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If they choose ARM, Intel will be crushed. Not necessarily because they will lose 30% market share or whatever, but because ARM will get that much more popular

If they choose ARM, Intel will be crushed. Not necessarily because they will lose 30% market share or whatever, but because ARM will get that much more popular as an alternative to Intel (and AMD) chips, and the idea that ARM could replace Intel's chips in pretty much anything will get that much closer to reality, especially with recent news that ARM Nvidia chips will be used in supercomputers. Another interesting choice is MIPS, which I'd also like to see rise as a 3rd alternative to ARM and x86, but I heard ARM, AMD and Google are considering buying MIPS.

thristian 15y ago
The Chinese Academy of Sciences already has he MIPS-compatible Loongson architecture; RMS uses a Loongson-based laptop because it's the only device that's completely Free from the BIOS upwards. I've heard the latest Loongson chips have support for executing 'some' x86 instructions in hardware, though, so perhaps practicality will beat purity after all.
- KaeseEs 15y ago
  Calling a Loongsoon laptop more free than other available alternatives is a downright Orwellian perversion of language. I understand the specific meaning of 'free' you are using, but juxtaposing such speech with China's horrific human rights record (and non-state and quasi-state terrible labor practices, top to bottom) is chilling.
  - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
    Is it not equally Orwellian that I read a comment like this every time RMS's choice of laptop gets mentioned, yet hardly ever hear it at any other time? It's as if China's human rights record only matters when someone wants to make fun of RMS or complain about Apple, yet our entire modern way of life is built on Chinese manufacturing.
    - KaeseEs 15y ago
      No, that is indeed not Orwellian - are you familiar with what the term means in the context of language? Calling something 'free', the purchase of which is detrimental to the freedom of many human beings by strengthening those who keep them in fetters, is akin to Newspeak from 1984, wherein words and phrases assumed meanings contradictory to their normal denotation. The situation you seem to see, wherein you assume that people use China as a handy stick with which to beat those they dislike for other reasons, has little or nothing to do with this. Words mean things, and we should all do our part to use them meaningfully - George Orwell would approve. :) Incidentally, I don't know why your recollection of complaints about China's atrocious human rights record skews towards the (rather few) complaints that are on HN about RMS' choice of laptop, or about the Apple/Foxconn dustup (which incidentally caught several other companies to a lesser extent), but it's not really germane to the conversation at hand.
      - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
        I was actually thinking of the Two Minute Hate from the same book, and how the ritualised anger aimed at external enemies was used to distract from the reality of their own existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate And as I said, I don't understand why China's human rights record is more germane to this particular conversation sub-thread. You could have replied at the top level to rail against China, but you replied instead to the apparently irresistible irony of someone wishing to have a chinese made laptop with Free Software rather than a chinese made laptop without. Which suggests to me at least that people may be struggling to cope with the idea that pretty much everything is made in China and would rather pretend that their non-longsoon CPU device is in some way morally superior.
wisty 15y ago
Long Xin (aka Loongson) is already MIPS, with extensions. Some of the extensions are there to speed up X86 emulation.
Retric 15y ago
As long as Intel continues to hold their current process advantage they could switch to ARM and still crush everyone else. Don't forget they are currently wasting ~30% of their transistor and heat budget on a GPU and they still dominate AMD on both benchmarks and real world tests.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Intel will not switch to ARM, or at least not until it's too late (kind of like Nokia with WP7 or RIM with QNX/BB10). They won't switch because their cost structure is higher than ARM's cost structure. Their whole company is used to selling expensive chips with a lot higher profit/chip. So they will not know how to sell these chips properly and be just as profitable. They will also have a conflict of interest with x86. Adopting ARM means admitting defeat for x86, and their x86 business will go down that much faster - unless they intentionally slow down the ARM business, in which case, what's the point of trying to compete with ARM chips anyway? This is why they failed with the Xscale ARM division, too. Intel can't sell dirt cheap processors that would make them billions per quarter, and they can't do it without hurting their x86 business. Why do you think Atom is their poorest brand ever and has stagnated so much? Because they never wanted it to become good enough for low-end laptops, and they only started working on energy efficiency much harder once they saw the ARM threat.
  - Retric 15y ago
    It's desktop chips that are high profit margin not x86. As long as Amdahl's law is in effect there will always be a market for single core power. Because, for a wide range of cases 4 core at x really does beat 4,000 cores at 3/4 x. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law) PS: I don't think Intel can maintain that advantage indefinitely, eventually when chips are designed by arranging individual atoms everyone will be on an even playing field. But, we are a long way from that point.

thristian 15y ago

The Chinese Academy of Sciences already has he MIPS-compatible Loongson architecture; RMS uses a Loongson-based laptop because it's the only device that's completely Free from the BIOS upwards. I've heard the latest Loongson chips have support for executing 'some' x86 instructions in hardware, though, so perhaps practicality will beat purity after all.

