ARM Makes Its CPU Roadmap Public, Challenges Intel in PCs With Deimos and Hercules Chips (pcworld.com) 158
With PC makers like Asus and HP beginning to design laptops and tablets around ARM chips, ARM itself has decided to emerge from the shadows and unroll its roadmap to challenge Intel through at least 2020, PCWorld writes. From a report, which details ARM's announcement Thursday: ARM's now-public roadmap represents its first processors that are designed for the PC space. ARM, taking aim at the dominant player, claims its chips will equal and potentially even surpass Intel's in single-threaded performance. ARM is unveiling two new chip architectures: Deimos, a 7nm architecture to debut in 2019, and Hercules, a 5nm design for 2020. There's a catch, of course: Many Windows apps aren't natively written for the ARM instruction set, forcing them to pay a performance penalty via emulation. Comparing itself to Intel is a brightly-colored signpost that ARM remains committed to the PC market, however.
ARM-powered PCs like the Asus NovaGo offer game-changing battery life -- but the performance suffers, for two reasons: One, because the computing power of ARM's cores has lagged behind those of the Intel Core family; and two, because any apps that the ARM chip can't process natively have to be emulated. ARM can't do much about Microsoft's development path, but it can increase its own performance. Finally, if you were concerned that ARM PCs will be a flash in the pan, the answer is no, apparently not. Further reading: ARM Reveals First Public CPU Roadmap - Targeting Intel Performance (PC Perspective); and ARM Unveils Client CPU Performance Roadmap Through 2020 - Taking Intel Head On (AnandTech).
ARM-powered PCs like the Asus NovaGo offer game-changing battery life -- but the performance suffers, for two reasons: One, because the computing power of ARM's cores has lagged behind those of the Intel Core family; and two, because any apps that the ARM chip can't process natively have to be emulated. ARM can't do much about Microsoft's development path, but it can increase its own performance. Finally, if you were concerned that ARM PCs will be a flash in the pan, the answer is no, apparently not. Further reading: ARM Reveals First Public CPU Roadmap - Targeting Intel Performance (PC Perspective); and ARM Unveils Client CPU Performance Roadmap Through 2020 - Taking Intel Head On (AnandTech).
Ohio, Leon Chen (Score:1)
Intel is still struggling to make 10-nanometer chips at the same time as ARM is talking about 7nm and 5nm parts.
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Would be interesting, except 10nm, and 7nm are marketing terms with no basis in reality, and are actually the same. https://www.eejournal.com/arti... [eejournal.com]
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Please read about the differences between architecture and microarchitecture. RISC is part of the (instruction set) architecture and out-of-order execution etc. are part of the microarchitecture.
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Intel is still struggling to make 10-nanometer chips at the same time as ARM is talking about 7nm and 5nm parts.
Let's be fair. 1) Intel 10nm is roughly equivalent to TSMC/GF/Samsung 7nm. 2) "Struggling to make" is roughly equivalent to "talking about".
As nearly as I can tell, Intel bit off just a bit too much this node with a metal pitch that is just about 10% finer than deep UV multipatterning alone can do reliably, so they had to bulldoze their fab line for a do-over and never got into their precious copy-exactly zone. Meanwhile, the "bunch" went ever so slightly more conservative and are now supposedly starting 7n
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ARM still doesn't actually make chips, so all they can ever do is talk about process nodes.
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It's a little more complicated than the feature size. Intel's 10nm process is about as dense as the 7nm processes at Samsung or TSMC. But that doesn't change the fact that Intel isn't shipping its 10nm in quantity yet, while those others are shipping 7nm. GlobalFoundries will probably also be shipping 7nm before Intel has its 10nm going.
Intel has fallen behind in process technology. That's an unaccustomed position for them; their ability to manufacture (as opposed to design) chips better than anybody else h
If ARM "really" wants to compete with Intel (Score:5, Funny)
They need to get off their lazy ass and introduce several major vulnerabilities into their CPUs as they are seriously lacking in that category...
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They already did! Their chips are vulnerable to Spectre and some even to Meltdown. AMD on the other hand... :(
Forget Windows - Mac is where this will shine (Score:3, Interesting)
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except now apple controls the compiler, an optimized programming language and it's own GPU with a graphics API for gaming
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That was the PowerPC movie, you haven't seen the ARM movie yet.
Re: Forget Windows - Mac is where this will shine (Score:2)
Why do you think arm is publishing this? Apple takes the basic arm and tweaks it for it's desired specs.
Though arm 7 and 5nm are in truth closer to Intel 10 and 7nm.
