3 ms·

This very much reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote that in the future, laptops and desktops will be like trucks. They will always be around for those who need th

This very much reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote that in the future, laptops and desktops will be like trucks. They will always be around for those who need them, but most people don't need trucks. Personally, I don't quite see that yet with today's hardware and paradigms. The processing power is certainly getting there. My tablet today is significantly more powerful than my laptop in 2006 but still not quite fast enough for compiling stuff etc. Also, tablet user interfaces are still a bit too unwieldy and rigid for programming work and there is something to be said for huge monitors. But then, Windows 8 looks like it could be the solution: A tablet that can run Windows on the go, but transforms into a regular desktop when connected to a keyboard/mouse/screen. The future.

Roritharr 14y ago
> My tablet today is significantly more powerful than my laptop in 2006 but still not quite fast enough for compiling stuff etc. What kind of laptop did you own? If you've got an iPad 3, any Tegra 3 or Exynos 4412 powered Android Tablet known to my knowledge you have in no way the processing power of a 2006 Laptop. To remind you, a reasonable Laptop in 2006 had a Core (2) Duo CPU, discreet graphics aside. I've used such a Laptop until 2011 to work flawlessy with Eclipse, Photoshop and even older versions of Premiere. Performance-wise the current ARM CPUs still are lagging behind anything the Desktop had roughly ten years ago. It's only their power consumption that made them interesting for Apple and only that only with the uprising of very power efficient gpus aswell so the iPhone 1 could have that level of responsiveness at basically no cpu power. And it's not a fault of X86, which is shown by the newest Intel Medfield CPUs which are starting to outperform the ARMs at the same level of power consumption. At these levels of engineering it boils down to physics. ARMs CPUs aren't just more "cleverly" designed, they had a different scope, different instruction sets and therefor different power specifications. You can only get so much CPU Speed from a CPU at a certain NM scale with a certain intructionset at a certain power level, and if it's arm or x86 doesn't change that. ARM should start to feel Intel's breath in their neck, since ARM doesn't have nearly the kind of spending power Intel has to strongarm(no pun intended) the technology beyond the reach of ARMs financial possibilities(The NM race is becoming exponentially more expensive with each iteration...). Motorola has started to build the RazrI which will be very interesting to watch in the market.
- steevdave 14y ago
  What is the Razrl? Google search isn't being very helpful. I haven't done much testing of ARM versus Intel, but the experience that I do have with ARM, compiling software wise, using an i.MX6Q (Freescale), it takes roughly 3 1/2 hours (softfloat) to build Firefox 15. While the current market of ARM devices won't win any speed tests, there are more features to it than just power consumption. My mx51 netbook has no moving parts and doesn't burn my legs even when its been running a long compile (such as Firefox) versus the Core i7 I have that can build it much faster however it cuts the battery life almost in half. There is also the fan noise when those cores start churning, not to mention the heat.
  - Roritharr 14y ago
    I'm talking about this Phone http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409833,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409833,00.asp which as very recently been announced. With your mx51 netbook you've traded power consumption, noise and heat production against performance. If you value the former more than the latter, there is no discussion.
    - steevdave 14y ago
      Ah. Okay. I'm reading/responding on my phone and I thought the i was an L. The intel chip is definitely interesting. Indeed it depends on what your needs/wants are. There are still quite a few people out who do expect an ARM device to have the same performance as an x86 one. There are actually 2 different ARM cores that can be licensed, one is power efficient, and one is for performance. As far as I know, "everyone" licenses the power efficient one. I'd be interested in the performance one, but I'm not sure who licenses it. I could see Calxeda licensing it since they are in the server space, but I don't believe they are.
- Derbasti 14y ago
  The laptop in question was a 1.6 Ghz Core Solo with 2 Gb of memory and integrated graphics. Even with x86 outperforming ARM at similar clockings etc., a current generation quad core 1.5 Ghz tablet will probably be in a similar performance range as that laptop. But you are right in that I am comparing a mid range laptop from 2006 with a top of the line tablet in 2012, which is unfair. However, it does not alter the argument much: Tablet/phone processors are getting fast enough for desktop work. As an aside, it does not really matter if future tablets will run ARM or x86. What matters is that we are talking about slim, light devices that can not afford laptop caliber batteries or active cooling.

