ARM Build

[d_o_n_t_understand]

Increasingly, cloud/infrastructure providers are offering Arm server types (Graviton, Ampere). I think the demand for Arm builds of Factorio is only going to continue to increase.

My hope is that the next iteration of Steam Deck is some kind of AArch64-based monster, thus forcing the game industry to finally take this platform seriously

As they said here earlier, the developers will not do this labor-intensive task for the sake of a group of geeks with ARM servers and Steam Decks

Well, they already have working ARM version (Switch, and Apple M1/M2 are ARM), but building and maintaining Linux ARM would be another build config, more CI runs, etc., and it's probalby still not worth it considering the size of the potential audience. There is also not many Linux ARM devices that can run Factorio to be honest and Graviton/Ampere-based multiplayer server is pretty niche usecase. Maybe Raspberry Pi 5 is powerful enough (not sure)?

[salat]

There is also not many Linux ARM devices that can run Factorio to be honest and Graviton/Ampere-based multiplayer server is pretty niche usecase. Maybe Raspberry Pi 5 is powerful enough (not sure)?

I think the community is more interested in the headless ARM version of Factorio, since there are many free and/or cheap AWS on this core

[TheKillerChicken]

I would love to see an ARM server support as my current game server is 700-watt power-hungry server and would like an alternative to a mainframe server.

[d_o_n_t_understand]

I would love to see an ARM server support as my current game server is 700-watt power-hungry server and would like an alternative to a mainframe server.

Out of curiosity: what's the spec of the server and on what scale do you serve?

[TheKillerChicken]

I would love to see an ARM server support as my current game server is 700-watt power-hungry server and would like an alternative to a mainframe server.

Out of curiosity: what's the spec of the server and on what scale do you serve?

It has 2x Xeon E5-2667 V2s (16-cores/32-threads @ 3.60Ghz, 128GB ECC RAM, 12 SAS harddrives (it is also my backup centre) As well as many game servers.

[d_o_n_t_understand]

It has 2x Xeon E5-2667 V2s (16-cores/32-threads @ 3.60Ghz, 128GB ECC RAM, 12 SAS harddrives (it is also my backup centre) As well as many game servers.

Well.. that's 10 years old hardware with DDR3 from the era when 8 cores was a lot. You will probably get >2x the Factorio performance on mid-range modern CPU and even more on AMDs X3D CPUs, both weeeell below 700W. I'm not saying ARM is bad, I believe ARM is the future in many areas, but you don't need ARM to have less power hungry Factorio server.

[Npl]

Is there any update, now that Factorio is native on Apples M1 and even The Nintendo Switch? Seems the hardest parts should be done already.

Personally I have a Chromebook with a Snapdragon 7Gen2, not having an Arm64-Linux build is seriously impeding the factory growth!
From a perfomance standpoint there already are alot SBC/Tablets easily exceeding the Switch, and Qualcomm Oryon is around the corner.

[Rseding91]

Every additional build of the game is another group of support tickets, another group of bug reports specific to that platform, another person needed to handle all of that for that platform.

It's not just a matter of adding it to the release script and ignoring it for the rest of time. It's additional work for us for the rest of time that we support the build.

We have to decide between the increased workload and the amount of players that it would benefit.

Currently it's not there for linux-arm or windows-arm.

[Npl]

obviously yes. speaking for myself i wouldn't complain about keeping such a thing a unsupported beta until enough demand is there.

certainly beats the hoops one would need to jump through by using qemu or fex-emu.

[Illiander42]

obviously yes. speaking for myself i wouldn't complain about keeping such a thing a unsupported beta

Except this is WUBE. Their "unsupported beta" branch is less buggy than triple-A games that have been out for decades.

And they're not going to want to change that.

Though I am curious if the Apple M1 build can be hacked to run on ARM Linux. Apple's a UNIX these days, so it might be possible.

[herkulessi]

There are attempts at running Linux on Apples ARM-Chips already, see Asahi Linux

Would honestly love even a headless Linux on arm build, to run a Server with that sweet sweet arm efficiency. I wonder how well/badly factorio currently runs with emulation/translation tools like qemu, rosetta or box64 or whatever that windows version of rosetta is called (iirc that was fairly bad though)

I guess I gotta check that soonish (tm)

[mrvn]

As to headless ARM server: All the work is really done there for the switch client already. As long as the FPU of the ARM in question doesn't behave differently from the switch ARM core there should be zero changes. Where ARMs really differ is the GPU, i.e. the graphical client.

In fact is there a headless server for the switch? That would probably already work as is or with qemu running it as a VM on any high performance ARM.

[mrudat]

I'd expect a headless build for the M1/M2; I don't think the Switch has much performance to spare, plus it's not really set up to work as a server.

Theoretically, a headless server binary for Apple Silicon should run on Darwin on Hyper-V/Windows or KVM/Linux on ARM.

I wonder if you can run Darwin on wsl2 on arm?

[mrvn]

Well, I don't want to use the headless server on a switch. I just want it to exist so I can try running on a non-switch.