Simple answer is that there’s still nothing comparable to M architecture. It has the benefit of unified memory and SoC which eliminates the bus. And being RISC, it has small fixed size instructions which can be read in batches, then any instructions that don’t have a dependency within the batch can be executed in parallel. This makes it possible to just add more cores and parallelize against them. You can’t do this with CISC because instructions are all different length, and figuring out the dependencies and what needs to be read into a batch becomes expensive really fast negating the gains of running stuff in parallel.
I know how and why RISC is a better design (I wrote an x86 C compiler before, ugh), but how come there is still no one else making great RISC PCs/Workstations that are relatively affordable and don’t suck? I personally would kill to get a decent RISC PC from a non-BigTech Company that comes with a Manual for Users and Programmers and has all of its chips documented and I can just install/compile any OS I want, or even write my own.
Some chinese companies could easily kill the proprietary tight-lipped bullshit companies that way. And I really hope someone does at some point. I really don’t want to enter a future where we have technically excellent RISC Computers, but they’re all locked down and everything is so proprietary that you can only run Verified™ software on them, and the only online documentation you can find just tells you to not eat the batteries and don’t shove the power plug up your ass, etc.
I’m guessing it’s the Windows desktop monopoly. I’d love a laptop with a chip like M series in it that could run Linux, but the market is just too small for that. Everything except the chip itself is pretty standard and any company could make. But designing and producing the chip itself is still a hard problem. There is some hope though because there is an effort to do this in China right now https://xiangshan.cc/en/
I’d say that Wintel is less true today than ever. Most stuff can be done via just a Web Browser these days.
People just use/put up with Windows because that’s what comes pre-loaded on most PCs that you can buy.
I bet that you could give a RISC-based PC w/ a Linux distro that has a familiar Desktop to the average user and they wouldn’t really have a problem as long as they can just use a Browser and MS Teams/Slack/Discord/whatever they need for work and recreation.
Gaming is a different issue, though last I checked x86 Emulators for RISCs are getting better and better and even Valve seems to support those.
While that’s true, a lot of the enterprise still runs on Windows, and that’s where a lot of money is. Also, while you certainly can live without Windows today, vast majority of non-technical people simply aren’t going to want to change. Unless Windows gets so bad that it starts driving people to find alternatives, it’s going to be very hard to displace.
I’m far more optimistic about this happening in China because there is a national effort to become technologically self sufficient, and that means getting off Windows on a national level. And we already see Huawei designing HarmonyOS along with their own hardware, which isn’t tied to any legacy tech.
Simple answer is that there’s still nothing comparable to M architecture. It has the benefit of unified memory and SoC which eliminates the bus. And being RISC, it has small fixed size instructions which can be read in batches, then any instructions that don’t have a dependency within the batch can be executed in parallel. This makes it possible to just add more cores and parallelize against them. You can’t do this with CISC because instructions are all different length, and figuring out the dependencies and what needs to be read into a batch becomes expensive really fast negating the gains of running stuff in parallel.
I know how and why RISC is a better design (I wrote an x86 C compiler before, ugh), but how come there is still no one else making great RISC PCs/Workstations that are relatively affordable and don’t suck? I personally would kill to get a decent RISC PC from a non-BigTech Company that comes with a Manual for Users and Programmers and has all of its chips documented and I can just install/compile any OS I want, or even write my own.
Some chinese companies could easily kill the proprietary tight-lipped bullshit companies that way. And I really hope someone does at some point. I really don’t want to enter a future where we have technically excellent RISC Computers, but they’re all locked down and everything is so proprietary that you can only run Verified™ software on them, and the only online documentation you can find just tells you to not eat the batteries and don’t shove the power plug up your ass, etc.
I’m guessing it’s the Windows desktop monopoly. I’d love a laptop with a chip like M series in it that could run Linux, but the market is just too small for that. Everything except the chip itself is pretty standard and any company could make. But designing and producing the chip itself is still a hard problem. There is some hope though because there is an effort to do this in China right now https://xiangshan.cc/en/
I’d say that Wintel is less true today than ever. Most stuff can be done via just a Web Browser these days.
People just use/put up with Windows because that’s what comes pre-loaded on most PCs that you can buy.
I bet that you could give a RISC-based PC w/ a Linux distro that has a familiar Desktop to the average user and they wouldn’t really have a problem as long as they can just use a Browser and MS Teams/Slack/Discord/whatever they need for work and recreation.
Gaming is a different issue, though last I checked x86 Emulators for RISCs are getting better and better and even Valve seems to support those.
While that’s true, a lot of the enterprise still runs on Windows, and that’s where a lot of money is. Also, while you certainly can live without Windows today, vast majority of non-technical people simply aren’t going to want to change. Unless Windows gets so bad that it starts driving people to find alternatives, it’s going to be very hard to displace.
I’m far more optimistic about this happening in China because there is a national effort to become technologically self sufficient, and that means getting off Windows on a national level. And we already see Huawei designing HarmonyOS along with their own hardware, which isn’t tied to any legacy tech.