I think it’s well in valves wheelhouse after proton to do something similar and revolutionise x86 to ARM translation. But at the moment better chips still need to arrive for that too be good enough for a product to built around. Which is why it’s the first thing i think of when they say they need technology to advance more before they make a new steam deck.
x86 to ARM translation is a fairly different problem than what proton solves, so I don’t think it’s clearly in their wheelhouse. Proton / wine is mostly just an implementation of windows libraries on Linux, but doing efficient x86 emulation on arm is a compiler problem. I would guess that Valve could do it or at least hire people to do it, but it’s a bit of a different skill set. Doing x86 efficiently on ARM (particularly with concurrency) also likely involves some extensions to ARM like Apple does with their chips. I haven’t heard if the snapdragon elite chips have anything for x86 compatibility baked in at all. Frankly, I’m treating the snapdragon elite with a fair degree of scepticism until you can actually buy the thing, but I hope it’s good!
I don’t think they’re waiting for ARM specifically. If that ends up working out, sure, but if they can get x86 with the right power to performance ratio I doubt they would complain.
I think it’s well in valves wheelhouse after proton to do something similar and revolutionise x86 to ARM translation. But at the moment better chips still need to arrive for that too be good enough for a product to built around. Which is why it’s the first thing i think of when they say they need technology to advance more before they make a new steam deck.
x86 to ARM translation is a fairly different problem than what proton solves, so I don’t think it’s clearly in their wheelhouse. Proton / wine is mostly just an implementation of windows libraries on Linux, but doing efficient x86 emulation on arm is a compiler problem. I would guess that Valve could do it or at least hire people to do it, but it’s a bit of a different skill set. Doing x86 efficiently on ARM (particularly with concurrency) also likely involves some extensions to ARM like Apple does with their chips. I haven’t heard if the snapdragon elite chips have anything for x86 compatibility baked in at all. Frankly, I’m treating the snapdragon elite with a fair degree of scepticism until you can actually buy the thing, but I hope it’s good!
Then maybe those chips that would help with that process is what they’re waiting for then.
I don’t think they’re waiting for ARM specifically. If that ends up working out, sure, but if they can get x86 with the right power to performance ratio I doubt they would complain.