ARM vs x86: What's the Future Hold?

[Timman_24]

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the increase of ARM cpu power while Intel/AMD tries to reduce power consumption of the x86 processor. Currently, ARM is nowhere near as powerful as traditional PC processors, but they are steadily increasing. The next iteration of ARM will be 40% faster clock for clock than the previous generation, be scalable to 8 cores, and will clock at up to 2.5Ghz all while having a TDP in the single digits. Intel needs to begin trying to break into the low power cpu market and are currently developing the Atom processor family further. Intel's new Z6 series will have a TDP of 3W, which is still much higher than the ARM family processors.

Eventually the two companies will cross paths (Intel looking for lower power, ARM looking for more performance.) Rumors are swirling that ARM processors will be ready to replace Intel/AMD processors in laptops by 2015. Rumors are also coming out of Apple saying that the MacBook Pro line will be moving to Apple's A# series of processors in the future allowing Apple full control over the design of their processors while simply licensing the cores from ARM. This would be a dream come true for Apple since they will then have control over all the components in their computers. It is doubtful that ARM will be in their desktop solutions any time soon.

Windows 8 will support the ARM architecture. This begs the question, what does the future hold for desktops? Intel won't go down swinging, but the future looks much different in a world were ARM is becoming more powerful. An ARM in a HTPC would be incredible, very low power consumption. They already have Android smart phones that plug into kb/m and hook to a monitor.

What say you guys? Is ARM a strong contender or do you think they will simply stay in the low end laptop and mobile market?

The most powerful ARM supercomputer in the world:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/24378..._in_spain.html

[ua549]

Here is one possibility.

[James]

SoC isn't anything new, and many designs use ARM based architectures. Take your cable box for example. Most of those are ARM based SoC's. Problem is, 99% of the time, the people using ARM are doing it for cost. And when they architect a solution, they do just enough. So it's laggy, slow, etc. But it works. Therefore it is "good enough". I personally hate good enough. While I don't think you should completely overpower something, you should always build in headroom for situations you can't think about.

[drdoom]

We can always use another CPU company. Smart phone CPU's are a lot different from desktop CPU's so it's going to be a long time before the markets cross. You have to throw in APU's in the mix too. Of course, most people still use their computer for basic task that don't need much power which is why the smart phone market is big. I just hope the lower power "good enough" CPU market doesn't stifle development of high performance desktop CPU's.

[Timman_24]

ARM processors can't handle the very general tasks that our desktop processors can, but for simple word processing, listening to music, and surfing the web they are fine. My worry is that mainstream computers are going to become more narrowly focused to "consumer" tasks instead of being made for general use. I would hate to have gaming/content-creation/encoding/professional-task computers being a very small focus of the chip manufacturers only to have us get small developments in those fields coupled with niche-market high prices.

[ua549]

IMO that is exactly what we'll see. The day of the general purpose desktop computer is fading fast.
There are graphics workstations for video editing and other high end precise graphics applications.
There are game consoles for fast, but imprecise graphics.
Notebooks and other portables can be general purpose, but are limited by the peripherals.
There are tablets and smart phones for very limited, but ultra portable applications.

October saw the last desktop computer on my network sent for recycling. What remains on my home network are all special purpose machines - 3 notebooks, 1 server, 1 workstation, 2 TV's and other AV equipment, 2 smart phones, a few picture frames and the network equipment. Everything is specialized.

[Squirrel Meat]

well seeing the trend in tablets and phones, the idea of an app is pretty cool imo. extremely small, all the basic functions are there and takes less than half the processing power to run at almost the same speed (getting there)....pretty cool if you ask me. Timman-you are probably right about specialized computer coming VERY soon. All basic computing can be done on super low power "slow" but very efficient tablets and phones. the only reason you will need an actual computer is for PROGRAMS that need the speed eg; video rendering, audio editing, and high end gaming just to name a few. not to mention rright now all those things are just so much easier with a kb + m. also seeing how apps on tablets/phones are soooooo much cheaper and can do most of the things that you need, its not really a matter of if the table/phone can do it, its gonna be whats more affordable to the general population and I honestly dont know many people who would rather spend hundreds of dollars on software to run on their thousand dollar machine when they could spend one dollar on their four hundred dollar tablet or their one hundred dollar phone and they can take it anywhere.
hell, i use my computer more for streaming than i do anything else these days (streaming blu-rays to my media box on my tv, streaming apps to my phone, ect.)
ill be picking up a tablet this christmas to replace the need for college books as you can find most of them for free or really cheap in e-book form and the savings will pay for tablet in one quarter or mabey 2.
I know this discussion was inteded to discuss the processors in general but my point is that the mainstream market simply dosent care, they want products that do what they want for cheap and thats what these devices do. how many people have you come across that talk about their dual core phones? ive met only a couple and they are in my CIS class haha. only the techy nerds like us actually care. these devices WILL get faster, they WILL get more power efficient, they WILL get cheaper and they WILL be here for a long time.
I am very curious to see whats going to happen in the next few years. The tablet im getting is the Asus transformer prime which is a quad core and they are realising quad core phones the first quarter of next year. how banana sandwhich is that???!!! its just getting better and better.