi is trying, but is currently only supporting M1/M2)? Freebsd? ECC memory? 5 disks of spinning rust for ZFS? How about a 96GB ram desktop, fast GPU with 16GB, and 12 fast cores (zen 5) for $1500?

So far ARMs for desktops are either crazy expensive, very limited (Apple), or slow (Qualcomm SXE). If you want to move up to workstation/server class the AMD Siena, Genoa, and Turin are pretty compelling compared to their ARM competitors. Say you need a ton of ram or high memory bandwidth for $750 you can get the Epyc 9115 for $750, motherboards are similar, and you can have 12 64 bit wide DDR5 dimms (actually 24 32 bit wide memory channels) for whatever your memory intensive needs are.

I'm all for ARM, have wanted to buy a Mac studio, but just couldn't justify it compared to a desktop PC that had better support for Linux, better support for numerous LLM stacks, more flexibility, and should be relatively easy to repair and keep running for a decade or so, like my last desktop.

[Brian_K_White]

That all sounds like effects caused by various companies policies, not things caused by the ISA. IE it's Intel and AMD selling well documented general purpose parts to anyone vs Arm and Qualcomm selling licences and undocumented highly integrated parts to Samsung & Apple, not x86 vs risc.

Probably also IBM for kicking off the pc platform in the first place where anyone could produce compatible parts. If IBM had done that with a 68k instead, it would be 68k instead of x86.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

I strongly agree that in theory these things are unrelated, and there's no hard reason someone couldn't make, say, a bunch of PC models and socketed ARM processors that all used nice standardized interfaces and had the same flexibility as x86... but in practice if you want an open platform today you almost certainly want x86. When some alternative gets its act together I'll be thrilled to use it, but we aren't there today.

[poisonborz]

While I don't think ARM = the Apple way, we see that nowadays no one would create a component ecosystem like there was around x86. This would be the death of personal computing, we would just own appliances.

So we should cherish and extend x86 while we can.

[hulitu]

> Is there any solid argument for the value of x86 in desktop computing?

You do not depend on one vendor (Hello Qualcomm), the arch is a bit more open and standardised than ARM , it is more expandable. ARM seems to optimise for power consumption, X86 for speed. And backward compatibility. Running x86 games (or CAD/CAE) on ARM is "challenging".

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> but is there any significant value proposition besides compatibility

...Oh, is that all? Do you know how many things in computing have died because they didn't worry about compatibility? IMHO x86 could stay competitive even if it had nothing but compatibility to offer, though it also wins in other places.

> Performance is often stated as an advantage of x86, but performance per what? Per Watt? Hour? Dollar? Chip size?

Per machine it usually wins, especially on single-thread but also at least sometimes multi-thread, and if you're actually using it (i.e. not mostly sitting idle) then x86 does very well on perf per watt.

[nitwit005]

If we're ignoring compatibility issues, I suspect the quality of the integrated graphics may matter more to the average desktop user than the CPU architecture.