4 ms·

Here's how I think about it. Don't think about the era, think about what it means for you. Either we are entering the Arm era, or we aren't. If we are, it wo

Here's how I think about it. Don't think about the era, think about what it means for you. Either we are entering the Arm era, or we aren't. If we are, it won't matter. all the s/w in the world,languages, libraries,expertise, applications, etc aren't going to disappear, so it won't matter much. Programmers will switch compilers and learn new tricks, and consumers march on. I still buy games, play them, and code for a living. If we are not, same story, just not as many new compilers.

firethief 5y ago
It depends on how high up the software stack you work. For most people it won't make much difference, but for some people it's huge. I do a lot of SIMD optimization, and x86 is 128/256/512-bit short-vector SIMD. Arm is 128-bit/long-vector. Even short-vector on Arm uses a different programming model from x86 (the intrinsics are more abstracted from the operations in order to support endian-agnostic operation), and of course long-vector is worlds apart. I'm not complaining though; we're entering a new golden age for people who like learning the intricacies of ISA's and microarchitectures!