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Shifting Apps To ARM Chips Could Save Laptop Batteries

Posted by timothy on from the but-does-it-run-windows dept.

An anonymous reader writes "When is an Intel PC not an Intel PC? When it moves applications such as Internet browsing and email on to an ARM processor because it can get longer battery life. And according to a story at EE Times, this hybrid Intel-ARM processor approach is being taken by PC makers as prominent as Dell. The problem for Intel: Why would you switch out of 'all-day' mode and use the Intel processor? The problem for ARM: lacking support from Microsoft for Windows; the applications it runs for the PC have to do so under Linux."

4 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. And this is how Linux will win. by B5_geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And this is how Linux will win. Not with a bang but a whimper. Embedded appliances, dedicated purpose applications, and multi-platform compatibility.

    Firefox, Thunderbird, and (hopefully) soon KDE.

    MS users who don't know any better, will win this for us.

    Geeks like us have already dominated the server-side of the Linux equation, now fools will win the desktop for us.

    --
    "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
    1. Re:And this is how Linux will win. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      True; but WinCE is pretty sharply dissimilar to Windows proper. MS has put a good deal of effort into making it look somewhat windowish; but it remains an alien freak. Similar enough to make you fall into Windows habits, odd enough to constantly frustrate those habits.

      Honestly, an appropriately skinned version of Linux would probably be more familiar to most users than would WinCE.

  2. The CPU is not the biggest consumer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The display uses far more power than the CPU, so the benefit of adding a second low-power CPU will only be realized with a different display technology that has much lower power consumption for a static image.

  3. Re:Not a problem by EvilRyry · · Score: 5, Informative

    WINE is just Win32 for POSIXy platforms. It's not able to rewrite x86 binary for ARM. You could perhaps take Windows software compiled for an ARM processor and run it, but that kind of defeats the point of using Linux for portability in the first place. KVM/Xen also do not rewrite binary for other architectures. QEMU could do it, but performance and battery life would drop dramatically.