this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
306 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

60033 readers
2683 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Intel doesn’t think that Arm CPUs will make a dent in the laptop market::"They've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Of course intel would be the last company to admit x86 is dying. It just doesn't make sense to keep doubling down on it anymore, Apple has proven ARM is more power efficient and in many cases more powerful than x86. I wanted to buy a new laptop this year but it makes no sense to do so considering Windows ARM machines are right around the corner and will triple battery life and increase performance.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Intel is a licensed ARM manufacturer. They’re just doing PR but are capable of playing both sides.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This seems to be doggedly persistent rumor. Apple's M chips are better due to better engineering and vertical integration.

There is no inherent benefit to the underlying isa

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Is it me or is this even worse news for Intel?

The new guys have better engineering that the guys they have been doing it since the dawn of the semiconductor age.

Pack it in.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ARM has a more efficient instruction set, uses less power, and generates less heat while matching performance. Not really a rumor.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Source?

Here's mine

It's down to the engineering. Saying ARM has a more efficient instruction set is like saying C has more efficient syntax than python. Especially these days with pipelining 'n stuff, it all becomes very similar under the hood.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Source?

Here's mine

That article may be out of date though. From the article:

What limits computer performance today is predictability, and the two big ones are instruction/branch predictability, and data locality.

This is true, and it points out one of the ways Intel has made their architecture so competitive, Intel has bet very heavily on branch prediction and they've done a lot of optimisation around it.

But more recently branch prediction has proven to be quite problematic in terms of security. Branch prediction was the root of the problem that led to the meltdown and spectre vulnerabilities. And the only real mitigation for this problem was to completely redesign how branch prediction was done, and significantly reducing the performance gains.

So yeah to sum up, one of the big differences between ARM and intel's X86 architecture is branch prediction, except branch prediction just got nerfed big time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

CPU aside, it's best to wait for thunderbolt 5 to mature. Might finally be able to go to using one device for travel and an eGPU for gaming.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Did you have issues with tb and an egpu? Beside some minor issues, my laptop with tb3 and an egpu works actually good.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I mean that's fine. I'm just saying that x86 chips are still faster. If you want a beefy laptop, especially a work device that only needs to be slightly portable eg drag it to conference rooms and back to your desk, there is little current reason to go with ARM. I'm not saying they won't catch up but folks in here seem to be thinking that ARM is currently faster.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What arm chips are faster than ryzen or Intel chips?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

M2 Max chips are close to the high end i9, but the M series cpus are mobile chips. They're designed for laptops. If competition is a bit harder then no doubt desktop-focused ARM CPUs will match their performance soon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

AFAIK they're large chips though, and larger generally is more performance but also much more expensive to manufacture.