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ARM Makes Its CPU Roadmap Public, Challenges Intel in PCs With Deimos and Hercules Chips (pcworld.com)
With PC makers like Asus and HP beginning to design laptops and tablets around ARM chips, ARM itself has decided to emerge from the shadows and unroll its roadmap to challenge Intel through at least 2020, PCWorld writes. From a report, which details ARM's announcement Thursday: ARM's now-public roadmap represents its first processors that are designed for the PC space. ARM, taking aim at the dominant player, claims its chips will equal and potentially even surpass Intel's in single-threaded performance. ARM is unveiling two new chip architectures: Deimos, a 7nm architecture to debut in 2019, and Hercules, a 5nm design for 2020. There's a catch, of course: Many Windows apps aren't natively written for the ARM instruction set, forcing them to pay a performance penalty via emulation. Comparing itself to Intel is a brightly-colored signpost that ARM remains committed to the PC market, however.
ARM-powered PCs like the Asus NovaGo offer game-changing battery life -- but the performance suffers, for two reasons: One, because the computing power of ARM's cores has lagged behind those of the Intel Core family; and two, because any apps that the ARM chip can't process natively have to be emulated. ARM can't do much about Microsoft's development path, but it can increase its own performance. Finally, if you were concerned that ARM PCs will be a flash in the pan, the answer is no, apparently not. Further reading: ARM Reveals First Public CPU Roadmap - Targeting Intel Performance (PC Perspective); and ARM Unveils Client CPU Performance Roadmap Through 2020 - Taking Intel Head On (AnandTech).
ARM-powered PCs like the Asus NovaGo offer game-changing battery life -- but the performance suffers, for two reasons: One, because the computing power of ARM's cores has lagged behind those of the Intel Core family; and two, because any apps that the ARM chip can't process natively have to be emulated. ARM can't do much about Microsoft's development path, but it can increase its own performance. Finally, if you were concerned that ARM PCs will be a flash in the pan, the answer is no, apparently not. Further reading: ARM Reveals First Public CPU Roadmap - Targeting Intel Performance (PC Perspective); and ARM Unveils Client CPU Performance Roadmap Through 2020 - Taking Intel Head On (AnandTech).
Intel is still struggling to make 10-nanometer chips at the same time as ARM is talking about 7nm and 5nm parts.
They need to get off their lazy ass and introduce several major vulnerabilities into their CPUs as they are seriously lacking in that category...
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
There are already rumors Apple is developing a desktop version of their iPhone ARM processors, which have larger dies and much better performance than nearly every other ARM implementation..
Missed the opportunity to call them Phobos and Deimos
how meny pci-e lanes / other io does it have?
If ARM is going to start making desktop class CPU/SoCs, this is where Linux can show off. Window doesn't have good ARM application support. The open source community has been supporting ARM for years. Instead of being behind the game in available software compared to Windows, Linux can ahead of the game in available software.
This could also help push more 3rd party binary software developers to port their software to ARM + Linux.
No good deed goes unpunished.
who cares about windows, linux runs fine! :D
Higuita
except now apple controls the compiler, an optimized programming language and it's own GPU with a graphics API for gaming
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That tells us more about Windows than it does about ARM processors. :D
#DeleteFacebook
Talk about out-of-touch.
Phone and tablets are great for consuming. Reading something on an ereader, listening to a podcast, watching stuff like Hulu or YouTube. They're not great for creation (aside from home video).
Desktops/laptops have keyboard and mouse (not to mention all the other stuff like sheer power). I (and many others) loathe writing an email on a touchscreen keyboard. And anything more complicated than an email will be far easier and faster to create on the desktop than on a phone/tablet.
Sure, less people are putting together their own PCs or even buying new ones, but we have a long way to go before the desktop is dead.
Yep. They are getting inside PC's turf and there their winning mobile platform attributes don't make them insta-winners.
Apple could try and do it better, considering they have a captive market share of luxury/vanity computer users.
But even among those, they won't like if the PC nerds are getting more fps from their uncool but powerful pumped-up PC rigs.
