Discussion: Do you think the next steamdeck will be x86 or ARM?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨JohnWorks@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨steamdeck@sopuli.xyz⁩

Wanted to talk about this a bit. I’ve seen some things showing how well along translation layers have gotten with both proton from windows based games and x86 apps running on ARM. I think it’d be a huge improvement for something like standby time. Although I’m not sure how well it’d be for power efficiency while gaming since it might use the same amount of power for similar performance regardless. Maybe better for low complexity games like balatro or vampire survivors?

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deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Sounds unlikely to me.

Valve would be taking on a huge compatibility problem in exchange for maybe better battery life in scenarios that already have good battery life.

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- geoff@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  It also seems likely that the perf hit from x86_64 -> ARM64 emulation, even if the emulation is really excellent, might very well eat up any battery savings from the more efficient ARM chip.
  
  My understanding is that ARM chips work fine for gaming when games are built for ARM, but that is far from the norm at the moment.
  
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  - strongarm@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Right, so basically mobile games
    
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Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
arms not ready yet for gaming. id expect at least 1 more generation of x86 hardware. especially if AMDs 1W optimized efficiency cores end up becoming an option.

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- tomcatt360@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  On the contrary, my arms are quite ready for gaming, thank you very much!
  
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Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I would guess steam deck 2 will be x86, I’m assuming that valve is already working on hardware for it. We do know that Valve is working on a new VR headset that will be ARM based though, and that they’re working on an ARM compatibility layer for it. If the early testing of the VR headset is promising enough I could imagine valve pivoting to make the next Deck ARM based, but that will probably cause a longer delay before we get a Deck 2.

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- wasabi@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  What’s the source on the VR headset being ARM based? I must have missed that
  
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  - Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    There were previous leaks that were covered here about it, here are two articles on it:
    
    gamingonlinux.com/…/valve-appear-to-be-testing-ar…
    
    gamingonlinux.com/…/deckard-is-apparently-the-cod…
    
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savvywolf@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I don’t think so, Valve already have their hands full with one translation layer and probably don’t want to add another layer on top of it.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if battery life ends up being worse through the hypothetical vm. It still has to do the same amount of work after all.

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rotopenguin@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Standby time is 99% a function of “how much power the ram takes”. If you have less ram, it takes less power to refresh.

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- JohnWorks@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Is ram that’s used on arm chips usually lower power than x86 or can they be interchangeable?
  
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  - crater2150@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    ARM boards with slotted RAM use the same type as x86 (although mostly LPDDR, as found in laptops), so I assume there isn’t any difference that is related to the CPU architecture.
    
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xavier666@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It will be there eventually, but on Valve time. There isn’t any huge issue with what AMD is releasing

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smeg@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I was surprised to discover how simple Windows commands on Linux (via Wine/Proton) are, x86 on ARM is much harder. That said, Apple have managed it pretty well (Rosetta?) so it’s clearly doable.

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- SGG@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  My understanding is Apple did this by having the more “expensive” to emulate commands be actual hardware, so some commands are emulated/translated, but others are just implemented in hardware on the processor. They could do this because they control the hardware and OS. Microsoft or anyone else trying to get that done is much more of a challenge.
  
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- bobo1900@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Translation layers are possibile, but from what I can see, are quite unreliable for games (especially more graphically-demanding), which is not of high importance for Apple
  
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Sunshine@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Hopefully they go straight into RISC-V!

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- wasabi@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Absolutely 0 chance as current RISC-V chips are dog slow and inefficient. Currently RISC-V is only really used in microcontrollers and everything else is highly experimental.
  
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  - Sunshine@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I’m of the opinion that Valve should keep the og steam deck around for 7 years to keep squeezing more value out of the hardware with software updates and to keep the baseline simple for developers to ease the transition to the linux and mobile technologies then release the next iteration of hardware in 2029, RISC-V would be much more developed at that point especially with Valve’s full backing.
    
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