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There's also rumours of an inexpensive laptop that will replace the MacBook Air. One of the most expensive component of a laptop is the "Intel Tax Inside".
Given all the security holes we keep discovering in their CPUs I don't see why they're still selling at a premium price. And given Apple's love of control from top to bottom, they'll switch to their own ARM processors instead of going with AMD.
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Apple can do inexpensive. They've done it in the past (iPod shuffle, iPhone SE, Mac mini) and they're still doing it right now (Mac mini).
Apple's "inexpensive" is going to be the same price as the other guys' "middle range" though.
Re: Forget Windows - Mac is where this will shine (Score:3)
Apple can do inexpensive. They've done it in the past (iPod shuffle, iPhone SE, Mac mini) and they're still doing it right now (Mac mini).
All of those products were more expensive than competing products in their class. If apple sells something for $5 that might fit your definition of "inexpensive", but when competing products only cost $2 then no, in the context of the discussion it's not at all inexpensive. Apple charges a premium, and that premium exists refuardles of whether the specific product we are talking about costs $5 or $5,000.
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There are already rumors Apple is developing a desktop version of their iPhone ARM processors, which have larger dies and much better performance than nearly every other ARM implementation..
I expect they can succeed without too much trouble. What the mobile ARMs lack which the desktop CPUs have is wide, fast memory busses and large caches with wide, fast internal busses. Those things suck power though.
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Well, Microsoft is going to jump on this bandwagon too. The mistake they made last time round with Windows 8 is unlike to be repeated: this time Windows on ARM will be as much like the reigning Wintel version as they can possibly make it. I'm actually hoping for this because I don't perceive any other path at the moment to getting a decent ARM Linux laptop.
Of course there's always the possibility that they might lock down the bootloader just to freeze out Linux. Sigh. So in that case I stick with Wintel, or
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Yes, lock down the boot loader and ship it with Windows 10S = fail = this is not the PC you are looking for.
If Microsoft wants this product to not fail like the last time then it needs to be as much like a PC as it possibly can be, except for the processor. That includes the boot loader.
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me thinking ARM already shines on Linux, so much so that it is the most used OS for that CPU.
ARM obviously wants to expand their market reach, that would include Windows, the most use desktop OS.
the usage numbers of those two markets combined makes Apple look like small fish.
Deimos and Hercules? (Score:4, Insightful)
Missed the opportunity to call them Phobos [wikia.com] and Deimos [wikia.com]
Re:Deimos and Hercules? (Score:5, Funny)
Not to mention that all computers using Hercules will be stuck in monochrome 720×350.
how meny pci-e lanes / other io does it have? (Score:4, Interesting)
how meny pci-e lanes / other io does it have?
Re:how meny pci-e lanes / other io does it have? (Score:5, Informative)
ARM is fabless and therefore only designs CPU cores. This means it's up to the chip maker to include a PCI-e interface. So far, everyone making ARM chips cares fuckall about PCI-e and therefore they don't add any too their chips because all they care about is making smartphone chips.
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Some chips have 4 PCIe lanes (RK3399 for example)... That's 1/4 of what a modern GPU uses. And a generation behind too.
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A single PCIe port, nice. Sure, keep holding your breath for rockchip to release a chip with better PCIe support.
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There's the Marvell Armada series, but the good ones are expensive.
Their 8K series has 12 SERDES lanes that can provide PCIe lanes.
1 port PCIe x4 + 1 ports PCIe x2 +4 ports PCIe x1
The 12 lanes must then be shared with USB3, SATA, GbE, etc.
The nVidia Tegra SoC's also have PCIe
Watch for Thanoss (Score:4, Funny)
You should look at NXP QorIQ chips, Marvell, and NVIDIA.
The problem with Marvell is that half of your data could disappear with the snap of a fingerr.
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That was a joke son.
Marvell's name happens to resemble that of Marvel, a superhero comics publisher that Disney bought a few years back. The most recent film in Marvel's cinematic universe, Avengers: Infinity War, had a character wipe out half the life in the universe by assembling a magic glove and snapping his fingers. Hence the doubling of the final letter in "fingerr" and "Thanoss" to parallel "Marvell".
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Good one anyway
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this is a core, It will have how ever many lanes broadcom/nxp/apple/... bolt up to in in their implementation.
