News Ampere Preps 7nm 128-Core Server CPU to Take on AMD and Intel

bit_user

Polypheme
Ambassador
Apr 10, 2020
75
13
35
Apr 10, 2020
75
13
35
If arm based cpus are that powerful, does it mean x86 is doomed?

What means powerful?
Yes, they consume less power cause they are simpler but simplicity costs performance. It is not only instruction decoding, there is much more outside, eg famous Intel security issues.
All those "things" outside consume power and affect performance. For example branch prediction in parallel loads and decodes instructions consuming power but if branch is hit there is significant improvement in speed. We saw how bug fixes affected some apps.
Simply said, there is no performance without power consumption. Of course, in some examples ARM will beat x86 but also x86 will beat ARM. And there is much more outside, eg memory, inter CPU communication, etc. Old Ryzens are good example of AMD screwup.

Does it makes sense for most users to have x86 today?
No, ARM is powerful enough for web browsing, email and simple stuff. But, a lot of web servers check for mobile device and return mobile optimized pages. Complicated jobs, even Office, are different story.

But, I always say - software matters!
Let's take Microsoft today, pushing UWP and similar tech to get it running on x86 and ARM. Penalty is power efficiency and speed. Same for OSs. Linux here is different story but when we get to GUI distros... Win 10 is square on purpose to boost performance compared to roundly Win 7.

Something else on ARM. Does it makes sense to compare todays Macs with tomorrow ones using ARM?
I think not cause Apply purposely makes x86 Macs slower and thermally/power limited. There is a nice Linus video how MacAir using i5 is built.