People need to understand the differences between CPU architectures, also the differences between CISC and RISC processing. Intel/AMD/Via x86/x64 are CISC CPU's, meaning they have large instruction sets that get decoded inside the CPU itself into smaller instructions that are then executed by various resources (FPU / ALU / MMU / ect..). This means a monolithic core capable of running complex operations in serial, the cores are much larger and require large amounts of cache to buffer the data. This allows the company to crank up the speed to reach impressive performance in serial, or minor parallel applications. For the past two decades this has been the standard because most desktop and light to medium servers required this nature.
RISC systems use a much smaller instruction set with a much simpler CPU design. The CPU's directly execute the instructions their sent, usually very fast with little wait times. But complicated tasks require more instructions to be sent, with each fetch / store being a separate instruction. But because of this the programmers can optimize to only execute the instructions the absolutely need and only fetch / store the exact memory they need. There isn't as large a demand for cache memory. Also since the cores are smaller you can fit multiple of them on a single package. But because of that design its much harder to ratchet up the clock speeds on these.
In short, RISC systems allow you to combine a massive amount of simple cores together to execute dozens (now hundreds) of simultaneous threads at once. CISC systems allow you to preemptively predict and execute out of order instructions from a single application. Both have their PRO's and CON's.
CISC
PRO: Able to execute single applications with high rates of speed and responsiveness.
CON: Complicated and doesn't scale well with parallel processing.
USE: Gaming, light to medium server work
EXAMPLE: Moving windows, copying files, browsing internet, writing emails, doing office automation work.
RISC:
PRO: Able to execute massive amounts of parallel instructions at once without needing complicated translations.
CON: Suffers in single application performance.
USE: Graphics rendering, Scientific research, Large database operations.
EXAMPLE: Rendering a animated movie using water refractions and ray tracing. Calculating physical interaction of an earthquake, weather patterns. Calculating the mass of the universe based on known physics models, calculating the effects of a Black Hole on a star system a few light years away.
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