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who cares about windows, linux runs fine! :D
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That tells us more about Windows than it does about ARM processors. :D
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The chief problem for Microsoft is that a large part of the Windows ecosystem is still dominated by x86/64 applications. Despite 15 years of pushing .NET, and now with .NET beginning to look like an at least credible cross platform environment, even Microsoft's own flagship apps are pretty entrenched in the x86/64 world. Yes, they're making big efforts, but the fact is that there are a whole host of Windows apps that won't run. This is a re-run of Windows NT's early days, where the OS could boot up on multi
and they need to drop the store only idea (Score:2)
and they need to drop the store only idea
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It was pretty much that easy 20 years, and yet the Alpha and PowerPC ports of Windows NT shriveled on the vine because developers weren't interested. Getting past four decades of x86 momentum is clearly harder than compiling a new binary.
Now is the time for the Linux Desktop... (Score:5, Insightful)
If ARM is going to start making desktop class CPU/SoCs, this is where Linux can show off. Window doesn't have good ARM application support. The open source community has been supporting ARM for years. Instead of being behind the game in available software compared to Windows, Linux can ahead of the game in available software.
This could also help push more 3rd party binary software developers to port their software to ARM + Linux.
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Where are you going to get your ARM laptop to run Linux on?
As I see it, there are only two plausible paths:
1) Chromebook manufacturers start offering usable amounts of storage and Google lays off their FUD game with developer mode boot warnings.
2) Microsoft takes another run at the ARM laptop market, with for-real Windows this time instead of Windows-trying-to-be-a-phone.
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Where are you going to get your ARM laptop to run Linux on?
Pinebook [pine64.org] should help answer that soon.
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Yaaaaas. If they deliver, I will send them my money. GPU could be a sticking point.
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Whoops, they already deliver. I'm getting one :)
Re: Now is the time for the Linux Desktop... (Score:2)
Those 2 gigs of ram will do wonders when I open up Firefox with 30+ tabs. I'll get to relive the good old days with my pentium computer and 56k modem.
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I used Firefox on a netbook with 1 GB of RAM for years before maxing it out at 2 GB. Here are some tips for using Firefox with low memory:
- Limit yourself to 10 tabs and use bookmarks for the rest.
- Turn on Tracking Protection so that ads get loaded only if they don't stalk you from one website to another to build an interest dossier.
- Don't use a heavy desktop like GNOME 3. Use Xfce instead.
Some 2 GB systems may benefit from 32-bit (Score:2)
Even XFCE, Mate are getting a bit heavy with more bloat in the libraries and the move to 64bit.
I've recommended using 32-bit on machines with 1 GB or less or 64-bit on machines with 4 GB or more. For machines with 2 GB, it sort of depends on the rest of the system. With a conventional HDD, you need to keep more in disk cache, so the reduction in disk misses from keeping pointers small and not loading two sets of libraries (multiarch) outweighs the faster CPU execution from more registers. But with an SSD, you don't have to keep quite as much in disk cache, so you can afford to waste some RAM on the l
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we've been there before, but nothing much happened.
linux was 64bit ready even before 64bit x86 cpu's were available, how long did it take for Windows to catch up?
not to mention that desktop ARM computers have been available for/with linux on them for a while already, they're called chromebooks.
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Talk about out-of-touch.
Phone and tablets are great for consuming. Reading something on an ereader, listening to a podcast, watching stuff like Hulu or YouTube. They're not great for creation (aside from home video).
Desktops/laptops have keyboard and mouse (not to mention all the other stuff like sheer power). I (and many others) loathe writing an email on a touchscreen keyboard. And anything more complicated than an email will be far easier and faster to create on the desktop than on a phone/tablet.
Sure
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you said:
They're not great for creation (aside from home video).
but they actually said:
eaten at one end by the "creative workstation"
There was no assertion that phones/tablets are any good at content creation.
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I think you need to re-read what anon wrote.
the desktop is dying
the desktop has no actual application
A desktop and a "creative workstation" are basically the same thing these days...unless you have a different definition?
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the desktop is dying, eaten at one end by the "creative workstation"
The desktop is the creative workstation.
Which apps break in ARM? (Score:2)
Debian calls 64-bit ARM [debian.org] "a first-class release architecture in Stretch, with almost all packages built, and the standard installer working on various machines, and quite likely to work on new ones." Among those few applications in Debian's repository that fail on ARM [debian.org], which are most critical? Or by "application support" are you specifically referring to Wine, Steam, and Steam Wine [slashdot.org]?
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Apple could try and do it better, considering they have a captive market share of luxury/vanity computer users.
But even among those, they won't like if the PC nerds are getting more fps from their uncool but powerful pumped-up PC rigs.
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ARM, taking aim at the dominant player, claims its chips will equal and potentially even surpass Intel's in single-threaded performance.
