[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Huh. I wonder why AMD and Intel (Also, AMD/Ati and Nvidia if we count GPUs) can make their designs faster and more efficient between generations even on the same process technology regardless of workload, yet ARM seems to make each faster design less efficient.[/citation]
Perhaps because they're approaching chip design from different sides: The PC side already had high performance, now they're targeting efficiency; ARM had efficiency but they can't compete in terms of raw performance. They're chasing performance now, and i think the efficiency of their chips is hitting a wall, thus the need for big.LITTLE.
Actually i don't think ARM was ever efficient, their chips just weren't doing much. As in, ARM chips were/are efficient in terms of clock cycles per watt, while the PC side is efficient in terms of performance per watt.