3 ms·
Idk for phones and larger I'd say 5% power reduction is still pretty close to nothing, especially if that's the difference between x86 and ARM. A 5w SoC becomes
by kllrnohj 4y ago
Idk for phones and larger I'd say 5% power reduction is still pretty close to nothing, especially if that's the difference between x86 and ARM. A 5w SoC becomes a 4.75w SoC - nobody is going to bat an eye at that. Similarly a 50w laptop CPU dropping to 46w is hardly transformative. It's not nothing, but it's still significantly less than a node shrink even with Moore's law being dead. And the difference between ARM and RISC-V would likely be even smaller.
You could also save way more than 5% power by just optimizing user space a tiny amount
- klelatti 4y agoIt's not huge but it's not irrelevant either. Plus I think its probably an understatement (being from an x86 vendor). I agree that the focus on ISA is often a bit overdone just not that it's something we can ignore.
- kllrnohj 4y agoFair, and there are also of course ISAs that could be drastically impactful like the ill-fated Itanium or the doesn't-seem-to-be-real Mill.
- klelatti 4y agoAgreed. I think it's hard so see a new ISA getting much traction now unless it clearly offers a very significant power / performance benefit and that seems unlikely at the moment. I blogged that RISC-V might be the last mainstream ISA a while ago - I think it will crowd out other options.