CPU/Mobo ARM vs INTEL vs AMD

[Amax]

Hi TE members,

It seems that we had enough debate on "INTEL vs AMD". But hold on its not over yet, a new contender has dropped in. Gear up for the new buzz

ARM vs INTEL vs AMD​

What is ARM?
ARM is the new architecture of chips. Right now A4 which powers iPads are using ARM chips. Nvidia's new line of mobile chips Tegra are based on ARM architecture.

Wait wait!

Now u might be asking that "A4 powers ipad" and how are they gona support laptops?
Well thats what Apple says, they are moving laptop line and presumbly desktop too, to ARM base chips as soon as possible. Apple made a significant investment on it ARM architecture R & D. Apple even made the bold move to take ARM processor design in house with the acquisitions P. A. Semi and Intrinsity.

A transition of such magnitude is hard to imagine, but Apple had done that before from PowerPC to Intel's processor wayback successfully.

NVIDIA head Huang Jen-Hsun said, "The iPad has already killed netbooks, and now it’s starting to do the same to laptops. Within five years, the iPad might even kill off the Mac", says NVIDIA… replacing it with ARM-based machines that can outperform even the speediest Intel processors". link

I know nobody can believe that ARM chips can replace or match some of the mainstream chips of Intel, but lets see only time will tell. But Apple will leave no stone unturn if they actual mean what they say...

.. and so far AMD is concern, first let them catch up INTEL

 

[Superbad]

As long as i do not have to sell my or anybody else's kidney for an upgrade i welcome the chip wars.
and yes the ipad killed the netbook along with the chinese guy who sold his kidney.
I hope you get my point.

 

[cyberwarfare]

@ggt

my gawd tht chinese kid was stupid

@op

arm is a great architecture but i doubt it can give the performance required for HPC

well only time will tell

 

[damn]

At least for the foreseeable decade I doubt anyone has enough resources to compete with Intel. With Apple's support they can try but I'm guessing it'll be a walkover for quite a while.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

OP: You seem to have a lot of misconceptions and considerable lack of knowledge on the subject you have written here. Let me clear up some things for you.

It seems that we had enough debate on "INTEL vs AMD". But hold on its not over yet, a new contender has dropped in. Gear up for the new buzz

There are only two architectures in discussion here. x86 and ARM. x86 is being used by Intel and AMD in their desktop/laptop chips. ARM on the other hand is employed by a considerably more number of players which includes Intel.

ARM vs INTEL vs AMD​

​

It should be x86 vs ARM if anything.

What is ARM?

ARM is the new architecture of chips.

There is nothing new about ARM. It has been around in the market for 14 years now and used in a variety of devices. Even Intel has dabbled in the ARM architecture and has their XScale chips developed along with Marvell.

Right now A4 which powers iPads are using ARM chips. Nvidia's new line of mobile chips Tegra are based on ARM architecture.

Those are only the latest of entrants to have used the ARM Architecture. ARM was in widespread use even before A4 or Tegra came along.

Now u might be asking that "A4 powers ipad" and how are they gona support laptops?

Well thats what Apple says, they are moving laptop line and presumbly desktop too, to ARM base chips as soon as possible. Apple made a significant investment on it ARM architecture R & D. Apple even made the bold move to take ARM processor design in house with the acquisitions P. A. Semi and Intrinsity.

Actually, Apple owns very little of the computer market to make any real impact. MS owns 89% of the desktop OS market, so it is them that can impact the market with the support for ARM architectures in Windows 8. Also MS is not intending ARM CPUs to replace x86. Both have their own roles and they are going to co exist with the difference being the reduced gap between what kind of applications are running on either architecture. ARM is not a replacement for x86 at least anytime soon. As for Apple, they have long since neglected and abandoned their professional and power user market to go after the casual market, so It doesn't really matter even if they intend to switch out x86 for ARM in their laptops and desktops immediately.

A transition of such magnitude is hard to imagine, but Apple had done that before from PowerPC to Intel's processor wayback successfully.

That was possible for the simple reason that NeXT OS and Software and was originally built for x86 and then ported to RISC. So when Apple had to migrate to Intel CPU's, they already had the OS running on x86 since the last 12~20 years. They have had builds for both architectures for a long time. It is not really surprising considering the OS is built on Free BSD.

http://www.cultofmac.com/nvidia-macs-will-run-on-arm-processors-within-five-years/97681

I know nobody can believe that ARM chips can replace or match some of the mainstream chips of Intel, but lets see only time will tell. But Apple will leave no stone unturn if they actual mean what they say...

