ARM losing market share? What a load of b*llocks! If you can prove it, post the links.
Nearly every mobile device runs on ARM, that’s a market segment that barely existed in 1980, and you can bet far more mobile phones are sold compared to x86 computers. Back in 2008, ARM announced 10 Billion ARM devices had been shipped:
How many x86 devices were sold between 1987 and 2008?
ARM is here to stay (thank Jah), get used to it.
I am reffering specifically to the dekstop, server and workstation space. ARM,powerpc, etc lost that battle a long time ago.
ARM isn’t as big as several other micro’s and is dwarfed by more then a few. While arm is popular in mobile devices the bulk of mobile devices are not arm powered.
As I said.
arm isn’t that big, and with x86 putting pressure at 1w and sub 1w the landscape may very well change.
The reason for this will of course be software protability and lower developement costs.
While I agree arm has many beneficial technical merits beyond x86. It has one huge glaring problem.
x86 support. not having it is going to be huge as these small APU and ARM device start being asked to do more over then next 3-5 years. People will want to run the same programs that they have on their pc’s on their phones and vendors will want to cater to that.
Photoshoplight for mobile. Stripped out version of x86 photoshop.
Also realize that alot of those programs have hard x86 hooks into a hard x86 kernel.
I am curious to see what MS does. the only way to break from x86 is to rewrite alot of code for MS and MS software providers. I have my doubts if that will happen.
[quote=Zeno Arrow]ARM losing market share? What a load of b*llocks! If you can prove it, post the links.
Nearly every mobile device runs on ARM, that’s a market segment that barely existed in 1980, and you can bet far more mobile phones are sold compared to x86 computers. Back in 2008, ARM announced 10 Billion ARM devices had been shipped:
How many x86 devices were sold between 1987 and 2008?
ARM is here to stay (thank Jah), get used to it.[/quote]
Recall what IBM and the other computer giants had said, and later recoiled. Therefore, while we may not be able to agree on computing future, ARM and x86 still exist, and therefore, we just need to wait on how they develop. 
[quote=thatguy]arm isn’t that big, and with x86 putting pressure at 1w and sub 1w the landscape may very well change.
The reason for this will of course be software protability and lower developement costs.
While I agree arm has many beneficial technical merits beyond x86. It has one huge glaring problem.
x86 support. not having it is going to be huge as these small APU and ARM device start being asked to do more over then next 3-5 years. People will want to run the same programs that they have on their pc’s on their phones and vendors will want to cater to that.
Photoshoplight for mobile. Stripped out version of x86 photoshop.
Also realize that alot of those programs have hard x86 hooks into a hard x86 kernel.
I am curious to see what MS does. the only way to break from x86 is to rewrite alot of code for MS and MS software providers. I have my doubts if that will happen.
[/quote]
Anyone stupid enough to hardcode their apps to x86 in this day and age shpould be taken round the back of the barn and put out of their misery. In general, most code written in any portable language (IE: C and dialects etc.) should be able to run on any processor architecture with a simple recompile. Be pretty much did it with BeOS when changing from AT&T Hobbits to PowerPC. Also, very few programs in the day and age have “hard x86 hooks” in their source code. Sure, you can’t run an x86 binary on ARM, but neither can you run a diesel van on unleaded.
“People will want to run the same programs that they have on their pc’s on their phones and vendors will want to cater to that.” Desktop programs catergorically do not work on tablets and smartphones. Why do you think all the Windows 7 tablets have fared so poorly and Android tablets have done so well (which incidentally run cough ARM)? Maybe x86 won’t die out on the desktop front for a while, but it’s sure not going to win on the mobile front.
Photoshop CS4 is avaliable for PowerPC mac’s, making your analogy null and void. Anyway, Photoshop Express is an application that runs on the iPad, iPhone and Android, which are all (i’m starting to get tired of this) ARM devices.
Microsoft Windows and the NT architecture has been (IE not necesarily support anymore) to MIPS, PowerPC, ALPHA, and Itanium, with a SPARC port not making it to production. Windows CE currently supports ARM and MIPS, as well as x86. On a similar but slightly unrelated note, ReactOS is making an effort to get itself ported to ARM, making it the first NT architecture OS to run on ARM.
