Is ARM the future?

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086

See?, A Stopgap...

8086 is long gone though.  Even the 8088 is long gone. If win10 will run on an 8086 even extremely slowly I’d be very impressed. Even win32 was different.  There was some back compatibility between win32 and 8086 stuff. 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Bombastinator

[whm1974]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

8086 is long gone though.  Even the 8088 is long gone. If win10 will run on an 8086 even extremely slowly I’d be very impressed. Even win32 was different.  There was some back compatibility between win32 and 8086 stuff. 

Well there is the IA-16 ISA, which includes the i8086/i8088, i80186, i80286. The IA-32, includes the i80386, i80486, , Pentium, Pentium Pro, all others until Intel followed suit after AMD64...

[whm1974]

52 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

8086 is long gone though.  Even the 8088 is long gone. If win10 will run on an 8086 even extremely slowly I’d be very impressed. Even win32 was different.  There was some back compatibility between win32 and 8086 stuff. 

Well the 8086/88 is limited to 1 Megabyte w/o Bank Switching due to it's 20-bit Address Bus. So for Modern Uses it fairly limited.

[Spindel]

ARM isn't only the future ARM is the now. 

 

In another thread I made a list of ARM devices in my house, I'll do it again in this thread (I might miss some thing but still).

In my house these devices, that are in use, are ARM:

• 2 TVs
• 2 Mediaplayers
• 1 Game console 
• 4 mobile phones (both me an my wife have 2 phones each, one private and one work issued)
• 2 iPads
• 1 computer (M1 Mac mini) 
• 2 routers (one is main router the other is flashed with DD-WRT and just runs as a wireless AP)
• 1 head console for a weather station
• 1 hub for Z-wave, 433 MHz devices 
• 1 hub for Zigbee devices (Philips hue) 
• 1 NAS
• 1 apple watch
• Printer/scanner

Now to devices, that are in use, that are not ARM:

• Wives work issued laptop
• My work issued laptop (but I don't really use it when working form home so this hardly qualify)
• Control unit for my heat pump (it's not ARM, not x86 it's something other) 
• Our car (Subaru, not ARM, not x86 something other not sure what)

 

[whm1974]

1 hour ago, Spindel said:

Now to devices, that are in use, that are not ARM:

• Wives work issued laptop
• My work issued laptop (but I don't really use it when working form home so this hardly qualify)
• Control unit for my heat pump (it's not ARM, not x86 it's something other) 
• Our car (Subaru, not ARM, not x86 something other not sure what)

For the Control Unit and your Car, it is either MIPS or an PowerPC SoC.

[igormp]

6 hours ago, Spindel said:

ARM isn't only the future ARM is the now. 

 

In another thread I made a list of ARM devices in my house, I'll do it again in this thread (I might miss some thing but still).

In my house these devices, that are in use, are ARM:

• 2 TVs
• 2 Mediaplayers
• 1 Game console 
• 4 mobile phones (both me an my wife have 2 phones each, one private and one work issued)
• 2 iPads
• 1 computer (M1 Mac mini) 
• 2 routers (one is main router the other is flashed with DD-WRT and just runs as a wireless AP)
• 1 head console for a weather station
• 1 hub for Z-wave, 433 MHz devices 
• 1 hub for Zigbee devices (Philips hue) 
• 1 NAS
• 1 apple watch
• Printer/scanner

Now to devices, that are in use, that are not ARM:

• Wives work issued laptop
• My work issued laptop (but I don't really use it when working form home so this hardly qualify)
• Control unit for my heat pump (it's not ARM, not x86 it's something other) 
• Our car (Subaru, not ARM, not x86 something other not sure what)

Keep in mind that all of the ARM devices you listed are not exactly the same. ARM-M CPUs are wildly different from ARM-A ones, with different ISAs and capabilities.

 

When it comes to microcontrollers, ARM is currently the biggest player in the market (we shall see if RISC-V will make a dent in the upcoming years).

