
Chips of convergence - Apple and the ARM switch - apress
http://theorangeview.net/2011/05/chips-of-convergence/
======
zdw
Personally, I don't see this happening soon. 64-bit ARM is in it's infancy
([http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-
news/4210884/ARM-64-bit-C...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-
news/4210884/ARM-64-bit-CPU-coming-soon--says-report)), and in the timeframes
given >4GB of memory is going to be standard.

Getting a new CPU instruction set going is hard work - the original AMD64
instruction set took 3-4 years to get mainstream Linux support, and without
any hardware or software emulators out there to aide development...

~~~
wriq
You think it would require much more work than just a recompile? With the
similarities between iOS/OSX and Apple's investment in the LLVM toolchain I
see the switch going smoother than PPC -> x86.

~~~
zdw
For any performance intensive tasks, yes. Especially gaming.

That said, the entire computer industry is going ARM (Windows 8, all mobile
platforms, etc.) so I'm guessing that the transition will be easier.

There's much less tight x86 assembly for critical performance areas than was
commonplace 10 years ago.

------
ianferrel
I wonder how important the ability to virtualize Windows is to Apple
converting Windows users?

My impression is that it's quite important. Even if people don't end up using
Windows for much, they know that they can, and that significantly lowers the
risks and cost of transition.

If future versions of Windows run on ARM and Microsoft does a good job of
handling compatibility with older software, this might not be a major issue.
But I'd bet that it's still a major consideration.

~~~
nupark2
I think it matters more for mid-range business market, less so for the home
consumer that may find an iPad already meets most of their needs.

Personally, Windows virtualization is an unfortunate requirement I have due to
Windows-only hardware development tools.

I'm still pissed at Atmel for basing their modern AVR Studio 5 on Visual
Studio, rather than on the Eclipse-based work they did for the previous
version of AVR32 Studio.

------
nupark2
Apple will require CPU emulation to support legacy software releases (think
Creative Suite, MS Office, ...); whether this can be done with reasonable
performance on ARM is the first real question.

After that, why not make a switch? We (developers) can support ARM just as
easily as x86-64, x86-32, and PPC. There are some specific areas that will
require rework (games!), but investments are already being made there to
support iOS.

