3 ms·
Why arm?
by snissn 10y ago
Why arm?
- nickpsecurity 10y agoThe ecosystem. That's its main selling point.
- snissn 10y agoThanks - for servers? Would this be used to host a database?
- nickpsecurity 10y agoChristie covers the argument for proprietary ISA's in this discussion: https://research.cs.wisc.edu/multifacet/papers/ieeemicro16_card_isa.pdf https://research.cs.wisc.edu/multifacet/papers/ieeemicro16_c... It not the ISA that makes it desirable. It's all the tooling, apps, branding, and talent around it. You have to rebuild that stuff for new ISA's. You also have to get the market to trust a new one after so many perished. That is why companies pay ARM $1-15 million for licenses to use that ISA and brand name.
- wmf 10y agoSince we're talking about servers, it doesn't seem like any of those are advantages for ARM compared to x86.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoIt's apples to oranges. ARM is designed to be customizable with all kinds of pluggible accelerators and stuff. x86 is what Intel decides it is. I heard they followed AMD in building a semi-custom business but with who knows what limitations or costs. So, you get a lightweight, easy-to-customize SOC with huge ecosystem for both software and hardware accelerators.