[Bombastinator]

The problem I think is language again.  ARM is a company name and can refer to RISC coding structure in general and that coding structure as the company uses it which can be very different in different situations.  People refer to Apple silicon as ARM, but while it was based off of the original RISC chips that ARM made, that was long ago and Apple long ago went off in its own direction. ARM went off in its own direction with RISC too.  

Edited March 15, 2021 by Bombastinator

[small guy64]

It may be the future, but convincing corporate USA to jump ship will be a hard one. We got a arm laptop in work not long ago for a field tech and the higher ups hated that we could not put a print driver on it. The driver would not work on ARM, Even with the new win10 emu/compatibly layer "what ever you call it thing that lets you run x86 code on a arm system. " So our higher ups now refuse to let us get arm base systems. I don't blame them, its not ready  for corporate use yet, but its close. Server are anther thing too, on paper arm seems like a god send, but once you get into it your find its not the best yet do to compatibly. 

Still its very close. Once more work place and gaming apps get native x86 ports, or at the very least run just as good on ARM its game over for x86. The normal end user consumer does not care about Intel v AMD or x86 v ARM. They just want a PC to do work, web and just want it to work at a low cost.  its the corporate and high end users like gamers and number crunchers and server admins and content makers that need convincing to jump ship. 

[Spindel]

53 minutes ago, igormp said:

Keep in mind that all of the ARM devices you listed are not exactly the same. ARM-M CPUs are wildly different from ARM-A ones, with different ISAs and capabilities.

 

When it comes to microcontrollers, ARM is currently the biggest player in the market (we shall see if RISC-V will make a dent in the upcoming years).

Yeah I know, but still the consumer market runs on ARM in one form or the other. 

MS is dabbling in making computers on ARM.

RaspberryPi becomes more and more useful as a GP computer by the day, if you can live with Linux. 

Apple will, in a not to distant future, run all of its computers on ARM (and if the last 15 years have shown us anything is that when Apple makes something, the rest will follow). 

 

But I stand by my point: ARM isn't only the future, we already are in the age of ARM dominance.

 

[igormp]

7 minutes ago, Spindel said:

But I stand by my point: ARM isn't only the future, we already are in the age of ARM dominance.

 

Indeed, it has been a thing for the past 15~20 years.

 

But most people on this forum just think of their desktops and laptops as actual "computers", an area where ARM doesn't dominate that much (yet). Afterall, what matters for most people here is that if it can runs their games or not 

[whm1974]

1 hour ago, igormp said:

Keep in mind that all of the ARM devices you listed are not exactly the same. ARM-M CPUs are wildly different from ARM-A ones, with different ISAs and capabilities.

 

When it comes to microcontrollers, ARM is currently the biggest player in the market (we shall see if RISC-V will make a dent in the upcoming years).

Speaking of RISC-V, the ISA does shows promise as both an embedded SoC and General Purpose Computers.

[Sarra]

8 hours ago, Spindel said:

Our car (Subaru, not ARM, not x86 something other not sure what)

If it's 2005 or older, it's a 16-bit controller. If it's newer, it's a 32-bit controller.

 

Seriously, you don't want ARM controlling your ECU. I wouldn't want X86 or even a 64-bit PC processor controlling my car, either. Automotive, and aerospace, will most likely use dedicated hardware to control engines and vital systems for many, many years to come. Having seen a PC crash, would you want the microprocessor that controls your brakes to crash while you're getting off the interstate? Automotive/aerospace microcontrollers have a lot of ECC built in, and quite honestly, ARM doesn't have that kind of capability, at least not on consumer level products. Sure, they could add it in, but the stuff they use now for this is way more specialized than ARM really allows.

 

Add a TON of ECC and redundancy to ARM, and maybe it could dominate in automotive, but probably not aerospace.

 

That said, I'd be shocked if they didn't jam a bunch of ARM in your infotainment system. There's probably a bunch of ARM junk in most new cars.

[azblurbit]

TLDR: We're probably gonna see more diversity rather than just one architecture.