The given context of ARM providing chips to beat Intel's current offering was specifically regarding single-core performance, an area where Intel still dominates AMD with a significant lead.
If ARM succeeds in that goal, they beat AMD in their given performance metric by default.
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That's a strong term, more of a modest lead. It also isn't a metric that is likely to remain especially relevant going forward though its relevance will probably last longer than the current generation chips it isn't likely to last long enough for ARM to catch up with either.
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It also isn't a metric that is likely to remain especially relevant going forward
Oh I disagree with you very strongly right there.
I think the market for people who want 8 or 16 cores on their machine is very different than the market that wants higher performing single-to-6 core performance.
The current generation Ryzen chips don't beat current generation Intel chips in any benchmark except in aggregate performance utilizing more cores than the tested Intel has.
I, for one, will continue to buy Intel u
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15% more money for 15-30% more performance?
Ya, seems like it's wort
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AMD currently has nothing to offer for the ultralow power niche (equivalent of Intel Y series processors). It is also behind the performance curve in the mainstream laptop niche (Intel U series); Mobile Ryzen isn't terrible but it's not yet a serious challenger to a mobile i7. Finally, they don't have anything to go up against the high power H-series; the best they could do is a down-clocked variant of a desktop Ryzen but then you would also need a separate GPU. I don't expect AMD to launch a serious challe
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Yah. I'm pretty sure my next laptop will be AMD APU. The one after that might be ARM.
BTW, where is the GPS in my laptop? 4G modem? Bluetooth? Just asking.
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BTW, where is the GPS in my laptop? 4G modem? Bluetooth? Just asking.
Bluetooth is pretty standard fair these days, I can't really understand why you would need GPS in a laptop unless you don't carry a smart phone or for some reason have some sort of mission critical apps that require precise location. As for 4G, I could see that just as I could also see a USB device for the same functionality- a device that can be updated independently of the computer or network.
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I can't really understand why you would need GPS in a laptop unless you don't carry a smart phone
Maps. The full size screen is really so much better than a phone.
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Are you going to put your laptop in the car next to you?
I take it you have never gone on a business trip. You get to the hotel room, you set up your laptop and connect to the hotel wifi. How much does it suck to now have to tell your laptop where you are? It should already know.
Never confuse "no one cares" with "I don't care because I don't have that use case". You might never have a laptop, you might never go on a business trip. That's you. Because of the volume in handsets, the cost now to include GPS is roughly zero.
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Idiot.
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If I'm not using maps to find my way around blah blah blah
According to you, this market [lifewire.com] does not exist.
Repeat this to yourself as you fall asleep: "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs."
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Correction: this market. [lifewire.com] (GPS addons for laptops)
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GPS and 4G modem is on the WWAN card , if you choose a laptop with that functionality.
Bluetooth is integrated with the WiFi card.
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If you go with an apple laptop, an iphone will provide all those for your laptop.
I would rather gouge my eyes out than go with an Apple laptop. I have one, by the way, it was given to me. It's off. Used it for a while, enough to know to know exactly why the "Apple way" leaves me cold, let alone the lock-in, and the utter embarrassment of being seen with these things in public.
Clear?
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Which MacBook did you receive? What lock-in are you talking about and compared to what? Windows 10 is the worst by comparison.
And if you're not using it, give it or sell it to someone who will.
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Great post, makes me feel like I just criticized Scientology. That's another thing I don't like about Apple.
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If you go with an apple laptop, an iphone will provide all those for your laptop.
I would rather gouge my eyes out than go with an Apple laptop. I have one, by the way, it was given to me. It's off. Used it for a while, enough to know to know exactly why the "Apple way" leaves me cold, let alone the lock-in, and the utter embarrassment of being seen with these things in public.
Clear?
For me, I will not use Apple (Mac) because: It just works wrong. Everything I do on OSX seems counter intuitive. I've been behind a keyboard for a very long time now and every time someone shoves a Mac in front of me because they can't figure something out, I shake my head at how Apple decided to do things their way. Case in point: when Apple brought out inverted scrolling as default. Yes, I know it's configurable and I would fix the problem on it were it my machine, but that's not the point. It's frus
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With what they claim to be higher single thread performance, I doubt it will be lower power.
They would have said higher overall performance if they didn't have power/thermal limits with an equivalent number of cores.
qualify, qualify, qualify (Score:2)
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I'd be more impressed if they were targeting AMD's overall performance and cost.
Yes, but I don't think their shareholders would.
