Reliability is a corner stone of servers, and standards are more reliable than something which is nonstandard. If the server market is going to migrate towards ARM, it will necessarily have to happen after consumer computers have already switched over to ARM.
And why is that? Servers needed to be backed by a reputable OEM, but the notion that intel (or amd) chips would be more reliable than arm is just nonsense and isnt going deter any customer with a clue. The big customers dont even mind mind buying VIA servers from Dell if it lowers their powerconsumption:
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-b...no-based-server-for-hyperscale-customers.aspx
If you mean reliable in terms of RAS features, then yeah, those are lacking on ARM atm, but thats obviously a result of their current target market and Marvell and others are already fixing that. Besides, Atom is really a player in the server market (Im sure youve seen boxes such as this one
http://www.seamicro.com/ ) and it doesnt even have ECC.
There will need to be a lot of momentum behind both software and developers, and face it, not a whole lot of people are coming out of grad school specializing in performance orientated ARM based computers.
First of all, almost no one develops in machine code anymore, so hardly any application developer is (or should be) really a specialist in either x86 or ARM or Power or whatever. Some knowledge obviously helps if you are doing really performance sensitive stuff, but by and large, its the compiler (or JVM) doing it for you.
Secondly, its been a while, but Ill tell you if I where still an ICT student now, Id very much make sure I learned ARM, linux/android, opengl. Thats where the money is right now. If you are a competent developer for mobile platforms, you get a job (though you probably wont take it, but write your own apps for the appstore and android market). If you are yet another microsoft certified MCAD, good luck.
As hard as it is to get servers to migrate to new things, it is even harder to get consumers to make big changes. Microsoft office, microsoft operating systems, adobe and microsoft video editing and photo editing tools, popular web browsers, remote desktop clients, GUIs, gaming APIs, literally every major piece of consumer and enterprise software has grown and developed around intel based computers. It takes more then a wave of a magic wand to get them to work with ARM processors, and it takes at least some incentive on the part of the developers to get them to even try.
Pretty much all of the above (if you remove brand names) is readily available for ARM. Have you tried ubuntu, it literally ships with all of the above, and the arm port makes available 95% of its vast repositories. Thats the beauty of opensource. It took canonical a week (and a rack full of machines) to recompile the repo's for ARM.
As for incentive for software developpers. Seriously. 120 million iOS devices sold to date, 300k applications, 7+ billion downloads. This is the healthiest software eco system out there. And Android is catching up with that rapidly. ChromeOS is to be launched still, as is meego and the others.
Most of those apps are obviously geared towards mobile phones, and increasingly, tablets, but thats more than a healthy base to jump towards netbooks and desktops. Especially if more desktop specific apps like videoediting, office suites etc are only a recompile away (if that).
The first ARM smartbooks will probably use linux or some smart phone OS, which will help them sell as novelties like the ipad, but will do very little at all to displace desktop and laptop sales.
Actually no, its not helping at all. Look at the toshiba ac100. Its a nice machine and Id love to have one, if only I didnt have to use android 2.1 on it. Thats simply not a suitable OS for it (yet). Its a great mobile phone OS, its an okay but still troublesome tablet OS, but at this point its still utterly rubbish as a notebook/pc OS.
But those are growing pains. OEMs are just short sighted here, they see android selling by the gazillions on phones and therefore use that, rather than a more sensible OS which they dont see sell that well in any market. If and when ubuntu matures on the ac100, Ill buy one in a heartbeat.
All it takes is one OEM to see the light and pick an OS and application stack that makes sense for such machine. Today that would be ubuntu IMO, tomorrow that might be android, meego, chromeos or whatever. Maybe even windows. There will be plenty of viable options.
Touch screen devices are great and trendy, but the peripherals associated with intel based computers will always be more practical for every day tasks.
Always is a very long time. Dont believe it.
I can't imagine a scenario that would change that or cause any shift in that kind of thinking.
But its already happening. In one or two years, the devices most often used to access the internet will be.. mobile phones. Those are the machines covering our basic computing needs. The cloud is handling our processing needs. Thats already happening (checked out Otoy or OnLive for instance?) Only the ergonomics suck, you need a bigger screen, and you have a tablet. And perhaps a keyboard, and you have smartbook or nettop.
I think if anything, people have shown time and time again how reluctant they are to completely abandon windows based computers. At many times in recent history windows has been an inferior operating system, or been coupled with inferior hardware, to other computers on the market. It all revolves around the circular logic "We use it because we like it, we like it because we use it".
Then explain to me why nearly no one is using windows mobile (anymore, it used to have like 30% of the smartphone market).
Given time and a lack of competition, ARM could probably start to make major headway. The problem is that intel is eyeing the same market, and when moorestown based phones and tables are able to run a windows operating system it will be game over for ARM penetration.
You really believe that? Honestly? First of all, moorestown doesnt even run windows (NT kernel, I dont assume you are referring to CE/mobile/phone which is struggeling not to become completely irrelevant), but who would even want to? Secondly, being able and being succesful are two very different things. If intel ever proves successful in the ultra portable space (and I have very serious doubts about that), it will be running the same OSs and same application stacks as ARM.
You mentioned how successful the netbook was being a clear example of "good enough" performance. Netbooks were failing pretty miserably until Asus and others started shipping them with windows operating systems.
No not really. Asus managed to cobble together one of the worst linux distro's ever seen for the initial eeepc, and it wasnt received well. If you have looked at it, that shouldnt surprise you. OEMs need to learn they are no good at OSs. Asus learned that with EeePC, but all of them are repeating that mistake now with slapping buggy crappy interfaces on top of Android. They will learn. Meanwhile Dell and HP and other seem to be doing just fine with ubuntu :
http://www.itproportal.com/2009/2/25/third-dell-inspiron-mini-9-netbooks-comes-ubuntu/
(Even if neither could resist the urge to implement a crappy custom shell on top of ubuntu).
Anyway, even if we assume 2/3 of netbook customers insist on windows for the moment, which I doubt, its probably more ignorance, but even then 1/3 of the market is pretty damn significant when you have zero today (talking about ARM netbooks).
Wintel is a combination of two giants, and in whatever market the two meet each other in, everything else tends to fall by the way side.
The wintel alliance is falling apart. ARM and linux are driving a wedge between them. Intel is sponsoring and pushing meego, its not even supporting windows with its latest mobile chips, while otoh microsoft seems to go and support ARM for its next generation desktop OS.
Intel can not succeed in the mobile space with windows, it had to push and support the alternatives, and microsoft can not afford to ignore the ARM gravvy train and let everyone run linux variants on them. I wrote this in the beginning of the year:
rcf wrote:
What will be Microsoft's reaction to ARM's competition with x86?
Just use Windows CE and be done with it?
Thats the $1M question.
The wintel duopoly is being challenged by ARM + Linux. Intel seems to respond to that by pushing x86 atom + Linux (see Moblin/Meego), I suspect MS is going to respond with a ARM + windows alternative, whether that will only be windows mobile (/phone) 7 or a port of windows 7 remains to be seen. But I cant see them do nothing, they lost the smartphone market not doing anything, I cant imagine they will allow to lose the tablet/netbook market without putting up a fight, because losing that market to android/chromeOS/meego/linux will provide a credible beachhead to arm+linux to attack windows' core markets.
Kind of fun to watch, both parties in the wintel duopoly pushing part of the arm+linux alternative