5 ms·

I wouldn't bet on it. According to Anandtech Cortex A15 will be around Core 2 Duo level of performance, with more or less the same power consumption per chip as

I wouldn't bet on it. According to Anandtech Cortex A15 will be around Core 2 Duo level of performance, with more or less the same power consumption per chip as today's dual cores and quad cores (Tegra 3). Dual core 2 Ghz Cortex A15 chips will appear first in Q2 2012 from Samsung (Exynos 5250). Is Brazos or Atom at the level of Core 2 Duo performance yet? Nope. And they still use more power than Cortex A15. In the mean time, ARM chips grow in performance faster than x86 low-end chips drop in power consumption every year. By the time Atom or Brazos achieves the same power consumption, high-end ARM chips will have first gen i3 or even 2nd gen i3 performance (a couple of years). Atom won't even be fanless until the end of 2013.

bryanlarsen 15y ago
I'll take that bet. Brazos & Atom are still 45nm, and are a lot faster than 45nm ARM parts. They should be, they use a lot more power. Exynos 5250 is 32nm. In Q2 2012 we will finally be able to compare apples to apples. Medfield vs A15. And we'll definitely see fanless CPUs from Intel next year. I don't think there's room for a fan in this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4788/intels-medfield-gingerbread-smartphone-reference-platform http://www.anandtech.com/show/4788/intels-medfield-gingerbre...
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  The node doesn't matter all that much. It gives a 30% boost or so. That doesn't change the fact that ARM has been improving in performance about 2x-2.5x every 12 months. Have you seen Atom improve that fast in either performance or energy consumption lately?
  - bryanlarsen 15y ago
    The node by itself gives a 30% boost. It also enables a dramatic increase in the number of transistors, which can be leveraged to also provide a dramatic increase in performance, if there are known gains to be made. It's far easier to be the second or third company doing something than to be the first. A large part of the increase in performance that ARM enjoyed was obtained by learning from the successes and failures of Intel & POWER & Alpha and all other performance trailblazers. Now that ARM is getting closer to mainstream performance, that kind of momentum is going to be much harder to maintain. But mostly I've learned to never bet against Intel. Many have done so, and the landscape is strewn with their failures over the last 30 years. Certainly NVidia & Samsung et al have some very impressive engineers that might be capable of beating them. Eventually Intel will stumble, and it might be this time. But I'm much more willing to bet on Intel than against them.
tadfisher 15y ago
You can purchase fanless Atom and Brazos boards now. They just have huge heatsinks.

bryanlarsen 15y ago

I'll take that bet. Brazos & Atom are still 45nm, and are a lot faster than 45nm ARM parts. They should be, they use a lot more power. Exynos 5250 is 32nm. In Q2 2012 we will finally be able to compare apples to apples. Medfield vs A15. And we'll definitely see fanless CPUs from Intel next year. I don't think there's room for a fan in this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4788/intels-medfield-gingerbread-smartphone-reference-platform http://www.anandtech.com/show/4788/intels-medfield-gingerbre...

nextparadigms 15y ago
The node doesn't matter all that much. It gives a 30% boost or so. That doesn't change the fact that ARM has been improving in performance about 2x-2.5x every 12 months. Have you seen Atom improve that fast in either performance or energy consumption lately?
- bryanlarsen 15y ago
  The node by itself gives a 30% boost. It also enables a dramatic increase in the number of transistors, which can be leveraged to also provide a dramatic increase in performance, if there are known gains to be made. It's far easier to be the second or third company doing something than to be the first. A large part of the increase in performance that ARM enjoyed was obtained by learning from the successes and failures of Intel & POWER & Alpha and all other performance trailblazers. Now that ARM is getting closer to mainstream performance, that kind of momentum is going to be much harder to maintain. But mostly I've learned to never bet against Intel. Many have done so, and the landscape is strewn with their failures over the last 30 years. Certainly NVidia & Samsung et al have some very impressive engineers that might be capable of beating them. Eventually Intel will stumble, and it might be this time. But I'm much more willing to bet on Intel than against them.

tadfisher 15y ago

You can purchase fanless Atom and Brazos boards now. They just have huge heatsinks.