 

I think that one individual architecture isn't necessarily the future. x86 I think will continue to be the architecture of the desktop form factor because the concern is less about power efficiency and more about raw power. x86 can get you A LOT of that raw power. Apple's M1 chip has shown more promise for ARM than we've ever really seen before.

 

ARM had always been relegated to low power devices that while they were powerful, they couldn't scale to the same scale that x86 could. With M1, Apple showed that ARM could compete with other devices in the laptop form factor. And it's undeniable that they'll be proving ARM even further and possibly even showing that it could compete in the desktop environment. Amazon especially has been increasingly utilizing ARM in the computing and hosting spaces. ARM is under a massive growth right now.

 

However, there's another big contender: RISC-V. It's (relatively) new. It's open source and completely free to develop with. The WAN Show covered a piece back in December about how Micro-Magic developed a CPU that absolutely stomped Apple's M1 not in raw performance, but in performance per watt. Here's an article about it for backstory. Obviously, since RISC-V is in such an early stage of development, it's got a long way to go before it's ready for any sort of production. However, with how promising its efficiency is looking, it's very probable that we'll see it utilized in edge computing and integrated circuits where you need that performance per watt.

 

All this to say is that we'll probably see less of "ARM/x86/RISC-V/PowerPC/Itanium IS THE FUTURE" and more of "Each of these architectures have their own purpose and instead of only using one architecture we should use the best architecture for the job"

[igormp]

1 hour ago, Sarra said:

Seriously, you don't want ARM controlling your ECU. I wouldn't want X86 or even a 64-bit PC processor controlling my car, either.

How's that relevant? Many auto makers use ARM micros on their ECUs and other control units. You see all kinds of ISAs being used in those modules, be it ARM, 8051, AVR or PICs.

 

1 hour ago, Sarra said:

Automotive, and aerospace, will most likely use dedicated hardware to control engines and vital systems for many, many years to come.

What do you mean by dedicated hardware? FPGAs? Dedicated ASICs? They do have some of those, but they are a minority on the grand scheme of the project, and you have regular microcontrollers controlling those in the end.

 

1 hour ago, Sarra said:

Having seen a PC crash, would you want the microprocessor that controls your brakes to crash while you're getting off the interstate?

Your regular desktop CPU has nothing to do with the microcontrollers found in those places. They're way too expensive, require too much energy and are way too overpowered for what you need.

 

1 hour ago, Sarra said:

Automotive/aerospace microcontrollers have a lot of ECC built in, and quite honestly, ARM doesn't have that kind of capability, at least not on consumer level products. Sure, they could add it in, but the stuff they use now for this is way more specialized than ARM really allows.

https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-processors:ARM-PROCESSORS

https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-microcontrollers:ARM-MICROCONTROLLERS

https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/landing-page/stellar-32-bit-automotive-mcus.html

https://www.microchip.com/en-us/solutions/automotive-and-transportation/automotive-products/microcontrollers-and-microprocessors

 

1 hour ago, Sarra said:

Add a TON of ECC and redundancy to ARM, and maybe it could dominate in automotive, but probably not aerospace.

You do know that micros don't use your regular RAM modules, right?

 

35 minutes ago, azblurbit said:

Obviously, since RISC-V is in such an early stage of development, it's got a long way to go before it's ready for any sort of production.

It already is in production, such as the Nvidia's Falcon and WD's SweRV. Keep in mind that just because it's an open ISA, doesn't mean the designs based on it will be open. Most of those will be proprietary µArchs used on in-house stuff where paying a royalty doesn't make sense.

 

38 minutes ago, azblurbit said:

All this to say is that we'll probably see less of "ARM/x86/RISC-V/PowerPC/Itanium IS THE FUTURE" and more of "Each of these architectures have their own purpose and instead of only using one architecture we should use the best architecture for the job"

This!!!!

Another thing that most people don't get is that how irrelevant the actual ISA is when it comes to performance and power efficiency, when it's the µArch beneath it that actually matters.

