Is ARM Ever Coming To the Desktop? 332
First time accepted submitter bingbangboom writes "Where are the ARM powered desktops? I finally see some desktop models however they are relegated to "developer" models with USD200+ price tags (trimslice, etc). Raspberry Pi seems to be the only thing that will be priced correctly, have the right amount of features, and may actually be released. Is the software side holding ARM desktops back? Everyone seems to be foaming at the mouth about anything with a touch interface, even on the Linux side. Or are manufacturers not wanting to bring the 'netbook effect' to their desktop sales? Are ARM powered desktops destined to join the mythical smartbook?"
Look on eBay (Score:5, Informative)
Look on eBay for an Archimedes.
They're rapidly becoming a collector's item, but they were on the desktop in 1987.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
... it's maybe the ONE thing I agree with Steve Jobs about -- touch does NOT work as a viable input method for a desktop.
He may have said that at some point, but you should know by now that Apple changes the kool-aid they serve every so often. He's even spoken at length about merging iOS concepts into the desktop OSX.
I've copied some text straight from the apple web site for the "Magic Trackpad" that make touch sound like you're no longer cool without it:
"The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer."
"And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen."
"Magic Trackpad gives you a whole new way to control what’s on your Mac desktop computer. When you perform gestures, you actually interact with what’s on your screen. You feel closer to your content, and moving around feels completely natural."
What's the problem with the TrimSlice? (Score:5, Informative)
Developer only? What is that non-sense? The TrimSlice ships with Ubuntu ready to use. ~$200 for the feature set is a steal, IMO. Not happy without a Dell logo or something? What's the problem with the TrimSlice?
Search a little more, like the Efika (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika [genesi-usa.com]
Smarttop $129 thin client
Smartbook $199 laptop
They run Ubuntu and are based on the Freescale iMX51.
They are far more powerful than a Raspberry PI.
Freescale i.MX515 (ARM Cortex-A8 800MHz)
3D Graphics Processing Unit
WXGA display support (HDMI)
Multi-format HD video decoder and D1 video encoder (currently not supported by the included software)
512MB RAM
8GB Internal SSD
10/100Mbit/s Ethernet
802.11 b/g/n WiFi
SDHC card reader
2 x USB 2.0 ports
Audio jack for headset
Built-in speaker
10.1" TFT-LCD, 16:9 with LED backlight, 1024 x 600 resolution
Freescale i.MX515 (ARM Cortex-A8 800MHz)
3D Graphics Processing Unit
Multi-format High-Definition hardware video decoder
16GB Nand Flash
External MMC / SD card slot (up to SD v2.0 and MMC v4.2)
Internal MicroSD slot
802.11 b/g/n WiFi (with on/off switch)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
2 x USB 2.0 ports
Phone jack for headset
Built-in 1.3MP video camera
Built-in microphone
Built-in stereo speaker
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
A few dollars a month for a desktop...
A few thousand dollars a month for an office full of desktops?
The average office worker doesn't do a lot with their computer, and has been doing much the same thing for years... The only thing stopping them from using 10 year old hardware is modern bloated software which is intentionally incompatible with older versions.
There's no reason that the average user's needs couldn't be fulfilled by a low power machine with equivalent processing power to a system from 10+ years ago, with power hungry x86 systems being relegated to the small niche of power users and certain classes of server.
(in short, watch what x86 did to Sparc/MIPS/Alpha/Power, attacked from below)
Re:Look on eBay (Score:4, Informative)
The OS itself is still around today [riscosopen.org], after a fashion. But time has not been kind.
IMV, a fast boot cannot compensate for a spectacular lack of features you'd expect to find in a modern OS. It's a single user OS with co-operative multi-tasking rather than pre-emptive, there's no protected memory or swap support, it's single-user.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
There's no reason a Cortex A7 dual core @ 800MHz wouldn't be able to handle both of the tasks you listed with ease. It could even handle basic gaming if you have a discreet video card to handle the load. Most people don't do the kind of number crunching that a modern high end desktop CPU would allow.
The gamer crowd, absolutely. I can fully understand why they would want a high end processor. Even games that aren't that graphics intensive, like Civilization, are very heavy on number crunching. The office crowd, however, could easily be serviced by a low end low power ARM CPU. I could easily replace my desktop with an ARM-powered nettop without adjusting my computing habits at all, and I'm already running a multi-head setup.
