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The real problem for AMD and Intel is that ARM chips are too cheap and have better power profiles. As ARM chips hit that sweet spot of say 2 GHz and say 3-4 cor

The real problem for AMD and Intel is that ARM chips are too cheap and have better power profiles. As ARM chips hit that sweet spot of say 2 GHz and say 3-4 cores, they'll hit laptops and it will be game over. Why would a company pay $100 for an AMD chip that is a 50 watt or 100 watt chip when an ARM chip might be 5 watt and $10? Once chips hit the "good enough" threshold where they perform well enough that the average user doesn't notice the increased performance, it becomes more of an issue of economics and $10-15 ARM chips are at a huge advantage over $100+ chips from AMD and Intel. Also, Apple is certainly working on an ARM version of full OSX (as iOS is already basically OSX on ARM), Android obviously runs on ARM, Linux runs on ARM, and WinRT runs on ARM, so all of the major OS's can/do support ARM. Thus, there's not a major barrier software wise for ARM, it's more of a performance barrier, which won't likely last more than 3 years. To AMD's credit, they're working on ARM for servers, but ARM is going to eat their whole business, so they need to move as fast in that direction as they can afford to. x86 is going to die a lot faster than anyone could imagine.

notdrunkatall 14y ago
Do you know of any smaller, publicly-traded companies which would benefit from a widespread shift towards RISC infrastructure? I had no idea that ARM was that close to being a viable competitor to x86, and after spending an hour reading about RISC vs CISC/ARM vs x86, I'm now looking for some stock to buy. ARMH is the obvious candidate, but it has had a huge run in the last few years, and the other big names in ARM processing are... well... already big. Any thoughts?
- ardit33 14y ago
  AMCC APPLIED MICRO CIRCUITS CORP COM NEW <- Working on 64bit ARM chips NVDA NVIDIA CORP <- have already great ARM chips + graphics Also, it is clear that AMD is leaving the x86 market, (keeping its APU chips though), and betting on ARM as well. They are shrinking their capital expendintures to keep them afloat during the transition. If they do survive, AMD has graphics chips as a competitive advantage. Graphics will be very important in the future. I think on the longer run INTEL will be the looser. The x86 market will not be as lucrative as it has been in the past, and the ARM market is very competitive. INTEL will have to shrink as a company (from the 95bil is worth right now). Also their graphics offering are not competitive/good enough even in x86. They have completely cornered the x86 market CPU wise, but that market is just less relevant. Whenever there are seismic shifts like this, it is the smaller guys that usually adapt faster and survive.
  - notdrunkatall 14y ago
    Thank you very much for that information; you've summed up in a few minutes what would have taken me at least a couple of hours of digging to learn.
sebastianavina 14y ago
why do ARM chips are more efficient?

notdrunkatall 14y ago

Do you know of any smaller, publicly-traded companies which would benefit from a widespread shift towards RISC infrastructure? I had no idea that ARM was that close to being a viable competitor to x86, and after spending an hour reading about RISC vs CISC/ARM vs x86, I'm now looking for some stock to buy. ARMH is the obvious candidate, but it has had a huge run in the last few years, and the other big names in ARM processing are... well... already big. Any thoughts?

ardit33 14y ago
AMCC APPLIED MICRO CIRCUITS CORP COM NEW <- Working on 64bit ARM chips NVDA NVIDIA CORP <- have already great ARM chips + graphics Also, it is clear that AMD is leaving the x86 market, (keeping its APU chips though), and betting on ARM as well. They are shrinking their capital expendintures to keep them afloat during the transition. If they do survive, AMD has graphics chips as a competitive advantage. Graphics will be very important in the future. I think on the longer run INTEL will be the looser. The x86 market will not be as lucrative as it has been in the past, and the ARM market is very competitive. INTEL will have to shrink as a company (from the 95bil is worth right now). Also their graphics offering are not competitive/good enough even in x86. They have completely cornered the x86 market CPU wise, but that market is just less relevant. Whenever there are seismic shifts like this, it is the smaller guys that usually adapt faster and survive.
- notdrunkatall 14y ago
  Thank you very much for that information; you've summed up in a few minutes what would have taken me at least a couple of hours of digging to learn.

sebastianavina 14y ago

why do ARM chips are more efficient?