Analysts predict Arm CPUs will power 40% of notebooks by 2029

hover389 said:

"Snapdragon X processors are substantially less power-hungry than the x86 offerings from Intel and AMD"

That has everything to do with the cpu architecture and not whether ARM or x86 is more efficient. Lunar lake is as efficient as snapdragon in PCs which proves that all x86 companies had to do was focus the architecture on efficiency

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Exactly. This whole "ARM is more efficient than x86" BS tells how worryingly uneducated current news writers are. That may sound rude but hey, I do except that site like Techspot have at least Some quality.

Intel is already managing with lunar lake and I have no doubts AMD will not be far behind: they're showing that prioritizing battery life and efficiency on x86 is not only quite possible, but it is far easier to tame down x86 for acceptable battery life than it is to achieve acceptable ARM compatibility: While a lot of people could trade access to many applications for 2 to 3x the battery life on ARM, once the battery life of the best x86 offers are like 20-30% from ARM it's way more convenient to just live with 8 to 10 hours of battery life instead of 15 but being able to actually use any app or game you might want while regular use still gets you 3/4 of the way there and certainly enough for 'all day' use.

HardReset said:

Exactly. This whole "ARM is more efficient than x86" BS tells how worryingly uneducated current news writers are. That may sound rude but hey, I do except that site like Techspot have at least Some quality.

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It is literally more efficient. ARM is built for that reason. RISC (which ARM is based on) was a response to CISC being more complex and inefficient.

The lack of progress with x86 is why Apple went ARM instead. Apple silicon's performance scales perfectly around 35% per year which Intel is unable to achieve, only reaching 12.5% a year but they get hotter and less efficient. My Intel MacBook Pro was way too hot and I traded in for MacBook Air with M2 which is much faster and never gets hot.

sternmutes said:

It is literally more efficient. ARM is built for that reason. RISC (which ARM is based on) was a response to CISC being more complex and inefficient.

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CISC CPUs switched internally RISC around 30 years ago. About only thing that makes x86 "less efficient" is translating CISC instructions to RISC and other way around but effect of that is minimal.

Basically there is no difference.

sternmutes said:

The lack of progress with x86 is why Apple went ARM instead. Apple silicon's performance scales perfectly around 35% per year which Intel is unable to achieve, only reaching 12.5% a year but they get hotter and less efficient. My Intel MacBook Pro was way too hot and I traded in for MacBook Air with M2 which is much faster and never gets hot.

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Again that has Nothing to do with ARM vs x86. Apple went for ARM because they had no x86 license.

sternmutes said:

It is literally more efficient. ARM is built for that reason. RISC (which ARM is based on) was a response to CISC being more complex and inefficient.

The lack of progress with x86 is why Apple went ARM instead. Apple silicon's performance scales perfectly around 35% per year which Intel is unable to achieve, only reaching 12.5% a year but they get hotter and less efficient. My Intel MacBook Pro was way too hot and I traded in for MacBook Air with M2 which is much faster and never gets hot.

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x86 isnt CISC and hasnt been since the 486 days. Starting with the P5 x86 moved to micro ops, obliterating most of the reason for RISC to exist.

ARM is as much RISC as X86 is. It was designed for low power applications first, but the arch has VERY LITTLE to do with power efficiency today. It's all down to core design. The actual x86 block is TINY. Lunar lake proves this. People think there's some monolith in x86 chips full of black box code that mandates dozens of watts of power draw, all it shows is how ignorant most people are to CPU design. I'd trust Jim Keller, who stated that its down to core design, not arch, over internet commenters who think ARM is magic.

Apple moved to M series to maintain control, something they obsess over. And the M series performance improvements gen over gen have proven very lackluster, relying on throwing more transistors at the problem, which comes with more power use. The m4 has 28 billion transistors, compared to 13 billion in a 7950x. That's only going to get you so far in the efficiency game.

Good luck. It might power 40% of the unsold notebooks sitting in warehouses by 2029.

HardReset said:

CISC CPUs switched internally RISC around 30 years ago. About only thing that makes x86 "less efficient" is translating CISC instructions to RISC and other way around but effect of that is minimal.

Basically there is no difference.

Again that has Nothing to do with ARM vs x86. Apple went for ARM because they had no x86 license.

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no, it has nothing to do with x86 licensing. In fact, ARM requires licenses too. Apple chose ARM because of superior architecture. You're talking about how we created an "internal RISC" for CISC but it's still CISC by design. When you have a lot of baggage, it will always impact performance. Intel and AMD are struggling to make x86 faster but keeps getting too inefficient. It could not scale.

ARM on the other hand scales well and keeps showing consistent scaling in the past decade starting with Apple's A series and then M series.

sternmutes said:

no, it has nothing to do with x86 licensing. In fact, ARM requires licenses too. Apple chose ARM because of superior architecture. You're talking about how we created an "internal RISC" for CISC but it's still CISC by design. When you have a lot of baggage, it will always impact performance. Intel and AMD are struggling to make x86 faster but keeps getting too inefficient. It could not scale.

ARM on the other hand scales well and keeps showing consistent scaling in the past decade starting with Apple's A series and then M series.

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Basically anyone can buy licence to make ARM CPUs. x86 licence is much much more complicated matter.

Because current x86 CPUs are internally RISC, they are RISC by design. How x86 could not scale is out of my mind, x86 has improved a lot in recent years while Apple CPU development comes almost solely from better manufacturing technology. Again, it's not about ARM or x86 but how you design CPUs.

ARM is eating marketshare in both servers and laptops.

We will probably see tiny desktops PCs soon with ARM as well. Windows 11 is ready.

This is why Intel and AMD work together improving x86 - https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/pre...6-ecosystem-advisory-group-to-accelerate.html

Lunar Lake was a big step forward and delivers ARM efficiency pretty much + more performance when you actually needs it.

Could easily see consoles with ARM CPUs eventually. I hope they stay x86 tho, for compatibility. For x86 to survive in the long run, Intel and AMD have to work together.

Nvidia is working closely with Mediatek as we speak. They will soon be able to deliver impressive CPU + GPU combos.

If the ARM performance is equal (or less but not that much) and their laptops can stay online longer ... then yes they will dominate the intel's mobile devices.