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Valve is working on a version of proton for ARM devices

x.com

https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837194223176847499

This would presumably let x86 windows games run on ARM hardware.

This is almost certainly meant for the next Valve VR headset, but ARM has so much better power efficiency than x86 that a future ARM based Deck would be a huge improvement to battery life.

Also see this tweet:

VR games that have already secretly pushed Android ARM builds onto the Steam Store are ran via Waydroid (androidARM to LinuxARM)

VR games that do not have an ARM build on Steam (windows x86) are being translated/emulated via ProtonARM and FEX

27 comments

helenslunch

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This is almost certainly meant for the next Valve VR headset

Based on what? Looks more likely to be Android to me. Or it could be an ARM Steam Deck.

ARM has so much better power efficiency than x86

x86 has pretty much caught up already if you look at the latest mobile chips from AMD and Intel.

BananaTrifleViolin

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Intel claims to have caught up with the upcoming Lunar Lake series but still to be seen.

That may be too late for whatever new device Valve is working on as given the lead time for such devices they may already have committed to an architecture for devices next year.

Also running X86 games on Arm devices is not likely to be efficient. I doubt the energy efficiency of Arm chips would outweigh the overhead of X86 to Arm translation?

But it's all speculation - even without hardware, getting Proton to work with Arm is good for steam regardless of any specific devices. For example it would allow steam to push the compatability tools onto Mac devices and even potentially mobile devices. Makes sense for Valve to do this without it meaning anything more that it being a god idea in itself.

Mwa

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Imagine someone can game on their Mac using ashi linux or heck even your phone

Vincente

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Amazing! I hope I can buy a Linux on ARM Steam Deck someday. It should be more efficient, lighter, and smaller.

Lemzlez

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And perform terribly because it’d have to emulate x86 because there’s no native ARM games (for Windows).

There’s no way there’ll be an ARM steam deck, unless valve wants to build an android gaming handheld for some reason.

Vincente

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And the second example is Rosetta 2 for gaming on ARM-based Macs, especially in the context of Apple Gaming. You mentioned that some emulators running x86 games (on ARM) are inefficient.

That's the point! emulation is not the same as translation.

Translation is generally more efficient and can sometimes even match or exceed the performance of native execution.

chonglibloodsport

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Perform terribly on modern AAA titles, sure, but that’s a tiny % of the total Steam library. A lot of people these days don’t even bother with new AAA titles, instead playing older games or indie games. I bet Valve knows this and is working on the ARM transition specifically because of this fact.

Vincente

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Which you said is a backward compatibility issue. Some games that are developed only for x86 or the DirectX API have performance issues, but other games that support cross-platform or cross-platform APIs like Vulkan do not have this problem.

An obvious example is the Nintendo Switch, which goes against your argument.

Because of backward compatibility, x86's efficiency still can't match ARM's. That's why I said games run on ARM would be more efficient, lighter, and smaller (when they natively support ARM).

If you have any doubts, just look at the Nintendo Switch.

leopold

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Well, Steam and Proton both already run on top of FEX or Box64 on ARM Linux, but it's nice to see an official effort from Valve.

Also, does ARM still have better battery life when all of the machine code has to be translated from x86? That adds a not insubstantial amount of CPU overhead, which does hurt battery life.

And perhaps most importantly, is there any ARM chipset out there that can deliver performance on par with the Steam Deck's CPU (even after factoring in the overhead of the x86 JIT) at a viable price for a Steam Deck successor?

pupbiru

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does ARM still have better battery life when all of the machine code has to be translated from x86

afaik macos/rosetta is more efficient than native windows/x86, but that could be down to OS integration, or any number of confounding factors… i’d suggest though that x86 windows applications sometimes run better and more efficiently on alternative platforms, even with the translation layers - whether that’s down to the instruction set or a combination of factors

TheGrandNagus

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IIRC, the M chips also have a couple of specific hardware accelerators for some parts of x86 code that ARM devices would usually struggle with. That's something that other ARM chips (presumably) don't have.

drspod

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is there any ARM chipset out there that can deliver performance on par with the Steam Deck’s CPU

Yes, but they're made by Apple.

MyNameIsAtticus

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I got a M1 Pro MacBook a couple weeks ago. I’m astonished at how fucking powerful those thing are. An Intel laptop I had with similar specs would start screaming for mercy for any heavy Programming work I’d do. The MacBook just shrugs it off. Fans don’t even come on

datelmd5sum

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Snapdragon X Elite?

bdonvr

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Definitely doesn't have even close to the graphical horsepower

Fubarberry

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Also, does ARM still have better battery life when all of the machine code has to be translated from x86? That adds a not insubstantial amount of CPU overhead, which does hurt battery life.

No idea, and that's a pretty good question. The again some games run better on proton through Linux than they do on windows, so the performance overhead isn't that bad.

super_user_do

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The world is getting a better place

Dudewitbow

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i mean better efficiency is one thing, but having "so much better power efficiency" isn't that large, especially under load. Arms major advantage is efficiency while doing lighter workloads, which is kinda the antithesis of a gaming device would be.

What arm based designs excel at is if whatever workload utilizes some of the specific built hardware in them, which is why the modems and camera image processor on the snapdragon cpus are better than x86, because x86 designs dont really have dedicated hardware for those functions integrated fully(intel cpus do to some extent)

Fubarberry

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Arms major advantage is efficiency while doing lighter workloads, which is kinda the antithesis of a gaming device would be.

That's important too for gaming devices. It's great the the steam deck can get 6-8 hours on low power games like Stardew Valley. A significant problem with many of the windows competitors is that they don't see significantly better battery life at low loads. The original ROG Ally gets about 1.5 hours in a game like Cyberpunk 2077, but only gets 2-2.5 hours in a game like Stardew Valley.

Dudewitbow

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the lighter workloads isn't like stardew valley levels workloads, it would be like watching a video level loads. Just being arm doesn't outright make it that battery friendly, its like the non application use(e.g sleep, super basic app) where the battery level is better. The qualcomm laptop reviews kind of show that platform when its battery life is mildly better than last gen amd/intel chips and worse under gaming. Qualcomm rushed the release because they new they needed to release before AMD's Strix Point and Intels Lunar Lake to make it look like they were more efficient. (X elite was on TSMC N4, Meteor lake was on N5/N6, Phoenix and Strix were on N4X, but they knew AMD would have the highest NPU performance had it released first.

the BIGGEST flaw that the arm based designs have that isn't tegra is that their graphics drivers are inferior to both Nvidia and AMD, and graphics drivers play a huge role in whether something works correctly or not.

acosmichippo

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this could be the biggest thing to ever happen to Mac gaming.

Voyajer

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does rosetta 2 not already handle this scenario for macs?

Stampela

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AFAIK Rosetta deals with Intel Mac apps, not Windows. If this handles Windows games like Proton does… pretty big news!

nave

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Apple has their own wine based tool called Game Porting Toolkit that runs windows games and uses Rosetta.

acosmichippo

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exactly, rosetta has nothing to do with windows apps.

xnx

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Rosetta is for the game makers, proton is for the fans. So its easier for people to make the games work vs waiting on the game developers to manually port it using rosetta

JohnWorks

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This is something I’ve always wanted from them ever since I learned that the current ways that emulate x86 use proton on top of a bunch of other stuff. Would love if this was able to be used on phones.