I’m currently contemplating on buying a new laptop with the new snapdragon x elite chips but can’t fully grasp the pros/cons of owning an ARMM-native pc vs the more common x86 one. I guess my main concern is if it will be a worry long-term wise? I only have a low-moderate info on tech hence the question. TIA!
In: Technology
Bottom line, The only advantage to ARM is lower power usage. ARM has risk of not being useful. X86 is king and is not risky.
The microprocessors are completely different. x86 (and its extension amd64) is design to be able to do complex instructions. This means a program can do more work in fewer steps.
ARM uses only simple instructions which mean more steps to do a calculation, but the strategy is that it has many many processors so it can do equal work. This utilizes parallel programming paradigm. The big advantage is you use less electricity, which is great for mobile.
The problem you have is that x86 has dominated the computer industry for 40+ years. So we’re really good at writing software for x86 in a non-parallel style.
Writing for ARM with parallel style is radically different, so a lot of experience doesn’t apply. The good news is smart phones use this approach so we have learned a lot there.
As a computer guy, I think ARM is exciting. I also am surprised that it has not become more popular. I would have thought the technology could do well in laptops or even desktops.
To guide your purchase, I think the fact Microsoft is the only one trying to sell these things is telling about the performance capability. If it were great, everyone would be making them as the hot new thing. I think there is potential, but it’s not there yet.
Still, smart phones are no slouches and do well. I think the leap here is if I want a cheap long battery life laptop, I can use a tablet with a keyboard peripheral. I don’t see the jump need to jump to a laptop and Windows.
I think the key factor is can it do what you need and is it comfortably fast enough for you?
I haven’t tried it. Maybe Microsoft office is a dream come true on these things.
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