Roritharr 14y ago

> My tablet today is significantly more powerful than my laptop in 2006 but still not quite fast enough for compiling stuff etc. What kind of laptop did you own? If you've got an iPad 3, any Tegra 3 or Exynos 4412 powered Android Tablet known to my knowledge you have in no way the processing power of a 2006 Laptop. To remind you, a reasonable Laptop in 2006 had a Core (2) Duo CPU, discreet graphics aside. I've used such a Laptop until 2011 to work flawlessy with Eclipse, Photoshop and even older versions of Premiere. Performance-wise the current ARM CPUs still are lagging behind anything the Desktop had roughly ten years ago. It's only their power consumption that made them interesting for Apple and only that only with the uprising of very power efficient gpus aswell so the iPhone 1 could have that level of responsiveness at basically no cpu power. And it's not a fault of X86, which is shown by the newest Intel Medfield CPUs which are starting to outperform the ARMs at the same level of power consumption. At these levels of engineering it boils down to physics. ARMs CPUs aren't just more "cleverly" designed, they had a different scope, different instruction sets and therefor different power specifications. You can only get so much CPU Speed from a CPU at a certain NM scale with a certain intructionset at a certain power level, and if it's arm or x86 doesn't change that. ARM should start to feel Intel's breath in their neck, since ARM doesn't have nearly the kind of spending power Intel has to strongarm(no pun intended) the technology beyond the reach of ARMs financial possibilities(The NM race is becoming exponentially more expensive with each iteration...). Motorola has started to build the RazrI which will be very interesting to watch in the market.

steevdave 14y ago
What is the Razrl? Google search isn't being very helpful. I haven't done much testing of ARM versus Intel, but the experience that I do have with ARM, compiling software wise, using an i.MX6Q (Freescale), it takes roughly 3 1/2 hours (softfloat) to build Firefox 15. While the current market of ARM devices won't win any speed tests, there are more features to it than just power consumption. My mx51 netbook has no moving parts and doesn't burn my legs even when its been running a long compile (such as Firefox) versus the Core i7 I have that can build it much faster however it cuts the battery life almost in half. There is also the fan noise when those cores start churning, not to mention the heat.
- Roritharr 14y ago
  I'm talking about this Phone http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409833,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409833,00.asp which as very recently been announced. With your mx51 netbook you've traded power consumption, noise and heat production against performance. If you value the former more than the latter, there is no discussion.
  - steevdave 14y ago
    Ah. Okay. I'm reading/responding on my phone and I thought the i was an L. The intel chip is definitely interesting. Indeed it depends on what your needs/wants are. There are still quite a few people out who do expect an ARM device to have the same performance as an x86 one. There are actually 2 different ARM cores that can be licensed, one is power efficient, and one is for performance. As far as I know, "everyone" licenses the power efficient one. I'd be interested in the performance one, but I'm not sure who licenses it. I could see Calxeda licensing it since they are in the server space, but I don't believe they are.
Derbasti 14y ago
The laptop in question was a 1.6 Ghz Core Solo with 2 Gb of memory and integrated graphics. Even with x86 outperforming ARM at similar clockings etc., a current generation quad core 1.5 Ghz tablet will probably be in a similar performance range as that laptop. But you are right in that I am comparing a mid range laptop from 2006 with a top of the line tablet in 2012, which is unfair. However, it does not alter the argument much: Tablet/phone processors are getting fast enough for desktop work. As an aside, it does not really matter if future tablets will run ARM or x86. What matters is that we are talking about slim, light devices that can not afford laptop caliber batteries or active cooling.