[quote=The123king][quote=thatguy]arm isn’t that big, and with x86 putting pressure at 1w and sub 1w the landscape may very well change.
The reason for this will of course be software protability and lower developement costs.
While I agree arm has many beneficial technical merits beyond x86. It has one huge glaring problem.
x86 support. not having it is going to be huge as these small APU and ARM device start being asked to do more over then next 3-5 years. People will want to run the same programs that they have on their pc’s on their phones and vendors will want to cater to that.
Photoshoplight for mobile. Stripped out version of x86 photoshop.
Also realize that alot of those programs have hard x86 hooks into a hard x86 kernel.
I am curious to see what MS does. the only way to break from x86 is to rewrite alot of code for MS and MS software providers. I have my doubts if that will happen.
[/quote]
Anyone stupid enough to hardcode their apps to x86 in this day and age shpould be taken round the back of the barn and put out of their misery. In general, most code written in any portable language (IE: C and dialects etc.) should be able to run on any processor architecture with a simple recompile. Be pretty much did it with BeOS when changing from AT&T Hobbits to PowerPC. Also, very few programs in the day and age have “hard x86 hooks” in their source code. Sure, you can’t run an x86 binary on ARM, but neither can you run a diesel van on unleaded.
“People will want to run the same programs that they have on their pc’s on their phones and vendors will want to cater to that.” Desktop programs catergorically do not work on tablets and smartphones. Why do you think all the Windows 7 tablets have fared so poorly and Android tablets have done so well (which incidentally run cough ARM)? Maybe x86 won’t die out on the desktop front for a while, but it’s sure not going to win on the mobile front.
Photoshop CS4 is avaliable for PowerPC mac’s, making your analogy null and void. Anyway, Photoshop Express is an application that runs on the iPad, iPhone and Android, which are all (i’m starting to get tired of this) ARM devices.
Microsoft Windows and the NT architecture has been (IE not necesarily support anymore) to MIPS, PowerPC, ALPHA, and Itanium, with a SPARC port not making it to production. Windows CE currently supports ARM and MIPS, as well as x86. On a similar but slightly unrelated note, ReactOS is making an effort to get itself ported to ARM, making it the first NT architecture OS to run on ARM.[/quote]
Alot of apps are still coded for x86 and alot of the specific x86_64 and x86_32 instructions. while it might seems stupid, some of these instructions offer some powerful functionality.
yeah how hard is it to imagine a hardware space where all hardware can run the software. Be it ARM or X86 its long overdue. As these node shrinks occur and cpu becomes more power efficient we will see low clocked 4 core chips in ipads,phones etc.
cs4, wow thats like 2 generations old. How does its feature set compare and does it offer the new GPU accelerated processing of cs5 + ??
Windows Ce is not compatable with alot of popular software.
Whats going to dictate the future is Power consumption and price. Looking at bobcat from AMD and the new SB arch from Intel sort of point where things are headed.Single MCU x86 devices. I expect developers to embrace these as porting should be very very simple. It won’t be required…
I see this future soon. Integrated Ram about 500mb to 1gb 2-4 core cpu more then likely dual core with integrated grahics all on one die. Will be cheap for manufacturers and popular for phone builders. Less parts, lower power consumption more cross platform capability.
when 22nm comes along we shall have our answer if ARM and x86 will truly compete. I think having these multiple ISA’s is insane.
Windows isn’t as portable as linux. Linux is succeeding very much in the embeded space but so are alot more dedicated embeeded operating systems.
Its hard to see the future, but lets all hope that the ISA’s get commonized to one ISA. This computing landscape is crazy.
@thatguy
"I am reffering specifically to the dekstop, server and workstation space. ARM,powerpc, etc lost that battle a long time ago."
You’re showing your ignorance there, ARM has traditionally been about the embedded space, it’s only with it’s most recent cores (Cortex-A8, Cortex-A9, and the upcoming Cortex-A15) that it’s been looking promising for low end PCs; netbooks, tablets and the like. To argue that it’s already lost in a market it never really focused on is absurd.
