Going by Apple’s transition from Intel to ARM, an ARM-based Steam Deck would be a no-brainer. They could make it a lot less bulky, ditch the cooling fans and still bump up performance.
Since they seem so interested in Linux, open source, and boosting currently niche technologies to mainstream, maybe they should make the Steam Deck RISC-V?
I like the sound of this for a device, but couldn’t it be more for these new ARM laptops?
Whether we like it or not, the low-power-draw of ARM mean it’s probably the future of personal computing, very likely to supplant X64 systems in all but the server space. If ARM continues on this path of growth to create even faster, more agile processors, it could also eventually take over the server space well.
Honestly, it’s time for a shakeup to Intel’s dominance and the stagnating status of X86/X64 chips.
EDIT: Come to think of it, in the future an ARM-powered Steamdeck might not need to be as bulky at all for the same output. Ideal for the form-factor.
Once a truly reliable x86 translation layer is figured out Intel’s days are numbered, my mate just got a Surface pro ARM and the PRISM emulator mostly works, but it has all sorts of trouble with anything that hooks deep into Windows like VPNs and Anticheat software. The battery literally lasts all day though, sometimes more even with heavy usage which is kind of amazing.
riscv is the future.
ARM64 is already here (Apple have replaced Intel with it, and Windows PC vendors are following suit), it’s just, as William Gibson put it, not evenly distributed. Mainstream high-performance ARM devices are imminent in a way that RISC-V isn’t yet.
There are ARM servers available too.
Hopefully they start supporting ARM64 on platforms that made the switch already too.
Unfortunately I get a feeling that Valve is going to make a proprietary platform out of Linux like Google did with Android and people will be clapping all along the way.
In my opinion this would be a bad move, the steam deck has an iffy enough game library and emulation is notoriously more difficult on architectures they weren’t designed for, considering the steam deck has too emulate %99.999… of its library that would be bad.
