
The Coming War: ARM versus x86 - signa11
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/print/2010/4/7/the-coming-war-arm-versus-x86.aspx
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lsc
eh, when I can buy a arm netbook with a reasonable keyboard, I will do so.

If someone wants to sell a high-density rack of ARM boards,I'll buy those too
(and rent them out.)

Right now, the available arm boards i've found cost about as much as the atom
boards, while the atom supports 4GiB ram, and the arm boards usually come with
256MiB.

Obviously, this makes the arm boards I've found commercially infeasible for
the sort of hosting I sell. I don't think it's anything inherent to the arm
architecture, I think there just isn't anyone currently designing arm boards
for people doing what I do.

~~~
kaib
> If someone wants to sell a high-density rack of ARM boards,I'll buy those
> too

I'd love to see something like this as well. Just CPU, memory and networking
(disks can be served from other machines).

~~~
cperciva
_Just CPU, memory and networking (disks can be served from other machines)._

I'd like to see ARM boards with disks attached. I have a recurring daydream of
having a cheap ARM board I can plug into the back of a SATA drive to give it
an ethernet port and a small amount of application logic.

When you get right down to it, the two places where disk is most important --
bulk data storage and database back-end storage -- need vanishingly small
amounts of CPU power. Why buy a general-purpose rackmount box costing $1000
and 200W to put your disks into if you can get an ARM board costing $80 and
5W?

~~~
wmf
There's a very interesting paper about an archival storage system built with
that kind of hardware:
[http://www.usenix.org/events/fast08/tech/full_papers/storer/...](http://www.usenix.org/events/fast08/tech/full_papers/storer/storer_html/)

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sliverstorm
The article attempted to spend it's time pushing ARM, and I'm a big fan of
ARM.

Yet I couldn't help but come away primarily very impressed by the VIA chip.

~~~
msbarnett
The performance was great, but the report makes it clear that it's very Apples
to Oranges.

> The AMD and VIA systems are inappropriate for power comparisons because they
> are based on desktop hardware.

~~~
sliverstorm
I know, but it's still very cool to see a company that isn't even the third
most prominent company doing so well. Especially when they make embedded and
non-x86 chips, too.

When I say 'third', I'm attempting to make an awkward reference how I see
politics. There are Democrats and Republicans (AMD and Intel), and that's
where most of the struggle happens. Then you have the Green Party, hanging out
as a third wheel (who I'd equate to PPC), and then you have the Libertarians.
I would equate VIA to the Libertarians. I don't know how they are doing as
compared to the Green Party, but said Party sure got a lot more press when I
was growing up.

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MikeCapone
I'd love to see ARM compete more directly with x86. Ever since AMD stopped
really being able to compete with Intel on tech, x86 has been in need of more
healthy competition (even if, to Intel's credit, it hasn't been resting on its
laurels).

Anything that makes our chips faster, more power-efficient, and cheaper is
very welcome.

I wonder if combining ARM with GPGPU could help it push into x86 platforms...

~~~
lsc
now, ever since Intel copied AMD's hyper transport architecture, people have
been saying that it's over for AMD. I don't really get it, as the 12 core AMD
systems are extremely impressive, for loads that thread well enough to use
that many cores.

In recent memory, it seems that Intel has been following AMD technologically,
albeit at higher clock speeds. First, they copied the amd64 instruction set,
and then they copied the hyper transport architecture. Right now, it looks
like Intel occupies the high end of the market, but as far as I can tell,
their lead is based as much on superior sales ability than on any
technological lead.