[whm1974]

1 hour ago, azblurbit said:

However, there's another big contender: RISC-V. It's (relatively) new. It's open source and completely free to develop with. The WAN Show covered a piece back in December about how Micro-Magic developed a CPU that absolutely stomped Apple's M1 not in raw performance, but in performance per watt. Here's an article about it for backstory. Obviously, since RISC-V is in such an early stage of development, it's got a long way to go before it's ready for any sort of production. However, with how promising its efficiency is looking, it's very probable that we'll see it utilized in edge computing and integrated circuits where you need that performance per watt.

 

All this to say is that we'll probably see less of "ARM/x86/RISC-V/PowerPC/Itanium IS THE FUTURE" and more of "Each of these architectures have their own purpose and instead of only using one architecture we should use the best architecture for the job"

Is this RISC-V design currently being manufactured? Anyway Itanium is completely dead as far as being used for anything. Turns out, the VLIW ISA it used, required hard to develop Compilers for it.

 

PowerPC? Well there is only one PC type that is still using it, and not much software for it. AmigaOS 4.x.x runs on them.

[igormp]

7 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Anyway Itanium is completely dead as far as being used for anything

It was just an example, if I understood correctly.

7 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Turns out, the VLIW ISA it used, required hard to develop Compilers for it.

That applies to any VLIW ISA, since you're abstracting the complexity away from the hardware and  into the compiler.

 

8 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

PowerPC? Well there is only one PC type that is still using it, and not much software for it. AmigaOS 4.x.x runs on them.

There are still some µCs and CPUs based on PowerPC, and the latest mars rover used one. It also has pretty good linux support.

Also, POWER is still alive and kicking, with POWER 10 CPUs coming out this year.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Is this RISC-V design currently being manufactured? Anyway Itanium is completely dead as far as being used for anything. Turns out, the VLIW ISA it used, required hard to develop Compilers for it.

 

PowerPC? Well there is only one PC type that is still using it, and not much software for it. AmigaOS 4.x.x runs on them.

The PowerPC architecture is very much alive and never went away.   It was never only for PCs.  It was just what Apple decided to use. I believe the final Apple g5 architecture was known as power5. Theyre on power9 right now.  It’s IBM’s preferred architecture iirc.  They’re still alive too.  They just don’t make PCs anymore and sold that business to Lenovo some years ago. 

[igormp]

10 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

They just don’t make PCs anymore and sold that business to Lenovo some years ago.

There are still workstations available for regular consumers, such as the ones by Raptor: https://www.raptorcs.com/

[straight_stewie]

On 3/14/2021 at 1:33 PM, Bombastinator said:

again I agree, but while full blockage bugbears may emerge, you attempt to predict how long the life expectancy of x86 is.  I would say that is unknown as well.

Pretty much everyone agrees that it will take around a decade of concerted effort to switch enough consumer applications to ARM for it to really become attractive. I will capitulate that we've seen the start of that process already.

 

On 3/14/2021 at 1:33 PM, Bombastinator said:

your example compares a thin-and-light laptop CPU to an enterprise level CPU.  When compared thin-and-light to thin-and-light the m1 does really well.

That's true enough, but my intention was to compare top-of-the-line offerings to top-of-the-line offerings.

ARM will always have a leg up in the low power space, that's where very nearly 100% of it's development effort (both from the brand and from the individual suppliers) has been directed since the introduction of the brand. At the moment, it's a little difficult to compare a high end chip to ARM, because no one has made a competitive high end ARM chip yet, which is my point.

Any word on when Apple intends to release an ARM chip for their workstations? My personal suspicion is that if Apple thought ARM was ready for that purpose the rumor mill would be churning.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, igormp said:

There are still workstations available for regular consumers, such as the ones by Raptor: https://www.raptorcs.com/

Didn’t mean to imply they couldn’t be bought.  Just that ibm doesn’t have a marque for home computers anymore.