KaeseEs 15y ago
Calling a Loongsoon laptop more free than other available alternatives is a downright Orwellian perversion of language. I understand the specific meaning of 'free' you are using, but juxtaposing such speech with China's horrific human rights record (and non-state and quasi-state terrible labor practices, top to bottom) is chilling.
- ZeroGravitas 15y ago
  Is it not equally Orwellian that I read a comment like this every time RMS's choice of laptop gets mentioned, yet hardly ever hear it at any other time? It's as if China's human rights record only matters when someone wants to make fun of RMS or complain about Apple, yet our entire modern way of life is built on Chinese manufacturing.
  - KaeseEs 15y ago
    No, that is indeed not Orwellian - are you familiar with what the term means in the context of language? Calling something 'free', the purchase of which is detrimental to the freedom of many human beings by strengthening those who keep them in fetters, is akin to Newspeak from 1984, wherein words and phrases assumed meanings contradictory to their normal denotation. The situation you seem to see, wherein you assume that people use China as a handy stick with which to beat those they dislike for other reasons, has little or nothing to do with this. Words mean things, and we should all do our part to use them meaningfully - George Orwell would approve. :) Incidentally, I don't know why your recollection of complaints about China's atrocious human rights record skews towards the (rather few) complaints that are on HN about RMS' choice of laptop, or about the Apple/Foxconn dustup (which incidentally caught several other companies to a lesser extent), but it's not really germane to the conversation at hand.
    - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
      I was actually thinking of the Two Minute Hate from the same book, and how the ritualised anger aimed at external enemies was used to distract from the reality of their own existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate And as I said, I don't understand why China's human rights record is more germane to this particular conversation sub-thread. You could have replied at the top level to rail against China, but you replied instead to the apparently irresistible irony of someone wishing to have a chinese made laptop with Free Software rather than a chinese made laptop without. Which suggests to me at least that people may be struggling to cope with the idea that pretty much everything is made in China and would rather pretend that their non-longsoon CPU device is in some way morally superior.

wisty 15y ago

Long Xin (aka Loongson) is already MIPS, with extensions. Some of the extensions are there to speed up X86 emulation.

Retric 15y ago

As long as Intel continues to hold their current process advantage they could switch to ARM and still crush everyone else. Don't forget they are currently wasting ~30% of their transistor and heat budget on a GPU and they still dominate AMD on both benchmarks and real world tests.

nextparadigms 15y ago
Intel will not switch to ARM, or at least not until it's too late (kind of like Nokia with WP7 or RIM with QNX/BB10). They won't switch because their cost structure is higher than ARM's cost structure. Their whole company is used to selling expensive chips with a lot higher profit/chip. So they will not know how to sell these chips properly and be just as profitable. They will also have a conflict of interest with x86. Adopting ARM means admitting defeat for x86, and their x86 business will go down that much faster - unless they intentionally slow down the ARM business, in which case, what's the point of trying to compete with ARM chips anyway? This is why they failed with the Xscale ARM division, too. Intel can't sell dirt cheap processors that would make them billions per quarter, and they can't do it without hurting their x86 business. Why do you think Atom is their poorest brand ever and has stagnated so much? Because they never wanted it to become good enough for low-end laptops, and they only started working on energy efficiency much harder once they saw the ARM threat.
- Retric 15y ago
  It's desktop chips that are high profit margin not x86. As long as Amdahl's law is in effect there will always be a market for single core power. Because, for a wide range of cases 4 core at x really does beat 4,000 cores at 3/4 x. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law) PS: I don't think Intel can maintain that advantage indefinitely, eventually when chips are designed by arranging individual atoms everyone will be on an even playing field. But, we are a long way from that point.