I wonder whether, when the faster Steam Deck 2 comes, it may have ditched the x86 architecture altogether and leapt to a high-performance ARM CPU, yielding more power per watt and generating less heat. If so, that would presumably require Proton to be supplemented with a Rosetta-style translation engine that can convert x86 machine code into ARM.
Currently, outside of Apple’s proprietary M/A-series CPUs, there don’t appear to be high-performance ARM CPUs that would fill such a role, though this probably won’t still be the case in a few years.
That Asahi team have done some amazing stuff, especially on the graphics front. They’ve put out a fully conformant OpenGL driver for the M1+2, something even Apple themselves haven’t done for their own hardware.
there already is a project for x86 to ARM translation on Linux called box86, and there’s another one for x86_64 called box64
havent heard about them in a while but I remember seeing a video of someone playing doom 3 on a raspberry pi with it so it seems very promising
Apple fans before their favorite binary translator came out: qemur? Eww… ELBRUS with lintel? Ewwwwww, you suck in past century!
Apple fans after their favorite binary translator came out: We have the Never Seen Before™ technology that was pionered by company we mindlessly praise.
outside of Apple’s proprietary M/A-series CPUs, there don’t appear to be high-performance ARM CPUs that would fill such a role, though this probably won’t still be the case in a few years.
They exists for many years. There are HPC cores in Cortex-A, entire Cortex-X and super HPC Neoverse cores, but they are rarely seen outside of datacenters.
I wonder whether, when the faster Steam Deck 2 comes, it may have ditched the x86 architecture altogether and leapt to a high-performance ARM CPU, yielding more power per watt and generating less heat. If so, that would presumably require Proton to be supplemented with a Rosetta-style translation engine that can convert x86 machine code into ARM.
Currently, outside of Apple’s proprietary M/A-series CPUs, there don’t appear to be high-performance ARM CPUs that would fill such a role, though this probably won’t still be the case in a few years.
A few months ago I remember they hired a contractor for arm development, I think they were a member from the Asahi Linux project
That Asahi team have done some amazing stuff, especially on the graphics front. They’ve put out a fully conformant OpenGL driver for the M1+2, something even Apple themselves haven’t done for their own hardware.
there already is a project for x86 to ARM translation on Linux called box86, and there’s another one for x86_64 called box64 havent heard about them in a while but I remember seeing a video of someone playing doom 3 on a raspberry pi with it so it seems very promising
Apple fans before their favorite binary translator came out: qemur? Eww… ELBRUS with lintel? Ewwwwww, you suck in past century!
Apple fans after their favorite binary translator came out: We have the Never Seen Before™ technology that was pionered by company we mindlessly praise.
They exists for many years. There are HPC cores in Cortex-A, entire Cortex-X and super HPC Neoverse cores, but they are rarely seen outside of datacenters.