Since when did AMD make ARM chips? Also they aren’t as different as a motorcycle and a car. It’s more like compression ignition vs spark ignition. They are largely used in the same applications (or might be in the future), although some specific use cases work better with one or the other. Much like how cars can use either petrol or diesel, but say a large ship is better to use compression ignition and a motorcycle to use spark ignition.
Also they aren’t as different as a motorcycle and a car. It’s more like compression ignition vs spark ignition.
I tried to keep it relatively simple. They have different use cases like cars vs motorcycles, and those use cases tend to lead to different focuses. We can compare in multiple ways:
X86 like motorcycle:
more torque (higher clock speeds, better IPC)
single or dual rider - fewer, faster cores
less complicated (less stuff on the SOC), but more intricate (more pipelining)
ARM like motorcycle:
simpler engine - less pipelining, smaller area, less complex cooling
simpler accessories - the engine is a SOC, but you can attach a sidecar (coprocessor) or trailer, but your options are pretty limited (unlike x86 where a lot of stuff is still outside the CPU, but that’s changing)
The engines (microarch) aren’t that different, but they target different types of customers. You could throw a big motorcycle engine into a car, and maybe put a small car engine into a motorcycle, but it’s not going to work as well. So the form factor (ISA) is the main difference here.
But yeah, diesel vs gasoline is also a descent example, but that kind of begs the question as to where RISC-V fits in (in my example, it would be a diy engine kit, where it can scale from motorcycles to cars to trucks to ships, if you pick the right pieces).
If you were comparing x86 vs RISC-V you might not be far off. But with ARM vs x86 they have basically the same use cases. Namely desktops, laptops, servers, networking equipment, game consoles, set top boxes, and so on. x86 even used to be used in mobile phones or even as a microcontroller. It’s not used in those applications as much now obviously, but it’s very much possible. Originally ARM was developed for the desktop too, and was designed for high performance. Lookup the Acorn Archimedes. When people say ARM is coming to the desktop they really should be saying ARM is coming back to the desktop, since that’s where it started from.
You’re also not correct on the clock speed and IPC front. For a long time Apple’s ARM implementation had better IPC than x86 chips. The whole point of RISC is that you can get better clock speeds and execute more instructions vs CISC having more complex instructions being executed more slowly. The only really correct part is that x86 chips are more pipelined. This is due to them being CISC essentially and needing more stages to hit the same clockspeed. Apple’s ARM makes up for this by having more superscalar units than x86 chips, allowing for greater IPC.
Putting graphics and video compression stuff on x86 chips isn’t new either. That’s a question of system design, not of x86 vs ARM. In the server market you get ARM chips that are CPU only. Both also come paired with FPGAs. So it’s not even fair to say ARM has more accelerators on chip. Also any ARM chip with PCIe (such as the server ones) can take advantage of the same co-processors that x86 can, the only limitations being drivers and software.
Since when did AMD make ARM chips? Also they aren’t as different as a motorcycle and a car. It’s more like compression ignition vs spark ignition. They are largely used in the same applications (or might be in the future), although some specific use cases work better with one or the other. Much like how cars can use either petrol or diesel, but say a large ship is better to use compression ignition and a motorcycle to use spark ignition.
At least 10 years now, and they’re preparing to make ARM PC chips.
I tried to keep it relatively simple. They have different use cases like cars vs motorcycles, and those use cases tend to lead to different focuses. We can compare in multiple ways:
X86 like motorcycle:
ARM like motorcycle:
The engines (microarch) aren’t that different, but they target different types of customers. You could throw a big motorcycle engine into a car, and maybe put a small car engine into a motorcycle, but it’s not going to work as well. So the form factor (ISA) is the main difference here.
But yeah, diesel vs gasoline is also a descent example, but that kind of begs the question as to where RISC-V fits in (in my example, it would be a diy engine kit, where it can scale from motorcycles to cars to trucks to ships, if you pick the right pieces).
If you were comparing x86 vs RISC-V you might not be far off. But with ARM vs x86 they have basically the same use cases. Namely desktops, laptops, servers, networking equipment, game consoles, set top boxes, and so on. x86 even used to be used in mobile phones or even as a microcontroller. It’s not used in those applications as much now obviously, but it’s very much possible. Originally ARM was developed for the desktop too, and was designed for high performance. Lookup the Acorn Archimedes. When people say ARM is coming to the desktop they really should be saying ARM is coming back to the desktop, since that’s where it started from.
You’re also not correct on the clock speed and IPC front. For a long time Apple’s ARM implementation had better IPC than x86 chips. The whole point of RISC is that you can get better clock speeds and execute more instructions vs CISC having more complex instructions being executed more slowly. The only really correct part is that x86 chips are more pipelined. This is due to them being CISC essentially and needing more stages to hit the same clockspeed. Apple’s ARM makes up for this by having more superscalar units than x86 chips, allowing for greater IPC.
Putting graphics and video compression stuff on x86 chips isn’t new either. That’s a question of system design, not of x86 vs ARM. In the server market you get ARM chips that are CPU only. Both also come paired with FPGAs. So it’s not even fair to say ARM has more accelerators on chip. Also any ARM chip with PCIe (such as the server ones) can take advantage of the same co-processors that x86 can, the only limitations being drivers and software.