The chief problem for Microsoft is that a large part of the Windows ecosystem is still dominated by x86/64 applications. Despite 15 years of pushing .NET, and now with .NET beginning to look like an at least credible cross platform environment, even Microsoft's own flagship apps are pretty entrenched in the x86/64 world. Yes, they're making big efforts, but the fact is that there are a whole host of Windows apps that won't run. This is a re-run of Windows NT's early days, where the OS could boot up on multiple architectures, but the suite of apps that could run on anything but x86 was too small to sustain those ports of the operating system. And x86 emulation isn't going to cut the mustard either. It's a useful stopgate at best. Sooner or later Microsoft is going to have to push developers away from native x86 compiled, or they're going to find themselves at a disadvantage even on the desktop.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That was the PowerPC movie, you haven't seen the ARM movie yet.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I'd be more impressed if they were targeting AMD's overall performance and cost. Intel's qualifier of single thread performance doesn't become any less a way to avoid admitting they are behind just because ARM is repeating it.
Depends on how you define PC chip dominance. AMD is second in marketshare, they are currently in first place in actual cost and chip performance.
and they need to drop the store only idea
Yah. I'm pretty sure my next laptop will be AMD APU. The one after that might be ARM.
BTW, where is the GPS in my laptop? 4G modem? Bluetooth? Just asking.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
you said:
They're not great for creation (aside from home video).
but they actually said:
eaten at one end by the "creative workstation"
There was no assertion that phones/tablets are any good at content creation.
With what they claim to be higher single thread performance, I doubt it will be lower power.
They would have said higher overall performance if they didn't have power/thermal limits with an equivalent number of cores.
Another good reason to switch from Windoze to Linux
Go well
ARM (which comes from the long forgotten British Home Computer revolution - which saw the UK produce more homegrown personal computer designs than any other nation) faces one final mountain to conquer, the x64 CPU space.
ARM went for the x64 server jugular and fell flat on its face. Now ARM understands that the road to all x64 markets runs thru the HOME x64 computer space.
But sadly for ARM, AMD's Zen has arisen to reinvigorate a space Intel's complacency had previously ruined for at least the last TEN years. ARM expected to go against a competitor that was reluctantly selling 6-core x64 parts at a very inflated price. Instead it finds itself against AMD, who will be selling brilliant 16-core desktop parts next year (Zen2).
ARM thought its one advantage was lots of cheap cores- AMD beat them to this punch.
Meanwhile ARM's grand GPU (graphics) initiative has been an awful failure. Only the worst Android phones rely on ARM's graphics (Mali). And ARM's recent (last 4 years) new ARM designs have been far from spectacular.
ARM's entire strategy was based on the assumption that the failed entity known as Intel was its only real competition. But now there is a core, clock, and IPC war back in the x64 space. And at the bottom of AMD's and Intel's ranges (moreso AMD) there are ever cheaper good enough parts for basic PC use. Indeed the No.1 problem with PC builds today is the horrific cost of RAM- RAM is totally out of wack with current CPU prices.
ARM can offer eight cruddy cores at a hyper low price- which AMD can match with 4-cores and 8-threads next year at a similar price.
If RAM prices collapse (as many predict for 2019) a race to the bottom can begin. But many pretenders have tried to get a slice of the x86/x64 biz (at least 3 multi-billion challengers to AMD and Intel) and all failed badly cos of poor performance and compatibility.
All of the coming AAA next-gen game consoles are Zen AMD CPU based. Apple doesn't think it worth going ARM in its dwindling traditional computer divisions. Microsoft now supports ARM fully in its dev tools and OSes, but all ARM based windows devices to date have been mega flops.
ARM should have made its move 6 or so years back when AMD had fumbled the ball and Intel was showing clear signs of its senility to come. Too late now.
If you go with an apple laptop, an iphone will provide all those for your laptop.
I would rather gouge my eyes out than go with an Apple laptop. I have one, by the way, it was given to me. It's off. Used it for a while, enough to know to know exactly why the "Apple way" leaves me cold, let alone the lock-in, and the utter embarrassment of being seen with these things in public.
