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ARM — Heretic In the Church of Intel, Moore's Law

Posted by timothy on from the how-far-can-I-survive-from-an-outlet dept.

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."

1 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Rocks don't use any electricity. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Every one of these xkcd.com things get modded either +5 Funny or +5 Insightful. I've yet to click on a single one and dont plan on doing so in the future.

    There are only two links that are +5 informative. The goat-dude and that Penny Arcade comic about the use of M$.

    I feel like an old fart. Now get off my lawn you kids...