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ARM feels like its attempting to have a offering that would have tons of cores, but lower clock speed ( ie- a 24 core, 1ghz processor ) whereas Intel has the ad

ARM feels like its attempting to have a offering that would have tons of cores, but lower clock speed ( ie- a 24 core, 1ghz processor ) whereas Intel has the advantage in clock speed- In a few years I would not doubt Intel to hit 5ghz+. The graphically intensive games of tomorrow are not optimized for many cores (still) and will need the raw power of a higher clock. This is especially true for strategy games like starcraft that make heavy use of the CPU. As time moves on, I do imagine the ability to run x86 operating systems / applications will be worth a lot as well. Yes, there may be virtualization as a option but I am not optimistic in the performance of such a feature. Back to your question. When you asked what the motivation will be to switch to x86 in 3-4 years, I think the answer is: Even in 3-4 years, the amount of developers familiar with x86 and the sheer amount of software already available for it will trump the offerings of ARM.

pjscott 16y ago
If you want clock rates, you might be interested in IBM's Power6 processor. One of the newer models runs at 5 GHz, and they were considering raising that. They didn't, though; the Power7 actually runs at a somewhat lower clock speed.
potatolicious 16y ago
I doubt Intel can keep the MHz race going. For the last, what, 5 years our clock speeds have been utterly stagnant. 2.2GHz or so for consumer chips, up to a maximum of 3.x GHz for extreme performers. This hasn't changed since the Pentium 4. What has Intel been doing instead to gain performance? Architectural optimizations, more cores, etc. The same game ARM plays. I'm not holding my breath for 5GHz chips. It might happen, but the exponential growability of raw clock speed is well and truly over. We ran into that brick wall in 2003. We're slowly crawling the clock speeds up, but to rely on it as a competitive advantage is IMHO lunacy. Also, I have to seriously challenge the notion that games to tomorrow are not optimized for multiple cores. This simply isn't true, particularly as more and more developers fall back onto common middleware like the Unreal engine, and almost no games are exclusively developed for a single platform (The Xbox 360 and PS3 both require extensive parallel programming support to really harness its capabilities). Games coming out today already can take advantage of multiple cores, albeit there's a lot of work that can be done on that front still. Games of tomorrow are certainly not architecturally single-core. > "Even in 3-4 years, the amount of developers familiar with x86 and the sheer amount of software already available for it will trump the offerings of ARM." Who is actually "familiar with x86"? Most programmers do not work at the microarchitecture level of the chain. Most of us write in higher-level languages and develop apps directly. Sure, in 3-4 years the number of low-level developers who understand x86 better than ARM will still hold, but for the majority of the programming world (the ones that never touch architecture-related issues) it makes no difference. It's a different set of flags to gcc and a few gotchas you have to learn.
- malkia 16y ago
  And to follow here.... Game developers develop mainly for... PowerPC :) -> Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 are all PPC architectures. Apart from certain MMO's - console video games are doing way more sales than PC.
malkia 16y ago
"The graphically intensive games of tomorrow are not optimized for many cores (still) and will need the raw power of a higher clock. This is especially true for strategy games like starcraft that make heavy use of the CPU." That's not true. Console video games have 5+ years of experience dealing with multiple cpus, and some even with different ones communicating through DMA (ps3). There are physics, sound, graphics, even data compression libraries optimized to use all CPUs there are. The problem is the PC games where you don't really know on which machine your game would land on - dual core, or quad core - what kind of memory latency, etc. If you are making an MMO you would shoot for more widespread PC, even laptop/notebooks. If you are shooting for high-quality FPS game, not caring about sales much then you can require high-level machines (but you won't get much money back). Or provide options for graphical selection.
jacquesm 16y ago
> In a few years I would not doubt Intel to hit 5ghz+. What do you base your lack of doubt on? Any hard info you can point to?

pjscott 16y ago

If you want clock rates, you might be interested in IBM's Power6 processor. One of the newer models runs at 5 GHz, and they were considering raising that. They didn't, though; the Power7 actually runs at a somewhat lower clock speed.

potatolicious 16y ago

I doubt Intel can keep the MHz race going. For the last, what, 5 years our clock speeds have been utterly stagnant. 2.2GHz or so for consumer chips, up to a maximum of 3.x GHz for extreme performers. This hasn't changed since the Pentium 4. What has Intel been doing instead to gain performance? Architectural optimizations, more cores, etc. The same game ARM plays. I'm not holding my breath for 5GHz chips. It might happen, but the exponential growability of raw clock speed is well and truly over. We ran into that brick wall in 2003. We're slowly crawling the clock speeds up, but to rely on it as a competitive advantage is IMHO lunacy. Also, I have to seriously challenge the notion that games to tomorrow are not optimized for multiple cores. This simply isn't true, particularly as more and more developers fall back onto common middleware like the Unreal engine, and almost no games are exclusively developed for a single platform (The Xbox 360 and PS3 both require extensive parallel programming support to really harness its capabilities). Games coming out today already can take advantage of multiple cores, albeit there's a lot of work that can be done on that front still. Games of tomorrow are certainly not architecturally single-core. > "Even in 3-4 years, the amount of developers familiar with x86 and the sheer amount of software already available for it will trump the offerings of ARM." Who is actually "familiar with x86"? Most programmers do not work at the microarchitecture level of the chain. Most of us write in higher-level languages and develop apps directly. Sure, in 3-4 years the number of low-level developers who understand x86 better than ARM will still hold, but for the majority of the programming world (the ones that never touch architecture-related issues) it makes no difference. It's a different set of flags to gcc and a few gotchas you have to learn.

malkia 16y ago
And to follow here.... Game developers develop mainly for... PowerPC :) -> Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 are all PPC architectures. Apart from certain MMO's - console video games are doing way more sales than PC.

malkia 16y ago

"The graphically intensive games of tomorrow are not optimized for many cores (still) and will need the raw power of a higher clock. This is especially true for strategy games like starcraft that make heavy use of the CPU." That's not true. Console video games have 5+ years of experience dealing with multiple cpus, and some even with different ones communicating through DMA (ps3). There are physics, sound, graphics, even data compression libraries optimized to use all CPUs there are. The problem is the PC games where you don't really know on which machine your game would land on - dual core, or quad core - what kind of memory latency, etc. If you are making an MMO you would shoot for more widespread PC, even laptop/notebooks. If you are shooting for high-quality FPS game, not caring about sales much then you can require high-level machines (but you won't get much money back). Or provide options for graphical selection.

jacquesm 16y ago

> In a few years I would not doubt Intel to hit 5ghz+. What do you base your lack of doubt on? Any hard info you can point to?