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They've probably seen that: - ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds; further, there are dual-core and quad-core ARM chips in the near future - Laptops have be

by yason 16y ago

They've probably seen that: - ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds; further, there are dual-core and quad-core ARM chips in the near future - Laptops have been fast enough for years that customers can trade off some speed in favor of much longer battery life - They see synergetic advances in gluing together mainline Windows and Windows Phone with ARM platforms: ARM is certainly going to be a player, they're certain that ARM based minilaptops, netbooks, and tablets, when they become closer to mainstream, are going to eat away market share from Windows/x86

masklinn 16y ago
> ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds Frequencies, not speeds.
- regularfry 16y ago
  That depends what you mean by "speeds." I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > That depends what you mean by "speeds." Same as everybody else, the ratio between an amount of stuff S and the time T it takes to execute a set of operations P on it > I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. So? > Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go. It's not so much meaningless as irrelevant. I interpreted "ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds" to mean "ARM speeds are soon at [processing] speeds corresponding to x86 desktop machines at equivalent prices" which definitely isn't the case, not by a long shot. Soon at desktop frequencies yes (the A15 is advertised at up to 2.5GHz while retail desktop CPUs have been stuck under the 4GHz barrier for more than 5 years), performance per watt definitely (ARM has blown x86 away forever there) but actual, raw computational speed not really.
    - regularfry 16y ago
      > > I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. > So? So the idea of there being a "desktop speed" which ARM fails to satisfy is wrong. There has always been an ARM that can be used to perform "desktop"-type tasks.
- yason 16y ago
  More accurate claim: with "desktop speeds" I meant the processing power required to run a basic 2010's desktop system, including a modern browser and watching videos. ARM is pretty close there already and conversely nearly any x86 laptop today is vastly overpowered for any of those tasks. The power that is supplied by modern desktop machines and used by heavy gamers, video editing guys, and number-crunchers is a whole another story. That market is probably settled for desktop for quite a long time.

by yason 16y ago

masklinn 16y ago

> ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds Frequencies, not speeds.

regularfry 16y ago
That depends what you mean by "speeds." I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > That depends what you mean by "speeds." Same as everybody else, the ratio between an amount of stuff S and the time T it takes to execute a set of operations P on it > I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. So? > Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go. It's not so much meaningless as irrelevant. I interpreted "ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds" to mean "ARM speeds are soon at [processing] speeds corresponding to x86 desktop machines at equivalent prices" which definitely isn't the case, not by a long shot. Soon at desktop frequencies yes (the A15 is advertised at up to 2.5GHz while retail desktop CPUs have been stuck under the 4GHz barrier for more than 5 years), performance per watt definitely (ARM has blown x86 away forever there) but actual, raw computational speed not really.
  - regularfry 16y ago
    > > I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. > So? So the idea of there being a "desktop speed" which ARM fails to satisfy is wrong. There has always been an ARM that can be used to perform "desktop"-type tasks.
yason 16y ago
More accurate claim: with "desktop speeds" I meant the processing power required to run a basic 2010's desktop system, including a modern browser and watching videos. ARM is pretty close there already and conversely nearly any x86 laptop today is vastly overpowered for any of those tasks. The power that is supplied by modern desktop machines and used by heavy gamers, video editing guys, and number-crunchers is a whole another story. That market is probably settled for desktop for quite a long time.