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Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

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Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#61

Post by cmrdporcupine »

dinglo wrote: post #6

If ARM starts dominating in desktop and laptop spaces with a quite different set of applications, might we start seeing more software bugs around race conditions? Caused by developers writing software with X86 in mind, with its differing constraints on memory ordering.

This is actually one reason I feel like developing my systems level stuff on ARM64 instead of x86 (I have a DGX Spark box) is not a bad idea. Building lower level concurrent data structures, etc. it just seems wiser to have to deal with this more immanently.

That said, I've never actually run into one of these issues.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#62

Post by buran77 »

amelius wrote: post #57
ghosty141 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be? All he is saying: We currently have products in a similar product category (arm based desktop computers) that are widely used and have known benchmark scores (and general reviews) and it would make sense if I publish a new cpu for the same product category ("Reaching Desktop Performance" implies that) that I'd compare it to the known alternatives. In the end you can just run Asahi on your macbook, t…

But why would an article address _their_ specific usecase?

> But why would an article address _their_ specific usecase?

amelius, if anyone had specific requirements, it was you with your "systems for in-flight entertainment".

OP asked a very reasonable question for a very generic comparison to the 800-pound gorilla in the consumer CPU world in general, and ARM CPU world in particular.

If the article can reference AMD's Zen 5 cores and Intel's Lion/Sunny Cove, they could have made at least a brief reference to M-series CPUs. As a reader and potential buyer of any of them, I find it would have been a very useful comparison.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#63

Post by charcircuit »

amelius wrote: post #13
pdpi wrote: post #2

Kind of weird to see an article about high-performance ARM cores without a single reference to Apple or how this hardware compares to M4 or M5 cores.

Apple does not produce general purpose computing parts. This is an industry blog, not a consumer oriented blog.

M4 and M5 are literally general purpose computing parts. Apple literally owns the most profitable general purpose computing platform with the iPhone.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#64

Post by cmrdporcupine »

hylaride wrote: post #60
DeathArrow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of a solution in search for a problem. RISC-V will grow only if people find some value in it. If it solves their actual problems in ways that other architectures can't.

Yeah, the primary reason RISC-V exists is political (the desire to have an "open source" CPU architecture). As noble as that may be, it's not enough to get people or companies to use (or even manufacture!) it. It'll either be economical (costs) and/or performance (including efficiency) that drives people. It took ARM decades to get to where it is, and that involved a long stint in low-margin niche applications like e…

I don't think that's the primary reason there's momentum there. The reason is to avoid ARM licensing fees and IP usage restrictions.

I think you'll see ever more accelerating RISC-V adoption in China if the United States continues on its "cold war" style mentality about relations with them.

That said we're a long long way from Actually Existing RISC-V being at performance parity with ARM64, let alone x86.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#65

Post by amelius »

buran77 wrote: post #62
amelius wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would an article address _their_ specific usecase?

> But why would an article address _their_ specific usecase? amelius, if anyone had specific requirements, it was you with your "systems for in-flight entertainment". OP asked a very reasonable question for a very generic comparison to the 800-pound gorilla in the consumer CPU world in general, and ARM CPU world in particular. If the article can reference AMD's Zen 5 cores and Intel's Lion/Sunny Cove, they could have…

In industry, people want to take computing parts and build products with them.

This is not possible with Apple parts.

That's what my example was about. It was only specific because I wanted to have a concrete example.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#68

Post by buran77 »

amelius wrote: post #65
buran77 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But why would an article address _their_ specific usecase? amelius, if anyone had specific requirements, it was you with your "systems for in-flight entertainment". OP asked a very reasonable question for a very generic comparison to the 800-pound gorilla in the consumer CPU world in general, and ARM CPU world in particular. If the article can reference AMD's Zen 5 cores and Intel's Lion/Sunny Cove, they could have…

In industry, people want to take computing parts and build products with them. This is not possible with Apple parts. That's what my example was about. It was only specific because I wanted to have a concrete example.

> In industry

Talk about specifics, eh? Didn't you just argue against an article addressing "_their_" specific usecase?

In a store people will ask "is this better than an Apple?".

And I'll tell you one more thing, when I was in the industry and taking computing parts to build products with them I did not form an opinion by reading internet reviews. I haven't met anyone who did.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#69

Post by sylware »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #64
hylaride wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the primary reason RISC-V exists is political (the desire to have an "open source" CPU architecture). As noble as that may be, it's not enough to get people or companies to use (or even manufacture!) it. It'll either be economical (costs) and/or performance (including efficiency) that drives people. It took ARM decades to get to where it is, and that involved a long stint in low-margin niche applications like e…

I don't think that's the primary reason there's momentum there. The reason is to avoid ARM licensing fees and IP usage restrictions. I think you'll see ever more accelerating RISC-V adoption in China if the United States continues on its "cold war" style mentality about relations with them. That said we're a long long way from Actually Existing RISC-V being at performance parity with ARM64, let alone x86.

Yep, licensing fee and IP usage restrictions is a massive decision point on some silicon markets.

The other massive point: RISC-V integrates a lot of CPU "we know now" in a very elegant "sweet spot".

And it is not china only, the best implementations are US, and RISC-V is a US/berkley initiative re-centered in switzerland for "neutrality" reasons.

If good large RISC-V implementations do reach TMSC silicon process (5GHz), some markets won't even look at arm or x86 anymore.

And there is the ultimate "standard ISA" point: assembly written code then become very appropriate, hence strong de-coupling from all those, very few, backdoor injecting compilers.

On many of my personal projects, I don't bother anymore: I write RISC-V assembly which I run with a small x86_64 interpreter, that with a very simple pre-processor and assembler, aka SDK toolchain complexity close to 0 compared to the other abominations.

And I think the main drawback is: big mistakes will be made, and you must account for them.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#70

Post by senko »

charcircuit wrote: post #63
amelius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not produce general purpose computing parts. This is an industry blog, not a consumer oriented blog.

M4 and M5 are literally general purpose computing parts. Apple literally owns the most profitable general purpose computing platform with the iPhone.

Perhaps this was worded poorly, but the parent is referring to inability to source these processors from Apple and use them in other (non-Apple devices).

As in, they don't sell you the parts, they only sell you the entire product. If you don't want the entire package, the processors alone are irrelevant.

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