For loads that thread well, they beat the intel chips both in work done per
watt consumed, and they absolutely destroy intel chips on cost to acquire, so
I'm not sure why people seem to think that AMD is down for the count.

~~~
Groxx
Less advertisement for AMD gets my vote.

Given their purchasing of ATI and as many of the best GPU workers as they
could get their hands on, I think they're gearing up for a big blow
eventually. But there's _definitely_ more news about Intel's omg-latest-and-
greatest, from what I've seen.

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kittenparade
If anybody in the UK is interested, Sophie Wilson (who designed the original
ARM instruction set) will be speaking about her time at Acorn at the Vintage
Computer Festival (Bletchley Park) on June 19th/20th

[http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/calendar/event_detail.rhtm?c...](http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/calendar/event_detail.rhtm?cat=special&recID=594620)

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mustpax
I'm surprised nobody here is talking about the instruction set architecture
aspect of this. CISC won the first round of RISC vs. CISC saga.

X86 is bloated, legacy mess. It has been riding on the coattails of Intel's
success in marketing ("Intel Inside"), silicon wafer production process (a
couple generations ahead of AMD), and Microsoft's desktop platform (which only
runs on X86).

RISC is a better architecture that should have won, and it's finally going to
get its time in the sun.

~~~
ergo98
_Checks Watch_

Is it 1989 again?

We've had these horribly boring CISC versus RISC arguments since back in the
late 80s/early 90s.

Your arguments for why x86 keeps winning are ridiculous.

As to RISC versus CISC, in some ways the former is like "native code" and the
latter is like "VM byte code" (ala Java byte code, .NET byte code). The former
is heavily optimized, but can't adapt well to different hardware/environments,
while the latter isn't as fast out of the gate, but it can be heavily
optimized.

Which is exactly what every modern processor does. X86 to a Xeon is just like
Java byte-code, and gets interpreted into something very different in the
magical internals of the processor.

~~~
mustpax
Your analogy to native vs. byte code is apt, but the question is not whether
we can JIT-compile byte code to run as fast as native code (we can). The
question is, what instruction set allows us to write the best compilers. I
would argue that the answer is RISC.

Every time Intel adds yet another instruction for doing the same thing, it
makes every compiler's job harder. Intel's C compiler is faster than most
others because they know their overly convoluted instruction set best. Simpler
instruction set means more resources to focus on the few instructions that
exist both for the chip manufacturer and the compiler vendors.

On a somewhat related note, Java byte code uses a very-Reduced ISC, a simple
stack machine.

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achille
I don't get it -- I read through the entire review and I was hard pressed to
find where ARM shined.

The VIA chip was faster in most tests, Intel followed, the aging AMD chip came
usually third and ARM last.

The Intel Atom used ~3x more power and delivered ~2x the performance.

The Arm chip had issues running several tests, had graphics issues and its
memory channel was limited.

Why again was the author talking so highly of ARM?

~~~
gvb
The Innovator's Dilemma explains why. The response "I don't get it -- I read
through the entire review and I was hard pressed to find where ________
shined" is exactly what entrenched companies said a year or two before they
were destroyed by the lower capability (but growing) competitors.

In The Innovator's Dilemma, Christensen spends quite a bit of time on the disk
drive case study, where _over several generational transitions_ the entrenched
bigger-faster-better companies when under because they could not match their
lower capability (smaller, but more expensive in the case of hard drives)
competitors. When the competitors broke out of their niches and into the
mainline with size competitive products, they destroyed the entrenched
companies with their cost advantages.

ARM _owns_ the low power niche and now it is threatening to catch up with
Intel - being "good enough" - in low value moderate performance market. The
traditional response of an entrenched company is to retreat to "higher
ground," in this case more complex, faster desktops and servers. The problem
is, "higher ground" has limited height and the low areas of that high ground
keep eroding. Intel is addressing the threat with lower power (and slower)
chips - the Atom.

It will be very interesting to see if Intel can stave off their dilemma and
become competitive with ARM on the low power, moderate performance, _extremely
low cost_ front... and that last part _extremely low cost_ is both the key and
Intel's Achilles heel.