Again it is MS who can currently decide the fate of these architectures and for the near foreseeable future, it looks like both are going to co-exist. x86 on powerful desktops and ARM on portable devices.

 

[Amax]

Lord.. Thanks for the enlightment...

But ARM(Advanced Risc Machines Ltd.) was founded by Acorn, Apple and VLSI in 1990.

ARM's licensing system is designed to be relatively flexible and includes both fixed and flexible patterns. The Samsung-designed chips in current iPhones and iPod touch players, are based on a fixed ARM design that only has slight customizations to meet particular needs. A more open option lets license actually change the architecture itself past the original license; Apple has the rights to this and may have adjusted the Apple A4 for power efficiency.

As Apple already owns PA Semi, it can make a large number of the changes without needing outside help.

Rumors are on buzz that Apple eyeing ARM, harder to imagine anything like that going through. With Apple sitting on heap of $40 billion, such possibilities remains. But any acquisition would also face legal implications, as the company would either have to continue offering equal licenses to rivals or risk lawsuits from phone makers if it cut off licenses. Google,Microsoft, LG, Marvell, Nokia and Samsung all depends on ARM's technology to run their business and they are sure to start a bidding war if they believe ARM is in play.

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft announced that it's forthcoming new Windows version would also support ARM processors. So, we appear to have a situation where both Apple and Microsoft are embracing ARM technology to at least some degree - and possibly quite soon for Microsoft.

It is quite visible as why Steve Jobs would not like owing the intellectual property behind the world's cell phone chips and happily licensing it to competitors who are building phones with Google and Microsoft. They are most likely to do same for laptops and desktops.

Apple is one heck of a company competing against all, against all odds(OS,Phone,phoneOS,hardware...)

 

[raxy]

More competition is always beneficial for us consumers......

 

[Crazy_Eddy]

Not to add the massive difference in raw computation power between current x86 and ARM procs.

An average x86 proc has atleast 10~100x more FLOPS/MIPS over an ARM proc.

MS owns 89% of the desktop OS market, so it is them that can impact the market with the support for ARM architectures in Windows 8. Also MS is not intending ARM CPUs to replace x86. Both have their own roles and they are going to co exist with the difference being the reduced gap between what kind of applications are running on either architecture.

Saw this somewhere. Are they planning to just add ARM support to the full featured Win 8 builds, or are they going to spin off some stripped down tablet edition or something?

 

[linuxtechie]

^Not more, healthy competition is beneficial.

 

[asingh]

Again it is MS who can currently decide the fate of these architectures and for the near foreseeable future, it looks like both are going to co-exist. x86 on powerful desktops and ARM on portable devices.

Really nice write up Lord Nemesis. But this line of yours sticks in my mind. Though M$ controls the OS share, they literally have this much power over hardware architecture..? Why so..?

 

[avi]

^If they just stick to x86 and make there OS not compatible with ARM ? :ashamed:

 

[pratikb]

in that case linux takes hold in form of android and iOS also moves forward march.

which MS does not want.

No company in its right sense wants to loose upcoming opportunity like tablets and portable devices.

AMD lost its CEO in this ignorance on Tablets markets,which is so far monopoly of Apple.

so every company wants a share of this tablet Pie so all this support for ARM architecture.

early tablets based on intel's atom architecture are lagging behind in performance and they are overheating.

if I had that big money,I would have surely bought shares of Qualcomm and ARM.

those two guys will be ruling market of portables for sure.

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

current PC market is saturated so MS wants to tap newer markets to keep cash registers moving at regular pace.

just yesterday i read about Elope and nokia on bloomberg magzine.

its big money.

and I am sure in span of 2-3 yrs MS will be catching up with Apple in portables market.

their Win8 demo's are awesome and frankly win phone 7 with mango is fantastic change.

its sure shot to bring nokia and MS out in major form in current apple dominated market.

 

[hellknight_mnd]

Jen Heun Tsang paagal ho gaya hai.. What innovation did NVIDIA do besides 3D Vision? Nothing, AMD is kicked their butt in every department.. I agree ARM is growing exponentially but its not going to kill x86.. Moreover, some of the software like 3DS Max, Maya etc require ultra-powerful CPUs which is still the domain of Intel & AMD

 

[taher]

the main advantage of ARM is power efficiency ofcourse with its limitations but that's the biggest strenght......so yes in segments that is critical factor to consider (mobile gadgets) it will impact x86 architecture.........and in future their might be applications speicially written for ARM architecture but there is still a long way to go though people are talking about ARM for servers..

in near what i presume may happen is

atom may perish......once the tablets start invading its price range with some decent specs such as dual core cpu and 1gb ram well this will be clear only after introduction of next generation atom

their wont be any impact on desktop computing in near future

anyhow i very strongly believe both will co-exist with their strengths utilized in their fields

this debate is similar to that the "GPU's will replace the CPU's"

 

[comp@ddict]

I'm loving Microsoft and ARM native compatibility.

