I'm not going to write off Intel yet, but they're in a dangerous position. The number one reason Microsoft's stock has been moribund the past ten years is that Linux took over the datacenter. Imagine how much more revenue they'd have if the millions upon millions of X86 servers deployed since 2000 ran Windows. Instead, they're stuck in a saturated, slow-growth monopoly. If non-x86 chips take off in data centers, Intel will be in a similarly bad spot.
The End of x86?
21–30 of 119 posts
Re: The End of x86?
#22Intel is aware of this. Atom is the shot across the bow. They are working on making smaller and lower-power parts. It's interesting to watch ARM race up as Intel races down.
If we compare the RISC nature of ARM with the CISC-implemented-over-RISC approach of contemporary x86s, it's easy to believe it will prove simpler to upscale ARM than to downscale the Atom. Transmeta-style emulation could be one possible way out of this death spiral for Intel.
History has shown that intel is very good at getting out of potential death spirals...
Re: The End of x86?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is ARM's power advantage really that significant for devices larger than the smart phone / tablet form factor? I'll bet $5 that the MacBook Air in the future (18-24 months) will switch to ARM once the >2GHz ARM processors start shipping en masse. The Asus Eee PCs running Android with Snapdragon processors already embed the Cortex-A9 MPCores.
"4GB RAM ought to be enough for anybody." ARMS's Achilles' heel is that it's only 32-bit, and I don't think anyone wants to go back to a segmented address space any time soon.
That's a great point. Are there any 64 bit ARM chips on the horizon? I don't know much about chips, so maybe it's not even possible given the architecture.
Re: The End of x86?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is ARM's power advantage really that significant for devices larger than the smart phone / tablet form factor? I'll bet $5 that the MacBook Air in the future (18-24 months) will switch to ARM once the >2GHz ARM processors start shipping en masse. The Asus Eee PCs running Android with Snapdragon processors already embed the Cortex-A9 MPCores.
"4GB RAM ought to be enough for anybody." ARMS's Achilles' heel is that it's only 32-bit, and I don't think anyone wants to go back to a segmented address space any time soon.
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Re: The End of x86?
#25I'm a web developer (C# full stack) with 2 years of experience, I have been attracted to ARM development since the moment I studied it in university.
As I'll be mostly in technical functions for some time (3 years?) what should I consider when trying an experience in ARM development? What are the pros and cons career wise and technical challenges relatively to continue to do boring CRUD C# applications?
Re: The End of x86?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
NT doesn't currently run on ARM (WP7 is still based on CE), though it was originally designed to be CPU independent. Probably the biggest obstacle for MSFT porting Windows to ARM is not the expense of the port itself, but reluctance to put out a version of Windows that's binary incompatible with all the Windows software out there. Incidentally (and speaking of breaking compatibility), MSFT is working on a brand new k…
Windows NT originally was CPU independent, but only for Little Endian architectures.
This is no problem for ARM processors since they are bi-endian (as PowerPC).
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness#Bi-endian_hardware
Re: The End of x86?
#27Is ARM's power advantage really that significant for devices larger than the smart phone / tablet form factor? If an Atom-based CPU consumes ~2-3 extra watts but offers marginally better performance and (more importantly) compatibility with an enormous base of existing applications, that doesn't seem like a very compelling argument for switching.
Except that the Atoms at same (and even a bit higher) clock don't even offer marginally better performance. And another thing that I came to think of that weighs heavily in ARM's favor is the multitude of composite, multifunctional chips, SoCs etc. currently available in the ARM flavor. Is there ANYTHING like this for Atom, or any x86 at all?
Yes, AMD's Fusion line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion) aims to provide SoC functionality.
Re: The End of x86?
#28Is ARM's power advantage really that significant for devices larger than the smart phone / tablet form factor? If an Atom-based CPU consumes ~2-3 extra watts but offers marginally better performance and (more importantly) compatibility with an enormous base of existing applications, that doesn't seem like a very compelling argument for switching.
Is ARM's power advantage really that significant for devices larger than the smart phone / tablet form factor? I'll bet $5 that the MacBook Air in the future (18-24 months) will switch to ARM once the >2GHz ARM processors start shipping en masse. The Asus Eee PCs running Android with Snapdragon processors already embed the Cortex-A9 MPCores.
You think Apple is going to switch to an architecture that breaks VMWare?
Re: The End of x86?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
"4GB RAM ought to be enough for anybody." ARMS's Achilles' heel is that it's only 32-bit, and I don't think anyone wants to go back to a segmented address space any time soon.
That's a great point. Are there any 64 bit ARM chips on the horizon? I don't know much about chips, so maybe it's not even possible given the architecture.
I don't recall hearing any announced, though I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were currently in the works. The A15 mentioned in the article, however, I believe has something in the spirit of x86's PAE that offers an expanded (36 bits or so?) physical address space, for better or for worse (better in that you can address more memory, worse in that it's kind of an ugly hack and not a great long-term solution).
Re: The End of x86?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
"4GB RAM ought to be enough for anybody." ARMS's Achilles' heel is that it's only 32-bit, and I don't think anyone wants to go back to a segmented address space any time soon.
That's a great point. Are there any 64 bit ARM chips on the horizon? I don't know much about chips, so maybe it's not even possible given the architecture.
It's possible, but just like the x86-64 transition it won't be pretty.