[igormp]

1 minute ago, straight_stewie said:

At the moment, it's a little difficult to compare a high end chip to ARM, because no one has made a competitive high end ARM chip yet, which is my point.

There already exists high-end ARM server chips, and the most powerful MCUs you can find are ARM-based.

But if you're solely focusing on desktop/laptops, then sure.

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

Pretty much everyone agrees that it will take around a decade of concerted effort to switch enough consumer applications to ARM for it to really become attractive. I will capitulate that we've seen the start of that process already.

 

That's true enough, but my intention was to compare top-of-the-line offerings to top-of-the-line offerings.

ARM will always have a leg up in the low power space, that's where very nearly 100% of it's development effort (both from the brand and from the individual suppliers) has been directed since the introduction of the brand. At the moment, it's a little difficult to compare a high end chip to ARM, because no one has made a competitive high end ARM chip yet, which is my point.

Any word on when Apple intends to release an ARM chip for their workstations? My personal suspicion is that if Apple thought ARM was ready for that purpose the rumor mill would be churning.

So accurate by time slice but couldn’t apply to apple’s upcoming line for example.  I wonder how “arm” apple silicon is at this point.  It’s unarguably an arm ancestor, in sort of the same way as whales are related to this extinct somewhat pig like land creature.

[whm1974]

As far as the PowerPC ISA goes, I am aware of IBM's Power, but I was referring to Consumer PC Type Hardware.

 

I didn't know that the Current Mars Rover Computers use PowerPC SoCs.

[straight_stewie]

18 minutes ago, igormp said:

There already exists high-end ARM server chips and the most powerful MCUs

cannot hold a match to the most powerful application processors.

https://kinvolk.io/blog/2019/11/comparative-benchmark-of-ampere-emag-amd-epyc-and-intel-xeon-for-cloud-native-workloads/

If you look at these benchmarks, the ARM CPU outperforms the x86/64 processors in memory accesses. Which is a reasonable and expected conclusion since these processors exist mostly because AWS commissioned them to help run their database and AI offerings, which could really really benefit from a lot of in memory databases (hence high blocking I/O performance was the main point of optimization).

In the benchmarks that are not blocking I/O limited, the x86/64 offerings from both companies smoke the ARM processor. Keep in mind that the application spool-up/spool-down and semaphore-acquisition/semaphore-release benchmarks are blocking I/O limited, which is where we already know that the ARM chip excels.

It's almost like the ARM chip is designed to do one task really really well, while the x86/64 offerings are expected to do every task with high performance. Well, it's not "almost" like that, it's exactly like that: The stated purpose of the Ampere ARM chip was to help AWS improve their offerings for blocking I/O bound applications (data intense applications like databases and AI). The stated purpose of the x86/64 offerings is to build high performance servers for, basically, any task you could come up with.

It's like a purpose built drag car vs a street/strip machine. Yeah, the nitro funny car sure get's down and boogies, for a quarter mile of perfectly paved straight road anyway. But the street/strip machine can help you pick up the groceries on the way home from the track.

All my point, all along, is that there hasn't been an ARM chip yet designed for the high-end consumer space. We simply don't know how such a processor would perform.

[igormp]

18 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

cannot hold a match to the most powerful application processors.

https://kinvolk.io/blog/2019/11/comparative-benchmark-of-ampere-emag-amd-epyc-and-intel-xeon-for-cloud-native-workloads/

There's a new model that's pretty much on par with current x86 offerings: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-altra-q80&num=1

 

20 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

If you look at these benchmarks, the ARM CPU outperforms the x86/64 processors in memory accesses. Which is a reasonable and expected conclusion since these processors exist mostly because AWS commissioned them to help run their database and AI offerings, which could really really benefit from a lot of in memory databases (hence high blocking I/O performance was the main point of optimization).

Ampere doesn't sell its CPUs to AWS. Both AWS and Ampere licensed the Neoverse µArch from ARM and made their own CPUs (eMAG and Altra from Ampere, Graviton from AWS).