Clear?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It would be more accurate to say ARM is returning to the desktop market. The original ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) based Archimedes was a very fast 32 bit desktop machine released in the mid 1980's and I remember being amazed at the performance which utterly trounced anything Intel could produce at the time. I even used an Acorn R540 in 1990 which was running a nice UNIX environment and could even run a software PC to emulate both DOS and Windows on top of that. It took years before Intel was even in the same ballpark as the ARM from those days and even through the 90's there were plenty of chips that were much faster than anything Intel could make (Alpha for instance, what a joy!) and it is a shame that in the last 20 years or so we've seen most of these die off. Time for some new blood.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Which MacBook did you receive? What lock-in are you talking about and compared to what? Windows 10 is the worst by comparison.
And if you're not using it, give it or sell it to someone who will.
#DeleteFacebook
Great post, makes me feel like I just criticized Scientology. That's another thing I don't like about Apple.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You should look at NXP QorIQ chips, Marvell, and NVIDIA.
The problem with Marvell is that half of your data could disappear with the snap of a fingerr.
the desktop is dying, eaten at one end by the "creative workstation"
The desktop is the creative workstation.
Debian calls 64-bit ARM "a first-class release architecture in Stretch, with almost all packages built, and the standard installer working on various machines, and quite likely to work on new ones." Among those few applications in Debian's repository that fail on ARM, which are most critical? Or by "application support" are you specifically referring to Wine, Steam, and Steam Wine?
The real money is in mass market silicon (silicon chips are ideally sold in the many millions) for that you need vendors such as Nokia networks, Cisco etc
Mass market previously was mobile phones but that has matured now its about the networks which need more processing power and for that to be distributed.
regards
John Jones
The term "creative workstation" is meaningless, something pulled out of someone's rear to sound like they have insight.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
BTW, where is the GPS in my laptop? 4G modem? Bluetooth? Just asking.
Bluetooth is pretty standard fair these days, I can't really understand why you would need GPS in a laptop unless you don't carry a smart phone or for some reason have some sort of mission critical apps that require precise location. As for 4G, I could see that just as I could also see a USB device for the same functionality- a device that can be updated independently of the computer or network.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
I can't really understand why you would need GPS in a laptop unless you don't carry a smart phone
Maps. The full size screen is really so much better than a phone.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
ARM, taking aim at the dominant player, claims its chips will equal and potentially even surpass Intel's in single-threaded performance.
The given context of ARM providing chips to beat Intel's current offering was specifically regarding single-core performance, an area where Intel still dominates AMD with a significant lead.
If ARM succeeds in that goal, they beat AMD in their given performance metric by default.
while ARM chips have their place in the market, tablets, cheap laptops, i cant help but use the car analogy on them, ya i can make a 2 cylinder car engine with 200bhp, but how long will it last against a decent 4 or 6 cylinder running heavy work for hours at a time? They just feel anemic under load compared to a low end X86 processor...
GPS and 4G modem is on the WWAN card , if you choose a laptop with that functionality.
Bluetooth is integrated with the WiFi card.
"significant lead"
That's a strong term, more of a modest lead. It also isn't a metric that is likely to remain especially relevant going forward though its relevance will probably last longer than the current generation chips it isn't likely to last long enough for ARM to catch up with either.
If you go with an apple laptop, an iphone will provide all those for your laptop.
I would rather gouge my eyes out than go with an Apple laptop. I have one, by the way, it was given to me. It's off. Used it for a while, enough to know to know exactly why the "Apple way" leaves me cold, let alone the lock-in, and the utter embarrassment of being seen with these things in public.
Clear?
For me, I will not use Apple (Mac) because: It just works wrong. Everything I do on OSX seems counter intuitive. I've been behind a keyboard for a very long time now and every time someone shoves a Mac in front of me because they can't figure something out, I shake my head at how Apple decided to do things their way. Case in point: when Apple brought out inverted scrolling as default. Yes, I know it's configurable and I would fix the problem on it were it my machine, but that's not the point. It's frustrating for the entirety of EVERYONE else for Apple to make such a boneheaded change to the default after years of precedent. My laptop/desktop is not a phone! I guess that's more of that courage they point out.
