ARM is a dead end

[Kevin Kofler]

Hi,

I've been pointed to a news item about a (apparently the first) x86 (Atom) 
based smartphone:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/14/orange-san-diego-review/

So even smartphones are going x86 now. It looks like x86 is going to defeat 
ARM just like it defeated all the previous attempts at changing the 
instruction set, even Intel's own IA-64. The fastest x86 CPUs are still 
worlds faster than the fastest ARM CPUs. This new smartphone's single-core 
Atom is competitive in speed with other smartphones' multi-core ARMs.

So I would urge Fedora not to waste our time on a low-end architecture 
filling a temporary niche which will become obsolete as demand for 
performance increases. We should rather support only one primary 
architecture (x86, i.e.: x86_64, and legacy i686 as long as there's a need 
for it) and support it well, as we have done since we finally got rid of the 
legacy PPC burden. Niche architectures are exactly what secondary 
architectures are for.

        Kevin Kofler