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How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

theguardian.com

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Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#71

Post by TheCondor »

guelo wrote: post #64
dogma1138 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM CPU's aren't really comparable to anything above the Intel's ATOM line in terms of benchmark performance, and raw real world applications still give x86 based CPU's a huge advantage. http://www.computingcompendium.com/p/arm-vs-intel-benchmarks... http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_te... Allot of the "performance" of most of these SOC's actually comes from the GPU/DSP portion of the SOC rath…

Then how come nobody in the Android ecosystem is able to build a successful device with Intel? Even after Qualcomm had a very bad ARM chip for the last 2 years and Apple is beating their pants off nobody, from Sony to LG to Samsung, is willing to go with Intel.

Packaging? Will Intel let you graft in parts from your partners or do you have to get it all from them?

Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#72

Post by jacquesm »

rwmj wrote: post #70
jacquesm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That cavium looks extremely interesting. Any idea on how I could get my hands on one?

We (Red Hat) have one for testing, but I can only say limited things about it[1]. So I guess call Cavium and have a very solid business case for it :-) It seems they may be available for sale, but I have no idea how much they cost or what their availability is. [1] https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/48-core-arm-64-bit-ser...

Ok, thank you. I'll read your article.

Hm, ok, that was quick :) I believed you beforehand. Ok, will call Cavium. Thanks for the pointer!

Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#73

Post by thesz »

sohcahtoa wrote: post #14
kogepathic wrote: post #2

> Hands up who knows which company designed the iPhone 6s’ 64-bit chip Apple did. It's been widely acknowledged that the processor inside the iPhone is a custom design which implements the ARMv8 ISA. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A9 > Furber and his co-designer, Sophie Wilson, had found research from the Berkeley campus of the University of California into a new type of processor: one that simplified the s…

> ARM were hardly the first people to bring a RISC CPU to market: MIPS, SPARC, and POWER are RISC architectures which pre-dated ARM. Minor point: ARM-1-based devices were kinda, sorta, brought to market around '85-'86. That's neck-and-neck with MIPS I. Real ARM-2 based machines in '87 were three years ahead of the RS/6000. Of course, lots of people were developing RISC architectures in the early 80s, in parallel.

Early ARM designs have group load/store commands. This goes against RISC philosophy. You cannot call ARM a RISC because of that. It is a CISC with simplified decoder.

Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#74

Post by pjc50 »

thesz wrote: post #73
sohcahtoa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ARM were hardly the first people to bring a RISC CPU to market: MIPS, SPARC, and POWER are RISC architectures which pre-dated ARM. Minor point: ARM-1-based devices were kinda, sorta, brought to market around '85-'86. That's neck-and-neck with MIPS I. Real ARM-2 based machines in '87 were three years ahead of the RS/6000. Of course, lots of people were developing RISC architectures in the early 80s, in parallel.

Early ARM designs have group load/store commands. This goes against RISC philosophy. You cannot call ARM a RISC because of that. It is a CISC with simplified decoder.

This is the worst single piece of pedantry that I've ever seen on HN.

Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#75

Post by pjc50 »

randomsearch wrote: post #3

Can anyone explain why ARM have not been bought by Intel, MS, Apple or Google yet?

MS have historically been welded to x86.

Intel would attract antitrust actions, and would also rather continue to fight than admit failure by buying in tech.

Apple have historically changed processors a lot, and their hardware side is notoriously a cloud of outsourced factories and not owned by Apple; something of a virtual organisation.

Google have shown little interest in chip design or indeed hardware; remember, Android is a Java VM running on a free operating system on various OEM hardware.

Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#76

Post by dave2000 »

pjc50 wrote: post #74
thesz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early ARM designs have group load/store commands. This goes against RISC philosophy. You cannot call ARM a RISC because of that. It is a CISC with simplified decoder.

This is the worst single piece of pedantry that I've ever seen on HN.

It's amazing what some people find important, isn't it.

Is that pedentry better than the "android isn't really open source because Google doesn't do pull requests" though?

Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#77

Post by Andaith »

cstross wrote: post #6
randomsearch wrote: post #3

Can anyone explain why ARM have not been bought by Intel, MS, Apple or Google yet?

The success of ARM's strategy is based on them being an impartial supplier of designs that facilitate low power consumption and some degree of interoperability at the assembler level. If anyone buys it, they kill the goose that lays the golden egg. All those corporations run their own vertically integrated stack to some extent -- if you were Apple, would you be willing to trust an ARM design licensed from MS or Googl…

Interesting, I'd assume the opposite.

If you're apple, and you're licensing ARM designs, can you risk Google or Microsoft, or Oracle buying ARM? Can you risk them changing the licensing terms, or stop licensing altogether?

How come none of them want to be the first to buy, securing their rights to ARM, and instead enjoy the risk of a competitor buying ARM?

Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#78

Post by daemin »

prodmerc wrote: post #48
tacos wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Intel, of course. Windows NT started development exclusively on RISC: the Intel i860 ("N-Ten"). Shipped supporting MIPS, DEC Alpha and PowerPC.

Not to mention Intel had quite a successful line of ARM CPUs back in the day - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale Which makes articles like this one: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-arm-processors-... ridiculous. "the unthinkable happened. Intel revealed it was going to build ARM processors." Do your damn research, people :-)

Well from memory Intel sold off the general purpose ARM CPU division to Marvell back in 2006 or so. Though it kept the ARM chips that were specialised for storage or networking IIRC. So technically Intel has always made ARM chips in one form or another, just not any that slot into a mobile phone.

Re: How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing

#80

Post by stephencanon »

Andaith wrote: post #77
cstross wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The success of ARM's strategy is based on them being an impartial supplier of designs that facilitate low power consumption and some degree of interoperability at the assembler level. If anyone buys it, they kill the goose that lays the golden egg. All those corporations run their own vertically integrated stack to some extent -- if you were Apple, would you be willing to trust an ARM design licensed from MS or Googl…

Interesting, I'd assume the opposite. If you're apple, and you're licensing ARM designs, can you risk Google or Microsoft, or Oracle buying ARM? Can you risk them changing the licensing terms, or stop licensing altogether? How come none of them want to be the first to buy, securing their rights to ARM, and instead enjoy the risk of a competitor buying ARM?

You pay lawyers to negotiate contracts carefully to protect against that risk, you don't need to buy the company.
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