News - ARM-based chips predicted to dominate ultra-mobile devices

[HEXUS]

ABI Research reckons ARM will overtake x86-based platforms in netbooks and the like by 2013.

Read more.

[[GSV]Trig]

Mmm, by 2014 surely Atom (or its replacement) will be smaller and will bring x86 more into the smartphone arena...

[abaxas]

Mmm, by 2014 surely Atom (or its replacement) will be smaller and will bring x86 more into the smartphone arena...

No,

x86 is mearly an abstration layer ontop of a different CPU. The requirement for a specific instruction set is diminishing, x86 has no real purpose other than for legacy apps.

[Steve]

x86 is mearly an abstration layer ontop of a different CPU. The requirement for a specific instruction set is diminishing, x86 has no real purpose other than for legacy apps.

Quite true, modern x86 CPUs hide a whole lot of activity and microcode behind the instruction set. And of course, with emulation, "legacy apps" can run on non-native machines.

I'd love to see a processor that either had the ability to switch between its native and x86 instruction set (basically a hypervisor that turns the x86 translations on/off). Or, I'd like to see a multi-core processor with x86 compatible elements in it that are used when necessary, but the rest of it is used natively under "normal" conditions.

[TheAnimus]

The thing is most people have hudge investment in legacy x86 code. End users seam to mostly dislike java, finding it slow etc (there are of course exceptions like Opera Mini).

So something which can run all the existing code is great if its not at too much of a cost.

People have shown that they really don't value battery life above a certain threshold, just look at iPhone users. As such i'd say the trade off is mostly in space and cost.

RISC is by its nature easier to make very small physical packages, more chips per wafer, cheaper and smaller TDP too.

So I'd say its just a trade off between legacy code and cost. Given that most of these MID type thingies are used for very simple tasks (that is to say no one writes an essay on one) then you don't need to worry about the software too much, its not like netbooks where users prefer windows because they use them for a subset of their windows PCs.

Given that all of these MID things will be on a low price point, trying to differentiate themselves i'd say that its only logical that the lower cost ARM or XScale or Whatever chips are used over x86.

However I really doubt ANYONE will be using them on desktops
(pining for his old RISC PC!)