Snesboy said:
Anyways, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS both use ARM processors? |
Yes.
@everyone
x86 adds, worst case, 20% overhead. An ARM CPU would be about 20 percent faster than an Intel or AMD one for the same power consumption. BUT Intel employs 42 times as many people. So they can engineer something that is far beter than what ARM can design given the time. Intel also have a 1-2 year process node advantage which is worth about 25% in power consumpotion. Together his means that x86b processotrs will realistically be ehead of ARM for the forseeable future despite the theoretical advantage.
The commercial resistance to having to port every major piece of Windows software to ARM (would cost a lot for an unproven market with no real advantage per above) is so great as to discourage ARM from ever becoming mainstream.
Today's best comparison is ARM's Cortex A9 SoC at ~2W vs the 5W Ontario platform (dual-core Bobcat plus discrete-like Radeon graphics plus southbridge) for tablets. AMD's offering significantly outperforms ARM in this space, especially on graphics. Of course ARM uses less power but can't scale up CPU or graphics yet to use the headroom.
Another die shrink of Ontario and 2-3W versions should be possible, starting to get close to mobile phone levels.
