Excellent writeup, Space-Penguin. Can't wait to see what designs the manufacturers come up with.
It almost appears as though Windows on ARM could become a viable desktop replacement in the near future. I'm sure Apple has their own plans to kick Intel to the curb ASAP, and I'd be willing to bet A15 is the pair of steel-toed boots they need to do the job.
Agreed. Great write up and I'm really excited to see how this is exploited in the mobile space and in creating increasingly small footprint PCs for "normal" use.
0
Mt_GoatHead Cheezy KnobPflugerville (north of Austin)Icrontian
That was one of the best reads I have processed through my grey matter in quite a while. It was exciting, informative and left me thinking new possibilities! Well done SP!
Good article with one historical quibble, the PowerPC family was first used in 1994 on Macs, Apple migrated to that from the Motorola's 680x0 processor series which had been used in Macs before that (1984-1994).
Performance in ARM chips is comparable to x86 in some use cases
Both Microsoft and Apple have OSes that run on ARM
Power consumption by ARM chips is much lower than x86
It seems logical to move to ARM designs for at least mainstream laptops and possibly desktops. If Apple can get 5-7 hours of battery life on an Air with an Intel chip, imagine what they'd get with an ARM chip.
I'd love to move past the age when we need 500W+ PSUs in performance desktops, too. We'd need a breakthrough in GPU power draw, though. Wonder how close we are?
GPUs won't budge from their current power profiles, but what is happening that people don't notice is that the performance improvements offered by GPUs at every power envelope is increasing faster than the rate software requires. In other words, today a $100 GPU with 125W of draw can deliver the same performance that once required $400 of GPU and at least 225W.
SpacePenguin
Space Member
Comments
It almost appears as though Windows on ARM could become a viable desktop replacement in the near future. I'm sure Apple has their own plans to kick Intel to the curb ASAP, and I'd be willing to bet A15 is the pair of steel-toed boots they need to do the job.
You've set your own bar quite high, sir. Can't wait for more.
- Performance in ARM chips is comparable to x86 in some use cases
- Both Microsoft and Apple have OSes that run on ARM
- Power consumption by ARM chips is much lower than x86
It seems logical to move to ARM designs for at least mainstream laptops and possibly desktops. If Apple can get 5-7 hours of battery life on an Air with an Intel chip, imagine what they'd get with an ARM chip.I'd love to move past the age when we need 500W+ PSUs in performance desktops, too. We'd need a breakthrough in GPU power draw, though. Wonder how close we are?