It also isn't a metric that is likely to remain especially relevant going forward
Oh I disagree with you very strongly right there.
I think the market for people who want 8 or 16 cores on their machine is very different than the market that wants higher performing single-to-6 core performance.
The current generation Ryzen chips don't beat current generation Intel chips in any benchmark except in aggregate performance utilizing more cores than the tested Intel has.
I, for one, will continue to buy Intel until AMD is more competitive core-for-core.
I'm also pretty sure I'm representative of the market.
I think you need to re-read what anon wrote.
the desktop is dying
the desktop has no actual application
A desktop and a "creative workstation" are basically the same thing these days...unless you have a different definition?
Are you going to put your laptop in the car next to you?
I take it you have never gone on a business trip. You get to the hotel room, you set up your laptop and connect to the hotel wifi. How much does it suck to now have to tell your laptop where you are? It should already know.
Never confuse "no one cares" with "I don't care because I don't have that use case". You might never have a laptop, you might never go on a business trip. That's you. Because of the volume in handsets, the cost now to include GPS is roughly zero.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Besides Apple, it's also inside FreeNAS and pfSense. It's not as big a success as Linux but that is not equal to failure.
While I agree some of the product spreads where AMD really wins in the value department, it is that bad, however in the case of the 8700K and the 2700X, it's only $20 more processor vs. processor. That's only part of the story though, since you have to purchase a cooler for your Intel, while the AMD comes with one, so realistically, you're looking at a minimum of probably $50 more, which is really only a 15% high total price for the Intel.
15% more money for 15-30% more performance?
Ya, seems like it's worth it.
AMD currently has nothing to offer for the ultralow power niche (equivalent of Intel Y series processors). It is also behind the performance curve in the mainstream laptop niche (Intel U series); Mobile Ryzen isn't terrible but it's not yet a serious challenger to a mobile i7. Finally, they don't have anything to go up against the high power H-series; the best they could do is a down-clocked variant of a desktop Ryzen but then you would also need a separate GPU. I don't expect AMD to launch a serious challenge to those markets until Zen 2 and its accompanying 7nm process tech are ready next year; they just aren't yet where they need to be on power consumption.
AMD has solid offerings for the desktop and server markets. It's nice to see real competition in the market for PC processors again. But they've still got work to do. The good news is that they have a road map in place for doing it, and the company has been executing its plans well in recent years.
Idiot.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If I'm not using maps to find my way around blah blah blah
According to you, this market [lifewire.com] does not exist.
Repeat this to yourself as you fall asleep: "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." "I am a self centered prat with an inflated estimation of my own life experience who thinks the world revolves around me and my needs." ...
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It was pretty much that easy 20 years, and yet the Alpha and PowerPC ports of Windows NT shriveled on the vine because developers weren't interested. Getting past four decades of x86 momentum is clearly harder than compiling a new binary.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Correction: this market. (GPS addons for laptops)
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Even XFCE, Mate are getting a bit heavy with more bloat in the libraries and the move to 64bit.
I've recommended using 32-bit on machines with 1 GB or less or 64-bit on machines with 4 GB or more. For machines with 2 GB, it sort of depends on the rest of the system. With a conventional HDD, you need to keep more in disk cache, so the reduction in disk misses from keeping pointers small and not loading two sets of libraries (multiarch) outweighs the faster CPU execution from more registers. But with an SSD, you don't have to keep quite as much in disk cache, so you can afford to waste some RAM on the larger pointers inherent in the standard 64-bit ABI* and two copies of many system libraries.
* I'm excluding oddball ABIs like x32. In practice, an oddball ABI requires require 3-way multiarch (standard 32-bit, standard 64-bit, and oddball) if you want to run any proprietary software or even free software built for a more popular ABI.