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ARM — Heretic In the Church of Intel, Moore's Law
ericatcw writes "For 30+ years, the PC industry has been as obsessed with under-the-hood performance: MIPs, MHz, transistors per chip. Blame Moore's Law, which effectively laid down the Gospel of marketing PCs like sports cars. But with mobile PCs and green computing coming to the fore, enter ARM, which is challenging the Gospel according to Moore with chips that are low-powered in both senses of the word. Some of its most popular CPUs have 100,000 transistors, fewer than a 12 MHz Intel 286 CPU from 1982 (download PDF). But they also consume as little as a quarter of a watt, which is why netbook makers are embracing them. It's 'megahertz per milli-watt,' that counts, according to ARM exec Ian Drew, who predicts that 6-10 ARM-based netbooks running Linux and costing just around $200 should arrive this year starting in July."
I don't mean to Dis-ARM, ARM or Armless...
But it will do exactly the same thing, 0.5 Watts now, 100K transistors now, 300 MHz now... it wont stay that way though, it's just a slimmer base to build upon, like using aluminum instead of steal. People will still keep reaching for the sky, and with a lighter structure, means they can reach even higher, even more MHz, more transistors, etc...
that some /.ers seem to need to create an enemy of conventional wisdom, even when conventional wisdom is conventional for a reason?
Yes, efficiency is good. But do you really need to smear the idea of higher processing power at the same time you're pointing out the good in low electricity consumption?
I mean... really?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
From TFA:
For 30 years, the PC industry has treated Moore's Law with religious reverence. Its immutable commandment -- thou shalt double the transistors on circuits every 18 months -- created an enviable business model with consumers spurred to buy new, more powerful PCs every few years.
The actual law is about reduction of cost, not increase of performance. Other formulation says:
The transistor cost shall halve every 2 years.
ARM is not breaking any "law".
As I read through the article (I know, I've already violated Slashdot's law, but anyway), I couldn't help but go back to this whole idea of 'under-the-hood performance.' Cars built today don't necessarily have to have the 400 cubic inch plants and 500 horsepower that they sometimes had in the 60's. Engines are half that size and half the horsepower, but because they're designed better, it doesn't matter. (Although I'd love a 500 hp engine anyway.)
As well, continuing the car analog, just because there are still some cars with 500 horsepower engines made today, it doesn't mean everyone needs one. There are plenty of tiny cars doing just fine thankyou
This article suggests that because we're not using giant oversized processors in our iPods and cellphones, that somehow we've violated Moore's law. All it really means is that putting a Ferrari engine in golfcart is pointless.
Oi! Slashdot is not much more than ten years old so even a teenager might have a low UID. Also you don't have to be really old to have done stuff with the Z80 or the 6502 if you did it while you were still in school.
I think the ARM netbooks are going to have a monster market, like eventually over 100 million a year.
That may sound crazy, but you have to look at the demographics. There are about 6 1/2 billion people in the world. About 1 1/2 billion are in the developed world or the richer parts of the developed world. They all have computers. At the other end are about a billion who are are desperately poor.
That leaves around 3 billion who are in-between. These are the people who have enough money to buy things like bicycles, motor bikes, televisions, and cell phones. A great many would love to own a computer, and indeed many of them spend a lot of time at cybercafes. But they can't afford the price. And there is another problem, namely that half of these people live in areas with no electricity, and for most of the rest the electric service is very eratic.
The first generation of netbooks was too expensive for this gigantic potential market, and besides they used too much electricity. But the new ARM netbooks will be enough cheaper for perhaps 500 million more people, and they will use far less electricity, too. Furthermore prices are just going to keep going down. Pixel Qi is planing on designing $75 models in a few years. Every time prices drop another huge group will join the market.
This all is a huge problem for Microsoft. On the one hand, it would hate to charge the very low license fees it would need to get anywhere in this new market, on the other hand it can hardly afford to ignore it.
We have heard that before, and the 'super cheap' never quite pans out and ends up 2x.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Netbooks can use much less power than they do today. Real netbooks use solid state storage, which has negligible idle power consumption and very low read power consumption. In the future, RAM may be replaced by one of the contenders for persistent RAM (e.g. MRAM) with zero idle power consumption. Backlit TFT displays will at some point be replaced by E-Paper which only uses power to change the display. At that point, the CPU and the wireless network are about the only consumers of power, so every improvement counts.
Backlit TFT displays will at some point be replaced by E-Paper which only uses power to change the display./quote.
I doubt that's gonna happen for several reasons.
First, e-Paper refresh rate is horrendous, and it is unlikely to improve to the same levels as TFT for the foreseeable future due to inherent technology limitations. Moving solid particles around (which is what eInk does) is always going to be slower.
Second, while eInk screen doesn't have to be redrawn all the time, when you actually need to redraw it, it may well use more power (I'm not sure about that one, actually, but it would make sense). And how often would you need to redraw? Well, if you leave the mouse in, every time the pointer moves... so you'll need a touchscreen and no pointer. And as few smooth animations as possible. In fact, it may well require a total redesign of UI to make it work - so forget existing apps.
Third, eInk is useless in below-average lighting conditions. Remember that it doesn't emit light by itself, and it is not transparent, so you can't use a backlight (and if you did, that would suck up power just as it does in TFT). And you can't make the particles transparent, because the whole point of technology is to make them reflect light...
Fourth, eInk color gamut isn't going to be any better than printed stuff, ever, for obvious reasons. This may be good enough for some stuff (most office/productivity apps, web browsing), but forget about decent video (remember last time you've read a movie review in a journal? remember what the screens looked like... that's right, crap).
All in all, I think that it might work out, but only for a true "netbook" - a device that's only useful for surfing the Web, and nothing else; and even then with some interactive stuff (e.g. YouTube) crippled. Also, given the pace of technological advances in e-paper, it's going to take a decade at least before we get that stuff in production (there's still no working color e-paper available for use in production e-reader models, even though the first prototypes were shown over 2 years ago).