processor architecture

[ib3494]

What is the difference between different cpu architectures?

[Jurrunio]

Improved: efficiency, (sometimes) performance.

 

Changed: higher price, sometimes new socket.

[BubblyCharizard]

support for newer standards, like Netflix 4K and pci-x 3.0 or thunderbolt

 

[minibois]

It's the underlying workings of a CPU and could change a lot of things, including, but not limited to:

How big the dies are (smaller nm), energy usage, max GHz possible, tjmax, etc.

[Guest]

Generally every new cpu architecture will improve on the performance and features of the cpu. Some things a new architecture normally improves on would be an updated IPC, power consumption (TDP), etc. 

[TheLaserCucumber]

1 hour ago, BubblyCharizard said:

support for newer standards, like Netflix 4K and pci-x 3.0 or thunderbolt

 

Don't say PCI-X please. PCI-X is something completely different from PCIe!

[LAwLz]

That's like asking what the difference between different vehicles are.

It's an incredibly broad subject.

 

The most basic answer would be that different architectures have different amounts of transistors, and they are arranged in different ways. But that explanation is like saying the difference between two cars is the engine. There is a lot of details being skipped.

 

In practice, different architectures have different performance, heat output, features and many other things.

[BubblyCharizard]

1 minute ago, TheLaserCucumber said:

Don't say PCI-X please. PCI-X is something completely different from PCIe!

I meant pci-e

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 hours ago, ib3494 said:

What is the difference between different cpu architectures?

Mostly a different way to do the same thing. CPUs are fed instruction codes, which are different for each architecture. For example, the instruction for adding two numbers maybe code 1 on one processor but code 20 on another.

 

The other big difference is how much these instructions do at once. Some architectures do multiple operations (mostly related to getting data) at once, others only let you do one thing at a time.

 

Otherwise some features like out-of-order execution, branch prediction, etc. aren't necessarily tied to an architecture.

[Sniperfox47]

Just to clarify some of the above answers that seem to give wildly different answers, there are two things commonly meant by architecture.

 

Instruction Set Architectures (i.e. x86 vs MIPS vs ARM) is a difference in how the processor arranges and processes instructions that programs send to it. It details the low level software interface of the systems so that they can be standardized among programmers (if writing machine code) or compilers (if using higher level languages). These are different in the way @M.Yurizaki points out.

 

The other common meaning is the Microarchitecture (i.e. Intel's Core, AMD's Zen, etc.) This is an overarching description of a specific implementation of an ISA and represents changes in the physical hardware of a chip how @LAwLz pointed out.

 

When Intel or Nvidia are talking about the new architecture of the 7th gen Core CPUs or the Pascal based GPUs, they're actually (typically) talking about the changes to the Microarchitecture.

 

On the contrary, when people talk about how software won't run on your phone because it's a different architecture than your PC, they're talking the Instruction Set Architecture.