“ARM isn’t as big as several other micro’s and is dwarfed by more then a few. While arm is popular in mobile devices the bulk of mobile devices are not arm powered.”
Oh really, you base this on what exactly, wishful thinking? Other architectures in the mobile space are dwarfed by ARM, I bet you could go into any mobile phone shop in the world (apart from possibly China, where there might be a few more MIPS devices) and over 90% of the devices will be running on ARM.
“x86 support. not having it is going to be huge as these small APU and ARM device start being asked to do more over then next 3-5 years. People will want to run the same programs that they have on their pc’s on their phones and vendors will want to cater to that.”
I like APUs, but I think you’re overstating the importance of x86 support. For starters, lack of x86 support in iPhones and Android phones hasn’t held back the number of apps in a noticeable way has it, in fact the classic iPhone “there’s an app for that” meme comes about because you can usually do anything you want on these devices (and if you can’t you buy a N900 and you can have access to the thousands of pre-packaged Debian Linux apps, all for free). The downside being, not all of the interfaces suit mobile use, which isn’t something that will be fixed by using x86. Also, what is an APU? It’s a CPU and GPU on a single die, ARM have been doing this for years (ARM + Mali, for example), it’s called a SoC (System on Chip).
@The123king
"1) Anyone stupid enough to hardcode their apps to x86 in this day and age shpould be taken round the back of the barn and put out of their misery. In general, most code written in any portable language (IE: C and dialects etc.) should be able to run on any processor architecture with a simple recompile. Be pretty much did it with BeOS when changing from AT&T Hobbits to PowerPC. Also, very few programs in the day and age have “hard x86 hooks” in their source code. Sure, you can’t run an x86 binary on ARM, but neither can you run a diesel van on unleaded."
Whilst assembly isn’t as widely used these days, high level languages don’t always produce portable code, it’s up to the developers to ensure that portability, and it’s not always a priority. Google for ‘Endianness’ for the start of your education into the subject.
@thatguy
"1. Alot of apps are still coded for x86 and alot of the specific x86_64 and x86_32 instructions. while it might seems stupid, some of these instructions offer some powerful functionality."
You sure about that? See, what I see happening is that most coders don’t use assembly/machine code directly, they let their compiler work out which instructions are best, they might experiment with different optimisation flags (i.e. attempt to use more of the power of the silicon), but that doesn’t make their code any more or less portable, as I said to The123king, the issues lie elsewhere.
“3. cs4, wow thats like 2 generations old. How does its feature set compare and does it offer the new GPU accelerated processing of cs5 + ??”
Actually 1 generation, but clearly accuracy doesn’t seem to be your strong point (nor does maths, (CS)4 + 1 = (CS)5 you fool!).
“4. Windows Ce is not compatable with alot of popular software.”
WinCE is old (it does support popular sofware though, port of MS Office for instance), what’s Microsoft’s newest mobile platform? WinPho7. It’s brand new, so yes software selection isn’t that strong yet, but you can bet Microsoft will be pushing it heavily. Oh and what CPU hardware is required for WinPho7 devices? 1GHz ARM processor.
“Its hard to see the future, but lets all hope that the ISA’s get commonized to one ISA. This computing landscape is crazy.”
I remember a time when there was even more competition in the hardware space, which helped keep computing more interesting (for me). The emergence of ARM as a potential competitor in the desktop space is a welcome relief for me, I do want Intel and AMD to carry on competing in the desktop space, hopefully it’ll help all these companies to continue raising their game.
I had a big post typed out, I figure why bother. My argument isn’t about technical semantics. show me the bussiness case for ARM v x86 in the phone market and small portable devices. show me where companies save money with a diverse eco system of operating systems and non portable software.
Show me that bussiness case ???
Be prepared. Intel and AMD are making a run for phones and small devices with x86.
Do you know why walmart doesn’t use linux ?
Lets be frank. Its never about technical superiority. Its about cost vr benefit ratios.
x86 on small devices make alot of sense from a software standpoint.
