ARM as a primary architecture

[Kevin Kofler]

Brendan Conoboy wrote:
> Hypothetically speaking, if presented with an ARM system that builds
> packages, on average, 3x faster than x86, will you advocate that x86 be
> dropped to secondary and ARM be PA exclusively?

Not if most computers (which to me means desktops, notebooks, maybe 
netbooks, but most definitely not smartphones) are still x86.

We didn't make Cray or S/390 our primary architecture either, in the days 
where the fastest supercomputers weren't x86 clusters yet. ;-)

If we really do get to a point where x86 is dead and everything is ARM (and 
hopefully by then we'll also have ARM builders at least as fast as the x86 
ones!), that will be the point where I will indeed advocate that x86 be 
dropped to secondary and ARM be the exclusive primary arch (even though it'd 
hurt my personal usage because I'm not the type who replaces his computer 
every year). But right now we're very far from that.

> Sure it's hypothetical, but if that one variable changes, how does your
> position change?

Well, of course, in that case, ARM being added as an additional primary 
architecture would be at least acceptable. (It doesn't affect the question 
of whether it'd be USEFUL though. See also the previous paragraphs.)

        Kevin Kofler