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
It’s similar to the differences between western vs eastern written language. x86 has more instructions, like characters that represent specific things. You can write out a thought in chinese calligraphy much faster than with the 26 character latin alphabet (ARM). As a result of having more instructions that can be used in niche cases, x86 is generally faster than ARM which might have to take multiple more general steps to yield one specific step. However since ARM has reduced instructions, it can be optimized for efficiency and low power usage. More recently Apple took low power consumption ARM based chips, and made them massive so they could run as fast as x86 chips while using less power. Qualcomm is now also doing this with their mobile processors.
The biggest con to ARM right now is lack of compatibility. Almost everything was designed to run on x86, ARM struggles to run a lot of software. Even Apple took years to transition its OS to take advantage of ARM and they have total control over it. Make sure the computer you are buying will run all the software you plan to use, and that it wont have weird bugs when it emulates x86 for legacy programs (windows on ARM has historically had a lot of issues, i’m not sure how resolved they are now).
Latest Answers