Personally, I would like to see ultra-light 13.3-14" notebooks with cheap ARM processors under 200$ if possible.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

But ARM(Advanced Risc Machines Ltd.) was founded by Acorn, Apple and VLSI in 1990.

ARM Holdings was founded in 1990, but the ARM architecture appeared much earlier. According to Wikipedia, the first ARM based products were introduced in 1987 and they were intended to be used in Acron's own computers. The popularity of PC and Mac's slowly killed that idea.

Not to add the massive difference in raw computation power between current x86 and ARM procs.

An average x86 proc has atleast 10~100x more FLOPS/MIPS over an ARM proc.

Saw this somewhere. Are they planning to just add ARM support to the full featured Win 8 builds, or are they going to spin off some stripped down tablet edition or something?

MS has already started demonstrating builds of Windows 8 on both x86 and ARM. From what I can see, Window 8 is like a Windows Phone 7 like UI running on top of Windows 7 which can be switched out for the regular interface anytime. They are touting the fact that you will have the full power of Windows and the Touch friendly UI. The apps will be in HTML5, Javascript and .NET. HTML5 and JS are already platform independent and .NET requires only the run times to be made for ARM to be able to use all the existing applications. What MS is not talking about is support for native applications. Considering they are in x86 object code, I don't think ARM will be ever able to run those.

 

[pratikb]

it may not come to 200$ as intel subsidized meego tablet is coming at that point but it has its disadvantage of poor ecosystem and heat issues.
and microsoft tablet I am expecting around 350 to 400 $ mark.although both MS and Intel are subsidizing tablets.
MS has already put Strict control on tablet will run on which chipset just like WP7.
i will expect 200 $ mark on WP7 in this yr.nokia will pump out some unique handsets and to compete with it,current guys will cut prices.
lets see.
its exciting time to watch.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

Really nice write up Lord Nemesis. But this line of yours sticks in my mind. Though M$ controls the OS share, they literally have this much power over hardware architecture..? Why so..?

Well they are in control of the majority of OS market and have done so for the past many years, so they will of course definitely have control over the course of hardware architecture as well. End users don't care about the hardware architecture, what they care about is the hardware features and software. If they are running their favorite apps on Windows, they would like to run them the same way in future as well. Switching to something entirely different is costly and counter productive. People would keep buying any architecture that supports the OS that they have used over the years and runs their most used software. If AMD had stopped supporting x86 and come up with their own entirely different architecture back in the 586 era, would they have had come to their current position? I don't think so. They had to continue with x86 in order to be compatible with the most widely used OS. So yes, software can drive hardware architecture.

Now that Both Intel and AMD CPU's can run Windows, does that mean that one can completely take over the other? While both support the x86 instruction set, both have a completely different architecture. Still both of them have their own customer bases. Both of them have their strengths and weaknesses based on which people choose, but they still co exist. Its the same for ARM. If Windows 8 supports ARM, people who were reluctant to buy ARM based tablets would start buying them for Windows 8. It would bring their tablets and smart phones work more seamlessly with their desktops. It doesn't mean ARM will replace x86. Both have their own strengths. x86 has raw performance and ARM has power efficiency.

Its like this.

If MS doesn't support ARM, It wouldn't put any major dent in their PC Market though it may put some dent in the ultra portable (I am refereing to UMPCs, tablets and Netbooks) market which btw MS never had much control of in the past.
If MS supports ARM at the cost of x86, it would put a major (probably catastrophic) dent on MS, Intel and AMD.

If MS supports ARM in addition to x86, it would make a lot of people buy ARM based tablets, Netbooks and Smartphones in addition to their PC's.

 

[rahul21]

if windows has been ported (with all its libraries) then all native destkop application will work on ARM also , since native applications are run by windows a uses windows libraries . Problem will be with games which directly uses hardware for performance .

 

[pratikb]

ms would support both X86 and ARM,they want as maximum revenue as possible and they will control hardware specifications to maximum to keep it consistent across devices.