First we got this:
Then this:
https://www.androidauthority.com/nvidia-amd-windows-arm-chips-3378766/
Then this:
Let’s not hide it: Intel, AMD and nVidia are the PC gaming industry as we know it. Qualcomm surpassing the Xbox X series and the three (Intel/AMD/nVidia) pushing, or be pushed, towards RISC PC may change few things. But ARM RISC PC also mean lot of more competition like Samsung working on CPU using 5nm processes… this come at costs of the historical traditional PC’s software database.
Makes you think, I guess.
Modern games are generally written at such a high level these days that architecture barely matters. Java never delivered on its “write once, run everywhere” promise, and nothing else has either, so the main limiting factor is the lack of some unified ARM OS for gaming … which is maybe a great place for Linux to step in?
Anyway, all this is doing right now is put money in ARM’s pockets, so that’s not great. Sadly, an open RISC platform like RISC-V will take a while to reach the maturity that ARM has.
put money in ARM’s pockets, so that’s not great
What is wrong with ARM?
The general problem is the proprietary architecture and overall rent-seeking behavior. As a side effect of this, they’re working against the wider ARM PC market, e.g.:
It’s so bad that they act like a cartel whenever they think they can get away with it, in seemingly bizarre ways:
In the RISC space they are, currently, almost de facto monopolistic (we’ll how RISC-V will go, hopefully). X86 is fought between AMD and Intel, this gives us a leeway on how much scummy either of the two are. ARM is very competitive because they chased many industries so far, the last one is x86: if Intel and AMD go for ARM’s RISC, they will basically subdue themselves under ARM.
It’s not about ARM being a good or bad company, the issue is when a company become monopolistic they are basically forced into change their founding ground.
Valve is an example of a company that tries to avoid monopolies (even self one) as much as possible.
I’d argue that any monopoly is inherently bad.
Note that there’s a bunch of proprietary middleware in use by games that will likely never see support on platforms other than x86_64-windows. The high-level nature of individual components doesn’t mean much when some parts are just inherently unportable.
While you have a good point about the proprietary middleware, that would be far from inherently unportable - just not yet ported, likely due to low profitability. Something truly unportable would rely on specific hardware quirks, like - and I’m very sorry I can’t find the original source - one old instance of some game that relied on the timing of a spinning drumhead in order to select the correct data or instruction after the completion of one prior; and even then, a port could be made with sufficient understanding of the original system.
Oh the individual components could absolutely be ported but they won’t.
Let’s also remember that Apple computers have ARM chips already, and RISC-V might be competitive before long.
It would be nice to have some choice in architecture without having to give up games.
risc-v maybe sometime in the future but nah man, nah… x86 ftw.
