It feels like we are moving towards ARM becoming the primary consumer CPU, and x86/x64 being used to power only niche use cases (dev, audio/video, gaming etc.) or servers only. Can anyone working in the space confirm/deny?
Define "nowhere close"? Apple's cpu's are competitive with x86 when looking at low power applications. Microsoft has multiple examples of windows running on arm. This seems pretty close in the grand scheme of things.
The number of computers in use in 10 years will be a lot larger. According to the below link between 2002 and 2014 computer numbers doubled to 2 billion. So if things continued in even vaguely similar form ARM would have to sell about as many machines as are currently used.
But there are an awful lot of people who will take a low power, cool machine. Even if slower I’d like some.
Well they said “consumer CPU”, not “PC CPU”. So the question is, do most consumers do their computing on PC CPUs or ARM CPUs? Which then raises the question, what does “computing” mean...
Laptops outsell desktops by something like a 2:1 ratio. If you restrict your analysis to just consumer devices and exclude office PCs purchased in bulk by businesses, that ratio is even more skewed toward laptops. Desktops are a niche, and x86 could be relegated to niche status for consumer computing simply by ARM making significant inroads to the laptop market without having any uptake in the desktop market. (It's already the case that consumers tend to own more ARM-powered devices than x86-powered devices.)
Sounds a bit like Google trying to sell Stadia: "Nobody needs processing power close-by, let's compute everything in the cloud and access it with thin-clients!"
Which sounds workable in theory, but is unworkable for many people due to limited Internet access speeds/volume.
And the real disadvantage then becomes obvious when the "super powerful cloud" only renders the game at console visual details levels with in-built control-lag.
Not just limited to gaming: Video-editing is becoming increasingly popular as a hobby and a field of work, which is another use-case for lots of local processing power.
So while in terms of market size desktops might be a niche, that niche still fulfills an important function thus I don't see that going away any time soon.
> Microsoft has multiple examples of windows running on arm
And none of them have been well received or commercially successful. They seem to be more defensive bet hedging against Intel than anything intended to go anywhere.
Just now I googled "Surface Pro x review" and picked the top 4 results which are actual reviews. Out of those only one is negative. This also seems to align with my own experience of users using it.
For the purposes of this conversation, I'll define "nowhere close as follows (and willing to put money on the prediction, if you'd like to negotiate such):
"Primary" means simple majority. >50% ARM market share for consumer PCs as defined below.
"Consumer CPU" refers to non-server application PCs. Workstations, desktops, laptops, and DIY. Personal and professional use (including enterprise purchases, so the full fleet of corporate laptops at any company are included). Some current examples would include things such as the Talos POWER workstations and ARM workstations.
For "PC", the definition gets a little rough, and I'd be willing to negotiate this. I'd say anything where the primary interaction mode is mouse and keyboard. With this definition I would exclude most tablets, but something such as the Microsoft Surface would be included. The test that includes the Surface and excludes most other tablets is that the Surface is sold with a keyboard and trackpad. If the keyboard and trackpad is not included or required, then it's not a PC. This rule would also exclude something like a NAS, where the hardware is basically that of a tower desktop, but the use is headless; this would be a server. Like I said, this can get a bit loose. Happy to negotiate a firmer definition.
As for "nowhere close", I'd say that we won't see ARM as the primary consumer CPU for the next decade easily. I'd be willing to bet $1,000 US on this.
If you wanted different timelines, I'd put $5,000 on 5 years, and $500 on 15 years.
Apple's market share won't push ARM past 50%. Enterprises move slowly and make up a lot of the PC market. If you assume a 3-year hardware replacement cycle, then ARM would have to come to dominance at least 3 years before the end of a betting period for it to have a chance of meeting the end of the betting period. Thus, for the 5 year timeline, ARM would have to be dominant by 2022. For the 10-year, by 2027.
Separately, in writing this response, I realize that you could easily make the argument that a "consumer CPU" includes cell phones and tablets. This is a very different conversation.
> "Consumer CPU" refers to non-server application PCs. Workstations, desktops, laptops, and DIY. Personal and professional use (including enterprise purchases, so the full fleet of corporate laptops at any company are included).
This is a totally arbitrary distinction. We can’t just ignore the fact that consumers are doing the bulk of their computing on smartphones nowadays.
> We can’t just ignore the fact that consumers are doing the bulk of their computing on smartphones nowadays.
> > Separately, in writing this response, I realize that you could easily make the argument that a "consumer CPU" includes cell phones and tablets. This is a very different conversation.
I think you can see that I didn't ignore this fact in my post.
I made a definition (as requested) to clarify my position and based on my interpretation of the original post in this thread. Based on this interpretation, it seemed like that poster was referring broadly to PCs. The definition was for the purposes of a prediction.
In defense of my interpretation, I would consider it unreasonable to assume that the OP meant to include smart phones in their consideration of "primary consumer CPU", due precisely to the fact that you and I have both mentioned, that many individuals use a smart phone for the bulk or even all of their computing.
Aren't we? How many people's primary computing devices are ARM-based devices at this point? I know plenty of people who rarely touch a laptop, yet alone a desktop. Expansion of the computing market is mostly happening in developing markets through predominantly ARM-based devices too.
> How many people's primary computing devices are ARM-based devices at this point?
At home, it's a high percentage and has been for many years.
In office environments at work, it's still near zero (emphasis on primary). A couple hundred million people across middile and upper development nations use desktops and laptops every day at work. They're not going to switch to ARM systems anytime soon for that work. Good desktop processors are a few hundred dollars; ARM has no great angle there (including on pricing). For businesses the cost of a decent Intel or AMD processor is a modest share of the overall system they're buying for the employee to work with.
In developing nations with primitive economies, certainly smartphones are much more common for primary work purposes. And that's a case where ARM pricing does bring a huge advantage that Intel and AMD struggle to compete with. Cost obviously matters in personal businesses where your income is $50-$200 per month. Numerically this category wins, primarily due to the intense poverty of three billion people in India, Africa and China. This market alignment based on incomes probably won't change much in the coming decade, as ARM's ability to push into higher value office work environments as a primary will be very limited.
My Raspberry Pi 4 could be an entirely usable desktop replacement for casual usage if the GPU was a bit better.
My gf already uses her Samsung S8 as primary "computer". Only for a few things does she reach for her laptop, and that's mostly due to the screen and webpages not being mobile friendly.
That's hard to say. The timelines are too long. I don't think we'll see ARM primacy in PCs within the decade. If you read my reply to a sibling post of yours about what I mean by "nowhere close", you can see some of my thinking on the matter.
Isn’t the open rumor that Apple is gonna start switching over their Mac line next year? Apple switching from Intel to Arm across the board would drastically change the situation practically overnight.
Well, if you consider phones, sure. But for people who still need desktop/laptop computers for gaming, programming, video editing, photo editing, and heavy business use (spreadsheets, desktop publishing, etc), then Intel is still, by far, in the lead.
There are ARM Windows laptops. I don't think that they are successful. So I don't really see ARM becoming the primary consumer CPU for computers. It might change in the upcoming years, when Apple will release ARM computers.