Re:The OP is talking about red apples, not greenap (Score:5, Informative)
Smudging the screen isn't the problem. The problem is holding your arm up for long periods of time, or the repetitive motion of raising your arm up to touch the screen. That's not something most deskjockeys are going to be doing a lot. It's horrible for ergonomics.
A standalone touch pad doesn't have that problem.
Most phones are held in the hands with lowered arms, hence it's not a problem for those devices.
Hell, laptops were being sold with touch pads as the primary pointing interface. Not much different from a desktop, really.
I don't think any particular feature of touch pads was the perceived problem. But then, you seem prejudiced against Jobs, so my reply is likely pointless.
cost and integration, not just power (Score:5, Informative)
ARM licenses IP. Intel sells chips.
If you license a core from ARM you can put it down on a chip, then put down your other logic (north/south bridge, interface logic like USB) on the same chip. Then you can end up with your entire system on a chip.
With Intel you have to buy a CPU, buy a north/southbridge. If you want custom interfaces beyond that, that's more chips too.
So the net effect is that the Intel-based system uses more chips and that means it costs more, uses more power and is larger. Using more power means you need to put in a larger power supply, that costs more. If it's battery-powered, that means it needs a larger battery, that costs more. Larger in and of itself makes something more expensive to make as it requires more materials. And then it being larger means it costs more to ship from where it is made to the customer. And then finally every increase in costs also means more increase in on-the-shelf price because you not only have to cover the higher costs, but the OEM and retail margins on the costs.
The next effect is that ARM devices will be cheaper to buy and to run. And in the case of portable devices, more sleek too.
This may not matter to some customers but to other customers lower costs means a lot.
Performance is an issue. We have ARMs already in the pipe (dual-core ARM A15) which have sufficient power for most uses and ARM will certainly have even faster cores later.
I see a strong future for ARM in laptops and in home computers. No, not in tower computers but those make up a shrinking part of the market already.
Finally, as others have said, be careful about agreeing with Steve Jobs. He's a consummate liar. Just because he says he doesn't like touch for the desktop doesn't necessarily mean much. It means Apple doesn't deliver touch on the desktop today, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything more. Apple could flip on this at any time like on the video iPod.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Informative)
Lol...
You probably missed the Windows 8 presentation.
Not only does Windows 8 and the upcomming Office run on ARM, there is already a production ready ARM laptop that's going to be sold.
Image larger than iPad battery life and weeks of standby, a full HD resolution, accelerated x264 full HD video playback. Internet Explorer 10 full acceleration and DX11.
No fans. No noice. No overheating on your lap. Dirt cheap. Light. Fast for desktop use.
The ultimate family laptop, for every family member.
ARM was developed as a desktop CPU (Score:5, Informative)
ARM was originally developed as a desktop CPU, and it was on the desktop - it's been and gone.
ARM stood originally for Acorn Risc Machine, it was developed by Acorn because they couldn't find an adequate processor for what they wanted to do to follow on from the 6502. Many of the CISC chips at the time (mid 1980s) had very poor utilization of memory bandwidth and poor interrupt response (Steve Furber in one of his talks recently on the development of the ARM - he's one of the two people who developed the first ARM CPU, pointed out in particular the National Semi 32016 (IIRC) that they were thinking of using, until they found out the multiply instruction took over 100 clock cycles and could not be interrupted).
They also wanted ARM to be low power, not to make their new line of desktop computers energy efficient particularly, but because they needed it to be cheap so the computers could be affordable. If they could get it under 1 watt, they could use plastic packaging instead of ceramic packaging which reduces the cost by an order of magnitude. They had no tools for estimating power, so they just designed *everything* on the chip for low power. When they got the first samples back from the fab, they were blown away when they found the chip consumed 0.1 watts - they had massively overachieved.
We had the Acorn Archimedes in school. IIRC, it had an 8MHz ARM and it could emulate - in software - an IBM PC with VGA graphics faster than the original IBM PC ran. That's how much faster the ARM was at the time compared to anything else around. Without needing to be in a ceramic package.