
Intel left outside - colinprince
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/05/computer_processors
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quacker
This is actually an article about x86 and ARM processors, rather than Intel
against ARM. If you're talking about companies, AMD is really the one playing
catch-up. But I don't see x86 going away until Windows is gone, or until
Windows becomes widely used on ARM processors (the next version of Windows
will support ARM according to Microsoft).

Intel could start serious production of ARM processors if it wanted to (and
Intel's XScale processors were/are ARM-based). It would be significant change,
but Intel has the money and engineers to make it work. I'm sure Intel could
incorporate its Tri-Gate transistors into an ARM design as well.

~~~
mey
14nm, ARM, Tri-Gate would be interesting, and given Intel's competence in R&D
they could easily leap-frog other ARM producers. The unfortunate thing is I
don't see a new instruction set gaining new ground anytime soon outside ARM
and x86 for consumer applications. I wonder what legal agreements Sun had in
place for it's RISC based SPARC chips, and if it would have made sense for
Intel to buy them to leverage their hardware division to make RISC chips for
server and handset applications. (Also would've been interesting on the
ZFS/SSD front.) (Of course Intel has never really be heavily dedicated to
software, but buying Sun would've given them that power all at once.)

~~~
DrJ
my heart stopped when I read the first 4 words, then the 5th word pulled me
back to reality.

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TheBoff
I would very much like to see ARM gain traction in the desktop market: the
whole way the x86 works is quite inelegant (longer instructions decoded into a
RISC-like 'microops').

Considering how small ARM is compared with Intel, they've done a fairly
fantastic job.

~~~
ikono
Is one actually better than the other? I know very little about these things
but it seems like ARM relies on a higher volume of simpler instructions at a
faster clock rate vs x86 which uses fewer, larger, more complex instructions
which take longer to execute. Don't you eventually get to a point where the
only way to increase performance is to use more complex instructions?

I mean at some point Intel will be able to deliver x86 CPUs in ultra low power
form factors. At the same time ARM CPUs will become increasingly powerful. Is
it clear to those that understand these things that one architecture is going
to be inherently better?

~~~
yason
Practically x86 processors since a few generations back have been internally
running on a smaller RISC-like microcode core. The x86 layer is there mostly
for the dreaded compatibility (and to prevent compilers from optimizing
directly into any RISC code ;))

~~~
ikono
Is Intel's microcode core better than other competing RISC cores? Is it really
that Intel's process is that much better? It seems like it's unanimously the
best, but it can't explain everything can it?

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this. It almost feels like
Intel has simply added a layer of abstraction. It isn't clear to me that this
is a bad thing. Intel has the flexibility of changing that microcode core as
they please without worrying about the need for everything to be recompiled if
they think of a better implementation with a different instruction set. For
very specialized low power devices ARM makes sense. For more complex systems
I'm not so sure. You see a strong movement in software towards increasing
levels of abstraction. Why would hardware be different?

Is that a fair assessment of the situation? Or am I missing something?

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doosra
The way I think Intel can get competitive is by building a system on a chip.
Think a cpu, gpu, and perhaps other cores on a single chip, consuming
relatively less power. Nvidia is doing that with an arm cpu.

~~~
trotsky
Intel does have a pretty good performing SOC with the CE4100 based on the atom
cores, they just can't get the power under control for the handheld market. I
think they're still losing against arm with the new process, though it surely
closes the gap. <http://www.anandtech.com/show/4029/the-boxee-box-review/3>

~~~
justincormack
Is it better performing than the older Atoms? My 1.6Ghz atom, with
hyperthreading, is slower than my 1ghz Tegra2 arm, per core, and the arm is
dual core. Depending on the benchmark the arm is up to about 50% faster on
single core benchmarks. And the arm is lower power...

~~~
trotsky
There are a number of different generations of atom cores and ARM cores of
course. I don't have raw benchmarks, but my impression was that CE4100 at 1.2
was beating the previous gen of ARM at 1. D-link/Boxee was based on the tegra
2 platform and famously had to add 6 months to their development cycle
switching to the CE4100 because the tegra 2 wasn't performing well enough for
them - though I don't know the specifics there of what task wasn't performing
well enough.