References:

* [http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Busin...](http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business-Essentials/dp/0060521996)

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology>

~~~
stcredzero
> ARM owns the low power niche and now it is threatening to catch up with
> Intel - being "good enough" - in low value moderate performance market. The
> traditional response of an entrenched company is to retreat to "higher
> ground," in this case more complex, faster desktops and servers.

So Intel, like Sun, will be _trapped at the high-end of irrelevance?_

Is Apple pulling the same catch-up maneuver with "good enough" general
computing capabilities on the iPad? (Or are they going to be trapped at the
high end of irrelevance by Google and Android on commodity multitouch
tablets?)

~~~
gvb
> So Intel, like Sun, will be _trapped at the high-end of irrelevance?_

It is too early to tell, but there is a large risk of this. Intel has tried
several times to break out of, go beyond, the x86 architecture and has mostly
failed at this.

Examples are:

* iAPX 432 "object oriented" processor - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432>

* i960 RISC processor - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960>

* Itanium VLIW processor which has had limited succes - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium>

* Larrabee - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(microarchitecture)>

> Is Apple pulling the same catch-up maneuver with "good enough" general
> computing capabilities on the iPad? (Or are they going to be trapped at the
> high end of irrelevance by Google and Android on commodity multitouch
> tablets?)

The _Innovator's Dilemma_ focuses on the niche markets where companies hone
their skills, and then the niche markets "expand upwards" into a commodity
market, undercutting and toppling the market leaders.

Apple is a very interesting company from the _Innovator's Dilemma_ point of
view. They have a interesting history of _creating_ innovations themselves and
_also_ commanding a premium for those innovations. I think Apple's "secret
sauce" is to create innovations in _style_ (especially) and _implementation_
(It Just Works[tm]) which are very difficult for competitors to duplicate.
This allows them to both be a market leader and command a price premium.
Essentially Apple has been successful in self-defining their market in such a
way as to exclude the innovator's dilemma.

What I'm trying to say is, if you let the market define you, you are
vulnerable to the innovator's dilemma. Apple does an incredible job of
defining their own market and not conceding that control to outside forces.
They do this, not by asking customers what they want (and thus being
constrained by their customers' imaginations), but by being more imaginative
than their customers.

Henry Ford supposedly said "If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would
have asked for a better horse."
[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Henry_Ford#.22If_I.E2.80.9...](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Henry_Ford#.22If_I.E2.80.99d_asked_people_what_they_wanted.2C_they_would_have_asked_for_a_better_horse.22)

~~~
hga
They also failed with the VLIW i860 RISC processor.

I think it's too early to count Larrabee out; it was a failure at hitting its
market window for a stand along GPU, but that doesn't mean it won't eventually
make it there or that it won't find other e.g. HPC uses. Although it is a
x86_64 design.

ADDED: Larrabee is anything but dead:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1392534>

[http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/2010053...](http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/20100531comp.htm)

<http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=4413541>

Their 48 cores of 32 bit x86s chip with no hardware cache coherency experiment
might also bear fruit (ADDED: the follow on Knights Corner (22nm, > 50 cores
and not all of them x86) to the above might incorporate some of its
technology), but for now that's a Zero units project (i.e. they'll ship around
50 parts to various research labs to play with it).

And they did "break out" of the original x86 by moving to AMD's x86_64, which
is wildly successful....

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c00p3r
What war? ARM already won the next generation of the mobile consumer devices.
There are tens of millions of them sold.

x86-based smartphones, MIDs or even tablets are nonsense, just because the
only goal of x86 is Windows binary compatibility. Anyone needs Windows 7 on
their [i]phone?

ARM with Android is the new mainstream for the mobile segment, while atom-
based low-powered linux "servers" is just a small niche for systems involved
in monitoring and other low-intensity tasks.

~~~
hga
According to Wikipedia, 10 billion (thousand million) sold as of January 2008
and it's predicted that 5 billion will be sold in 2011. The current yearly
rate broke 1 billion in 2005 or earlier.