AMD's overall performance is hinged upon building processors with a very large number of cores, processors that are currently being outsold by top of the line consumer-grade Intel desktop processors by a factor of 3 to 1, depending on the source.
Not trying to get involved in the processor holy war, but I feel like the market is making it pretty clear that the path of ridiculous single-threaded performance is more valuable than the aggregate performance of 3
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I've been watching adoption on Steam, and while there was a pretty incredible initial bump for the 2700X, adoption growth then essentially dropped to zero, and has remained there.
AMD is competitive with them on single thread and beats them hands down overall at dramatically lower prices.
Depends how you define competitive, I suppose. Let's take the 2700X for example. Their flagship desktop chip. Cheaper than the 8700K, 2 more cores, giving the expected performance boost in applications that use all 8 cores...
It loses out in single-threaded benchmarks by between 15-30% dependin
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Their flagship processor comes in at #4, beaten out by their value processors, while the Intel performance king is #1.
I don't think anyone in the universe could make a credible argument that value processors aren't where AMD is king. I'm certainly not. But the revenue of the 8700K and the 8600K are more than every AMD processor sold in the couple of retailer breakdowns I've seen.
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AMD's overall performance is hinged upon building processors with a very large number of cores, processors that are currently being outsold by top of the line consumer-grade Intel desktop processors by a factor of 3 to 1, depending on the source.
Because AMD has produced awful processors for years. Zen is a brand new architecture and the first real offering from AMD in a very long time. The question is how long can they continue the momentum and catch up to Intel. It's not going to happen overnight, even if they produce a better product.
Not trying to get involved in the processor holy war
[Ed: That's an awfully funny way to go about it...]
but I feel like the market is making it pretty clear that the path of ridiculous single-threaded performance is more valuable than the aggregate performance of 32 cores.
Single-threaded performance is certainly incredibly important, but again, this is a brand new fight between Intel and AMD with a new architecture. The market was
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even if they produce a better product.
This is the point I'm trying to make. I don't think the market finds high-core-count processors to be the better product.
[Ed: That's an awfully funny way to go about it...]
By giving a reasonable hypothesis for why AMDs market share has been stagnant for months, while Intel's has grown?
Single-threaded performance is certainly incredibly important, but again, this is a brand new fight between Intel and AMD with a new architecture. The market was just buying the "fastest" CPU avialble.
My argument is that the market still is.
AMDs performance lead requires a * next to it that says, 'In highly parallel applications'
I'm not sure if that's a winning strategy.
I'm hoping AMD starts focusing on their single-threaded performance, because this whole thing is start
Linux on Arm (Score:3)
Another good reason to switch from Windoze to Linux
PC is ARM's last frontier (Score:1)
ARM (which comes from the long forgotten British Home Computer revolution - which saw the UK produce more homegrown personal computer designs than any other nation) faces one final mountain to conquer, the x64 CPU space.
ARM went for the x64 server jugular and fell flat on its face. Now ARM understands that the road to all x64 markets runs thru the HOME x64 computer space.
But sadly for ARM, AMD's Zen has arisen to reinvigorate a space Intel's complacency had previously ruined for at least the last TEN years.
Returning to desktop (Score:5, Informative)
It would be more accurate to say ARM is returning to the desktop market. The original ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) based Archimedes was a very fast 32 bit desktop machine released in the mid 1980's and I remember being amazed at the performance which utterly trounced anything Intel could produce at the time. I even used an Acorn R540 in 1990 which was running a nice UNIX environment and could even run a software PC to emulate both DOS and Windows on top of that. It took years before Intel was even in the same ballpark as the ARM from those days and even through the 90's there were plenty of chips that were much faster than anything Intel could make (Alpha for instance, what a joy!) and it is a shame that in the last 20 years or so we've seen most of these die off. Time for some new blood.
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In the end, it's all good and fine. I doubt we'd really be any further ahead today if Intel hadn't won the processor architecture war.
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I was so disappointed to see it replaced on the market by such inferior parts.
return to the network... (Score:2)
The real money is in mass market silicon (silicon chips are ideally sold in the many millions) for that you need vendors such as Nokia networks, Cisco etc
Mass market previously was mobile phones but that has matured now its about the networks which need more processing power and for that to be distributed.
regards
John Jones
hooray for competition (Score:2)
while ARM chips have their place in the market, tablets, cheap laptops, i cant help but use the car analogy on them, ya i can make a 2 cylinder car engine with 200bhp, but how long will it last against a decent 4 or 6 cylinder running heavy work for hours at a time? They just feel anemic under load compared to a low end X86 processor...
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