It's crazy, in another terminal I have an SSH session open to an RK3588 ARM SoC SBC sitting on the desk behind me. On it I am running benchmarks of my application -- which contains a custom virtual machine for a language interpreter and a custom database engine.

On throughput -- compared to my Ryzen 7 Thinkpad, it's getting 1/2 the performance on the DB engine side of things and 1/3rd for the VM. (This is on a single core, I don't have a good bench for multicore performance yet.)

The thing is... the laptop cost ~$3000, and is clocked way higher. The SBC cost ~$200. It's warm to the touch, but not hot. The little DC powerbrick it came with is totally fine, and there's no fan, just a heat sync.

I could stick a dozen of these in a 19" enclosure, and with the right programming have an absolutely awesome amount of computer for the price and power use.

I just wish I could get an ARM workstation-class machine that wasn't a Mac.