What is wrong with all those AArch64 desktops?

Re:What is wrong with all those AArch64 desktops? by cesarb on Friday January 10, 2020 @03:34PM (#22015223)

The author's description of what is a "desktop system" sounded a lot like a "no true Scotsman" to me. I've had several desktop systems that didn't meet all of the author's criteria - in fact, I've had desktop systems that met none of these criteria. And these systems did meet what most people would consider to be "desktop systems": box shaped, designed to be put over or under the desk, tethered (no built-in battery other than the RTC battery), internally expansible (not all-in-ones or NUCs), with a x86-32 or x86-64 processor, and booting with traditional BIOS and/or UEFI.

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Re:What is wrong with all those AArch64 desktops? by wolrah on Saturday January 11, 2020 @09:17AM (#22019963)

I disagree, the author's description matches the majority of x86 motherboards in production, and if you were to wander in to a random computer store and ask for a standard desktop PC you'd be led to an array of machines that met all of those requirements. If it's not "small form factor" it almost certainly checks all the boxes.

I agree with the author, what AArch64 (or any alternative architecture) really needs to be taken seriously for more than "toy" or "appliance" type use cases is a real desktop board that an interested party could swap in place of the motherboard of one of their old PCs without having to invest in a pile of adapters.

To me, that means the following:

* Standard ATX or MicroATX formfactor * Standard ATX power input * At least two standard DIMM or SODIMM slots, preferably four * At least 32 lanes of PCIe 3.0 or greater, exposed as at least one x16 and one x4 slot plus one x4 M.2, leaving eight lanes for onboard accessories or more slots as desired * At least two SATA channels, preferably four * At least one copper gigabit ethernet interface * At least six USB 3.0 ports, preferably more and faster. * Onboard audio sufficient for watching Youtube or participating in a VoIP/videoconference call.

Since I'm pretty sure that providing video from power on rather than after the OS loads requires support in the video card itself, onboard video of some sort is probably also a requirement for now as well. Specifics don't matter, but it should be able to handle an accelerated desktop and video decoding.

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Re:What is wrong with all those AArch64 desktops? by timthorn on Saturday January 11, 2020 @04:05PM (#22022290)

So something like this? https://e.huawei.com/en/products/servers/kunpeng/kunpeng-des...

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Re:What is wrong with all those AArch64 desktops? by wolrah on Thursday January 16, 2020 @10:46AM (#22065549)

Yes, that does seem to be pretty much exactly what I'd want out of an ARM desktop platform. It would be nice if they'd offer more cores in the desktop variant of the board, and anything that has a "contact us for pricing" link annoys the crap out of me, but it does meet the specs.

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Re:What is wrong with all those AArch64 desktops? by wyldfire on Friday January 10, 2020 @06:01PM (#22016561)

That just means that he used a poor term or didn't qualify it. Ultimately those features are the desired ones. So that's what they are looking for, regardless of what it's called.

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Re:What is wrong with all those AArch64 desktops? by hootbootscoot on Friday January 10, 2020 @05:31PM (#22016329)

indeed.

onboard audio is questionable in quality typically anyway, being some strange monstrosity (ac97 lol... intel-hd-anything)

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