Max (max@a.com) on 1/12/11 wrote:
>
>I remember well Linus's "crazy" comment a few years that
>if anything can challenge x86, it's ARM. (Not Itanium :-))

So I've obviously not changed my mind about the whole
"things grow up (rather than down)" model, and I will
absolutely still pick ARM over Itanium as a future model.

But I do have to say that people often seem to overlook
the serious problems that ARM has. We have ARM nutcases
(you know who you are) who think that ARM is a cleaner
architecture than x86, despite all the evidence to the
contrary.

And they are easy to overlook, because almost all ARM uses
are very much one-off. Users have very little view into the
problems that arise from the fragmentation of the whole
ARM ecosystem, because they almost never see them. So the
lack of compatibility between different ARM cores isn't
seen as the problem that it in reality would be if you
really chased the x86 market.

And people don't understand how big the performance gap
really is. ARM is absolutely not even close. ARM right now
is struggling to compete with Atom, for chissake! Your
high-end phone may sometimes feel "more responsive than
your desktop", and people think ARM performs well, but
that is entirely due to the problem size.

So I absolutely believe that the only realistic threat to
x86 is ARM, but at the same time I do think there's a very
strong tendency for people to be more aware of the problems
they have with traditional PC's, and unaware of the
problems with the "new solution", because they simply have
not had a lot of exposure to it.

And as mentioned, the people who have had a lot of
exposure to ARM are embedded people who think that a
product is a one-off event, rather than an ecosystem that
spans several decades. And those kinds of people like
being able to start from a clean slate, and think that
long-term support is a bad thing.

So ARM people need to really get a grip on some things.
That said, they certainly have an opportunity.

Linus