"The entire x86 computer architecture is living on borrowed time. It’s a dead platform walking. The future belongs to ARM, and Apple’s A-series SoC’s are leading the way."
That is an extremely bold claim. I'd love for it to be true though.
That is an extremely bold claim. I'd love for it to be true though.
ARM is capable in the data centre but there's nothing that comes close to Intel's Xeons without having to build a cluster of independent machines. Sometimes it's nice to throw two 18 core processors into a motherboard along with 512 GB of RAM to do your data processing.
ARM is more than capable of running most desktop tasks that offices, call centres, etc. use; can you imagine an entire office of thousands of awful Dell boxes replaced with tiny AppleTV-sized, A9X-powered workstations? I sure can. But I can also imagine them being unable to run the apps the call centre uses, or run Quicken, or whatever the next app is that the corporation next decides it needs from some consultant.
The reason that ARM is being so successful lately is that it's being used to create new markets, and not to usurp old ones. There's no legacy holding it back, and there's no performance crown to compete against. There was no Intel smartphone processor to match for performance, and there was no existing smartphone software that had to run on our new devices unmodified. ARM is a great technology and Apple is using it to the fullest extent of its capability, but one of the biggest reasons it's succeeding is because there are no pre-existing demands holding it back.
I'm interested to know why you think this – it's a common enough belief. What difference does the ISA make, practically speaking, to the utility or performance of a device?
The biggest problem would be to get third-party software developers to port to ARM, especially the major ones like Adobe. Microsoft already does a lot of work for ARM, so the barrier to getting Office running on OS X on ARM might be pretty low.
It would be a lot like the discrete GPU switching; running a program that needs more power, run it on the x86 processor; when it's not in use, put it to sleep.
You'll notice that this particular journalist is seen as very polarizing (you love him, or you hate him).
That's shows he's doing his job well.