BTW its not entirely compiler driven but your assuming MS is supplying a good cross platform compiler.
[quote=Zeno Arrow]@thatguy
"I am reffering specifically to the dekstop, server and workstation space. ARM,powerpc, etc lost that battle a long time ago."
You’re showing your ignorance there, ARM has traditionally been about the embedded space, it’s only with it’s most recent cores (Cortex-A8, Cortex-A9, and the upcoming Cortex-A15) that it’s been looking promising for low end PCs; netbooks, tablets and the like. To argue that it’s already lost in a market it never really focused on is absurd.
“ARM isn’t as big as several other micro’s and is dwarfed by more then a few. While arm is popular in mobile devices the bulk of mobile devices are not arm powered.”
Oh really, you base this on what exactly, wishful thinking? Other architectures in the mobile space are dwarfed by ARM, I bet you could go into any mobile phone shop in the world (apart from possibly China, where there might be a few more MIPS devices) and over 90% of the devices will be running on ARM.
“x86 support. not having it is going to be huge as these small APU and ARM device start being asked to do more over then next 3-5 years. People will want to run the same programs that they have on their pc’s on their phones and vendors will want to cater to that.”
I like APUs, but I think you’re overstating the importance of x86 support. For starters, lack of x86 support in iPhones and Android phones hasn’t held back the number of apps in a noticeable way has it, in fact the classic iPhone “there’s an app for that” meme comes about because you can usually do anything you want on these devices (and if you can’t you buy a N900 and you can have access to the thousands of pre-packaged Debian Linux apps, all for free). The downside being, not all of the interfaces suit mobile use, which isn’t something that will be fixed by using x86. Also, what is an APU? It’s a CPU and GPU on a single die, ARM have been doing this for years (ARM + Mali, for example), it’s called a SoC (System on Chip).
@The123king
"1) Anyone stupid enough to hardcode their apps to x86 in this day and age shpould be taken round the back of the barn and put out of their misery. In general, most code written in any portable language (IE: C and dialects etc.) should be able to run on any processor architecture with a simple recompile. Be pretty much did it with BeOS when changing from AT&T Hobbits to PowerPC. Also, very few programs in the day and age have “hard x86 hooks” in their source code. Sure, you can’t run an x86 binary on ARM, but neither can you run a diesel van on unleaded."
Whilst assembly isn’t as widely used these days, high level languages don’t always produce portable code, it’s up to the developers to ensure that portability, and it’s not always a priority. Google for ‘Endianness’ for the start of your education into the subject.
@thatguy
"1. Alot of apps are still coded for x86 and alot of the specific x86_64 and x86_32 instructions. while it might seems stupid, some of these instructions offer some powerful functionality."
You sure about that? See, what I see happening is that most coders don’t use assembly/machine code directly, they let their compiler work out which instructions are best, they might experiment with different optimisation flags (i.e. attempt to use more of the power of the silicon), but that doesn’t make their code any more or less portable, as I said to The123king, the issues lie elsewhere.
“3. cs4, wow thats like 2 generations old. How does its feature set compare and does it offer the new GPU accelerated processing of cs5 + ??”
Actually 1 generation, but clearly accuracy doesn’t seem to be your strong point (nor does maths, (CS)4 + 1 = (CS)5 you fool!).
“4. Windows Ce is not compatable with alot of popular software.”
WinCE is old (it does support popular sofware though, port of MS Office for instance), what’s Microsoft’s newest mobile platform? WinPho7. It’s brand new, so yes software selection isn’t that strong yet, but you can bet Microsoft will be pushing it heavily. Oh and what CPU hardware is required for WinPho7 devices? 1GHz ARM processor.
“Its hard to see the future, but lets all hope that the ISA’s get commonized to one ISA. This computing landscape is crazy.”
I remember a time when there was even more competition in the hardware space, which helped keep computing more interesting (for me). The emergence of ARM as a potential competitor in the desktop space is a welcome relief for me, I do want Intel and AMD to carry on competing in the desktop space, hopefully it’ll help all these companies to continue raising their game.[/quote]
First shot across the bow
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/11/23/acer-announces-three-new-tablets/