The value of ARM is that anyone with enough money can license Arm cores and incorporate them in their own products, which can be optimized for some custom applications.
The level of customization possible with an x86 CPU is much less. You must buy a complete computer board or module and incorporate it in your product.
While for custom applications it is easy to create a superior solution with Arm cores, for general-purpose computers it is hard to compete with the Intel and AMD CPUs. All the computers with Arm cores have worse performance per dollar than similar x86 computers. (For instance there was recently a thread on HN about a credit-card-sized computer with an Intel N100 CPU and with the same price or lower as a Raspberry Pi, but with a much higher performance.)
AMD does offer custom x86 - see the steam deck, surface laptops and Xbox and PS4 and 5. Given there aren't a ton of small fish making custom parts they are excellent at what they are made for.
AMD is pushing x86 to Apple ARM levels that keep power use low enough (best I've seen is 16 hour battery life on a device - I think MacBooks best this still) but performance per watt I haven't seen ARM really top charts. They are awesome and I want arm and risc-v to really shine in laptops but the only player on the PC side is Qualcomm who was told to destroy their only flagship by ARM.
(simplifying) ARM provides verified, tested, standardized, reasonably well designed chips (logic circuits) that your company can purchase a license for and then send that chip design / logic circuit to be etched on a wafer, cut, encapsulated, and soldered to a printed circuit board.
Those ARM CPUs support a standard (but ARM-flavored) assembly programming language. (Formally: Instruction Set Architecture)
Designing your own chip previously was risky because you might have logic or hardware bugs in your chip that were very hard to debug, and then you hope that someone will bother to write assembly code that works on your chip. Since you probably designed your own assembly language that co-evolved with your chip, those assembly code developers are going to be sinking a lot of time into understanding your chips and assembly code quirks to wring performance out of them.
RISC-V standardizes a RISC-V flavored assembly code (ISA) and also provides some certification test packages to prove that "this particular chip design" can execute the RISC-V assembly language according to specifications.
In PCs, ARM CPUs perform just as good or better than AMD64 but have much better battery life. In the cloud, ARM CPUs are much cheaper (ca. 25% less) for the same or better performance.
Not quite. I think we need to split the value of ARM the instruction from specific implementation.
1 - In term of pure efficiency, nothing magical about ARM. Looking at AMD latest strix laptop platform they are about on par with qualcomm new arm laptop chips.
Apple M* CPU are still better. However, a lot of that efficiency is platform derived.
2 - The lower cost in the cloud is a function of the middle man being removed. Amazon is selling graviton cheaper simply because they don't have to pay the markup of AMD or Intel.
adrian_b|1 year ago
The level of customization possible with an x86 CPU is much less. You must buy a complete computer board or module and incorporate it in your product.
While for custom applications it is easy to create a superior solution with Arm cores, for general-purpose computers it is hard to compete with the Intel and AMD CPUs. All the computers with Arm cores have worse performance per dollar than similar x86 computers. (For instance there was recently a thread on HN about a credit-card-sized computer with an Intel N100 CPU and with the same price or lower as a Raspberry Pi, but with a much higher performance.)
hypercube33|1 year ago
AMD is pushing x86 to Apple ARM levels that keep power use low enough (best I've seen is 16 hour battery life on a device - I think MacBooks best this still) but performance per watt I haven't seen ARM really top charts. They are awesome and I want arm and risc-v to really shine in laptops but the only player on the PC side is Qualcomm who was told to destroy their only flagship by ARM.
AlexDragusin|1 year ago
klelatti|1 year ago
NortySpock|1 year ago
Those ARM CPUs support a standard (but ARM-flavored) assembly programming language. (Formally: Instruction Set Architecture)
Designing your own chip previously was risky because you might have logic or hardware bugs in your chip that were very hard to debug, and then you hope that someone will bother to write assembly code that works on your chip. Since you probably designed your own assembly language that co-evolved with your chip, those assembly code developers are going to be sinking a lot of time into understanding your chips and assembly code quirks to wring performance out of them.
RISC-V standardizes a RISC-V flavored assembly code (ISA) and also provides some certification test packages to prove that "this particular chip design" can execute the RISC-V assembly language according to specifications.
avidphantasm|1 year ago
soulbadguy|1 year ago
1 - In term of pure efficiency, nothing magical about ARM. Looking at AMD latest strix laptop platform they are about on par with qualcomm new arm laptop chips.
Apple M* CPU are still better. However, a lot of that efficiency is platform derived.
2 - The lower cost in the cloud is a function of the middle man being removed. Amazon is selling graviton cheaper simply because they don't have to pay the markup of AMD or Intel.