x86 No More: Brave New World of ARM, RISC-V

[nqngo]

Context

ARM is ubiquitous on smartphone and smart devices. In the PC space, it has made headline recently with Apple adopting ARM as their new Macbook ranges. In server space, you can today rent an ARM VM on Oracle Cloud with twice the cores and RAMs for the same price as an x86 VM.

With the US tech sanction, Chinese chip developers increasingly look into building ARM and RISC-V for their domestic consumption. What is our thoughts on this brave new world where x86 architecture is no longer the de facto standard? Have we encounter issues during our development due to different architectures? What can we do test our code on the targeted platform?

Resources

• https://www.androidauthority.com/arm-vs-x86-key-differences-explained-568718/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1
• https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/09/china_homegrown_chips