- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
2024 might be the breakout year for efficient ARM chips in desktop and laptop PCs.
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I really hope so… Those x86 architecture chips are killing me.
It says it a few times about x86 being decades old…but so is ARM? I dont know whats supposed to be game changing about it.
X86 has an incredible amount of cruft built up to support backwards compatibility all the way back to the 8086. ARM isn’t free of cruft, but it’s nowhere on the same level. Most of that isn’t directly visible to customers, though.
What is visible is that more than three companies can license and manufacture them. The x86 market has one company that owns it, another who licenses it but also owns the 64 bit extensions, and a third one who technically exists but is barely worth talking about. It’s also incredibly difficult to optimize, and the people who know how already work for one of main two companies (arguably only one at this point). Even if you could legally license it as a fourth player, you couldn’t get people who could design an x86 core that’s worth a damn.
Conversely, ARM cores are designed by CS students all the time. That’s the real advantage to end users: far more companies who can produce designs. If one of them fails the way Intel has of late, we’re not stuck with just one other possibility.
This entire article just to hype up Qualcomm releasing a new CPU? I havent seen any evidence to suggest that this new Qualcomm CPU won’t be trash like all the other ones.
ARM on PC isn’t happening any time soon. They’re not more efficient than x86 CPUs at all.
Here’s a speed comparison between Qualcomm and AMD’s best cpus from last year. Same TDP.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-qualcomm_snapdragon_microsoft_sq3-vs-amd_ryzen_7_7840u
Here’s Jim Keller, the father of both AMD Ryzen and the Apple M1, saying that ARM is not necessarily more efficient than x86:
https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter/
The only reason why Apple was able to make a successful ARM CPU was because they control the entire OS and the entire supply chain, and they have super expensive exclusivity contracts with TSMC. (because they literally make 50% of all phones in the world)
AMD’s x86 CPUs are actually faster and more efficient than Apple’s ARM CPUs on the same 5nm process node, but Apple is consistently 2 years ahead when it comes to silicon manufacturing, because of their TSMC deals.
Qualcomm doesn’t have any of that, and there is no way their CPUs are going to be so much better than AMD’s that people are going to be willing to put up with ISA incompatibilities. Windows on ARM has been a flop.
At least servers are more reasonable to see ARM chips, because all the software is open-source and all the major cloud vendors are making their own CPUs.
Nothing against ARM, or alternative ISAs in general, people just don’t understand that x86 vs ARM is not about power efficiency at all, it’s about supply chains and software compatibility.
Here’s a speed comparison between Qualcomm and AMD’s best cpus from last year. Same TDP.
Amd’s chip runs on 28 watts and is built on 4nm, qc’s runs on 7 watts and is built on 5nm. They are not equivalent.
AMD’s x86 CPUs are actually faster and more efficient than Apple’s ARM CPUs on the same 5nm process node, but Apple is consistently 2 years ahead when it comes to silicon manufacturing, because of their TSMC deals.
Comparing amd 7840u pro (4 nm, 28W) with apple m2 pro 10 core (5 nm, 28W), amd is 7% faster in single core and 10% faster in multi core. It’s unclear how it would be if they were on the same node. Feels they’d be the same
I think the QC chip is 28 watts too. They use the same chassis as the Intel chip.
That is a good point that AMD’s node is technically slightly newer, even though they are both 5nm class. TSMC’s N4P is claimed to be up to 5% faster or 10% more power efficient than N5P. So, fair enough, they’re about even.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-announces-n4p-process-a-refined-n4-chip-node
2024 might be the year I win a million dollars.
This is just a repeat of the same old pro-RISC myths from decades ago. There is very little performance difference between x86 and any RISC based CPU, at least when pertaining to the ISA itself. Apple merely has the advantage of having far more resources available for CPU development than their competitors.
But one detail that we cannot forget is that with the increase in ARM architecture in PCs and laptops we will probably see an increase in fully locked hardware. We don’t need the expansion of the ARM architecture for PCs if it doesn’t come with hardware and software freedom
It would be fascinating to see Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD, Mediatek, and possibly others all competing to build the best ARM SoCs for windows devices, especially after so many years of Intel stagnating and Apple eating their lunch with their ARM SoCs.
Omg the porting of games would be awfull
Ah yes, let’s welcome one device - one operating system myth to the desktops, with people choosing hardware because of software feauture that could be installable. Welcome the expiration date on computers called “years of software support” and welcome overall unfriendlyness for alternative systems.
Performance and efficency is one side of the coin. But let me remind you that Qualcomm (among with Google) is the reason we cannot have lifetime updates for our phones, ROMs build needs to be specific for each model and making a phone with anything but Android is nearly impossible.
I’ll take ARM over x86, but I’ll take AMD/Intel over Qualcomm thousand times more.
Does anyone else worry that the rise of personal computers using super custom SOCs is going to have negative effects on our abilities to build our own machines?
