I ️love ARM

A 20i Platform Developer gives his personal opinion on his latest hardware purchase and the future of ARM.

We’re all shopping a little bit more online during lockdown.

I’ve recently replaced my trusty old Google/Samsung Chromebook Pixel 2. After well over 5 years of use, my old faithful finally died.

I was sad to see it go – but I’m not too sentimental about machines. So I replaced it with a much cheaper model, and I hate it.

The device is actually perfect for the Chromebook part of its replacement – indeed I am using it right now (Google Docs, obvs). But it’s the hardware that’s letting it down. The Pixel 2 was a developer device, and as such it was easy to boot from the USB and whatnot.

But before this post becomes a Chromebook-off: it’s not. It’s more that my new device’s developer failings got me searching the internet for something new to play with, and I came across this: PINE64 .

Open source hardware

Simply put, it’s an open source hardware/software combination of various flavours of Linux, SBCs (single board computers) and other smaller bits of hardware (eg, cameras).

They can be assembled together for whatever purpose you have – much like the Raspberry Pi. Their focus is the ARM64 architecture .

After reading reviews – https://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/linux/pine64-pro-laptop-review/ being the clincher – I decided to buy myself that laptop (it’s on its way, UK edition).

After playing around a little bit with qemu-system-aarch64 ( ARM64 in qemu ), I’m now just patiently waiting for my laptop to come.

Cupertino bombshell

And then all of a sudden I am reminded of my purchase again! Only a couple of weeks after finding PINE64, Apple announces it is going to ditch Intel for ARM (more precisely, Apple Silicon – licenced ARM). Just like it did PowerPC for Intel back in 2005.

Now this is where I got excited.

I’m not an Apple fanboy (they produce very nice hardware and software, and it’s UNIX under the hood, what’s not to like?), but I like a more open source world (ChromeOS and Linux at home). But when a company the size of Apple decides to drop Intel for ARM, you know they’ve done the math, and it makes sense.

Intel’s x86 architecture is old (well, they both are: 1968 vs 1978) but because x86 never got subject to the low power, high efficiency life that ARM did (plus other bloat ), x86 got ‘fat’ and ARM got lean. :muscle:

So why am I so excited?

I think Apple moving towards entirely ARM compatible Macs and Macbooks will drive the ARM SBC market forward for developers (it’s difficult to develop on architecture X for architecture Y).

Hopefully that will be in a way that will lead to there being releases/hybrids/OS projects of Apple’s collections of OSes finding themselves running on boards like the RockPro64 (inside the Pinebook Pro).

Demand for these boards will go up, prices will come down (even more), components will become cheaper, and the whole ARM ecosystem benefits from having a giant player suddenly on board.

And if you’re a Linux guy (like most people here at 20i), we’re very, very well catered-for when it comes to ARM64 Desktop OSes: Debian and Fedora both have lovely graphical desktops.

Also, don’t forget the world’s fastest computer – is ARM.

Servers next?

And that brings us on to servers. We love our current server setup that makes use of x86 Intel processors – they allow us to provide the lightning-fast web hosting we’re known for.

But I’m looking forward to more competition in the market. Who knows what the future brings for ARM?

I can’t wait.