Intel seems to have a few financial issues

[Kaine]

What does that Quantum chip even mean ?

Moore's law is dead and we can only shrink the current silicon designs so far. Quantum computing is one of the answers as to where we go next in terms of continuing to scale processing performance. We might be a good few decades away from this being a commercial concern for the average user however, it's also certainly not the first attempt as superseding traditional chip design and I doubt it'll be the last.

https://www.ibm.com/topics/quantum-computing

[Synthman2000]

That much is understood.

I was trying to correlate what it may mean for humanity that a computation that took 5 mins for a quantum machine that would take a very fast traditional computer a "quadrillion times the age of the universe" to calculate.

What are the potential ramifications other than being able to use 2 x Repro-5's in HQ mode both playing chords ?

[Kaine]

What are the potential ramifications other than being able to use 2 x Repro-5's in HQ mode both playing chords ?

Aye. fair enough point. I honestly don't think we know enough yet to be able to give an answer to that right now.

We didn't know what sort of revolution the introduction of the first micro computers would bring however and I'm sure there's going to be breakthroughs enabled by a jump in such processing power. There's certainly workloads out there that can take hours to render or process even now, although I'm talking scientific packages combing through medical data or number crunching for stuff like geological surveys when looking for resources.

I'd expect breakthroughs to come from having a multitude more performance at our fingertips, but from a media creation point of view, it's probably not going to be the segment that benefits so majorly from such extreme gains in performance.

[jamcat]

It will lead to an explosion in pharmaceuticals and other medical treatments that will vastly extend human lifespans. And also sentient AI, which will immediately make all that moot.

[Synthman2000]

I ascribe sentience to biologically evolved life, not dead bits, data and numbers.

[jupiter8]

Question: can a quantum computer calculate anything useful? Like anything at all, say 1+1=2 ?

[VariKusBrainZ]

Wetware, dont forget about organic ‘computers’

[keyman_sam]

Intel procs are heavily used in cloud computing which the world runs off of. So no, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon though AWS and the like are offering more arm based instances nowadays. I’ll give it another 15 years.

[PAK]

Desktop Windows on ARM is just starting to look like it might be viable. The main two issues being lack of drivers and, of course, lack of native software.

I'd say there's a decent chance the next-gen XBox will be ARM based, as it makes too much sense giving Microsoft a way to get games running natively, and giving desktop WOA the consumer boost it'll need. (Older games will run on a translation layer)

This new System 76 machine (Which is intended for Linux, but will run Windows on ARM) is interesting

[uOpt]

Important to point out that the instances of ARM in datacenters run Linux, and hence have no shortage of native software. That makes adoption easier of course.

system76 is on a good track. What are you getting, exactly?

[audiojunkie]

You should investigate Qualcomm instead. ARM is the future, to the extent that Windows has one. x86_64 has run its course.

Windows world is in for some rough years ahead. The fragmentation alone is going to be devastating. The extinction-level event that Microsoft and Intel have been avoiding is starting to make landfall.

Apple successfully evolved and survived. Microsoft as we know it may not be able. Intel most certainly won’t.

I really think this is a possibility. Although, all major platforms compile fine on ARM. Microsoft is going to need to build in some x86_64 on ARM emulation to survive. They have succeeded thus far because of their backwards compatibility. A change like this one affect Linux or MacOS at all.

[audiojunkie]

ARM is the future, to the extent that Windows has one. x86_64 has run its course.

That is not accurate. ARM is another way of computing, but its not the holy grail of computing. x64 is still alive and well, and will be like that for a long time from now - at least 10 years without even 20% of the market lost to ARM. Its not even settled that ARM architecture is the way to go forward in computing. Apple is still under 15% of the computer market - meaning only laptops and pre-assembled PCs, not DIY computers from parts. Intel problems are of another nature, not x64 arhitecture related - mainly greed and bad management which translated into manufacturing problems.

AMD is the CPU choice for now, at least until intel will fix their designs and manufacturing process - which will take at least 3-4 years - 1, 2 to fix them and another 1, 2 to be tested by the market. Newer AMD AM5 CPUs are the top choice for audio, video, and gaming purposes. Anyone who says otherwise is just an intel fanboy who got stuck in the past.

You have a good point. ARM is much, much lighter on energy usage, and will probably go the way Jamcat says for mobile devices, but for servers, x86_64 will still reign for the foreseeable future.

[audiojunkie]

You do have a point that CISC is near its endlife and RISC will be a better choice for the future. That doesn't mean that ARM will be the only one moving forward. There are also other architectures like Alpha, ARC, AVR, MIPS, PA-RISC, PIC, Power Architecture, SPARC, and even intel had its own RISC cpu long time ago - the i860. So its still debatable, and a subject of who gets to win the race. ARM is a British company owned by a Japanese bank, not an American company, like Intel is. Which makes it less obedient to American interests. Even the Chinese may get into this race soon, as they recently developed their own lithography machines, so the jury is still out.

That future, however, is not 5-10 years away, but more like 15-20 years away (if even that). And microsoft is not that helpless as you make it, they are a huge business that can always implement a rosetta-like framework while moving away from x86. But there's a lot of profit still to be made on current platform.

Good points!

[audiojunkie]

And in what concerns Qualcomm, you seem to forget the the most successful chip company nowadays is Nvidia, and if I had to guess, they will rise as the strongest contender in the near future.

Except that Nvidia does RISC-V, not ARM. And Microsoft does Windows 11 ARM. The significance of Qualcomm here is that Windows 11 ARM runs on Snapdragon (and soon will run on Microsoft’s own Azure Cobalt 100.) It’s not going to run on RISC-V, unless Microsoft is planning to fragment even further.

And what software runs in Windows ARM? You realize that there isn't even an emulator like Rosetta 2.0. If it wasn't for Rosetta 2.0, Apple would have failed miserably.

Windows ARM is nothing more than a proof of concept, for the time being.

Yes, actually there is and emulator like Rosetta. It's not corporate Microsoft owned, but open source.

[audiojunkie]

Just watched Jeff geerling try the new Ampere Ultra 192 core ARM CPU. Compared to the AMD EPYC 192 core, the Epyc was way faster AND more efficient. The Ampere Ultra is way cheaper though so it beats the Epyc in performance per dollar but not in performance per watt, so there's that.

Just saying.

Nice! I wasn't aware of AMD's new energy efficiency. This changes things a bit.