By: Aaron Spink (aaronspink.delete@this.notearthlink.net), August 9, 2014 3:44 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
juanrga (nospam.delete@this.juanrga.com) on August 8, 2014 10:49 am wrote:
> Take a modern A57 core. According to AMD the A57 Opteron is faster than jaguar based Opteron but
> consumes less power. The ARM core performance is ~40% faster, and consumes roughly one half.
>
Faster at what? Its a bunch of market point pointing to nothingness.
> E.g. a x86 decoder is more difficult to implement than an ARM64 decoder, because the former has to match
> instructions of variable length. Also the x86 ISA is full of legacy instructions, which have to be implemented
> in hardware and then verified/tested which increases development costs and time of development.
>
Hate to break it to you, but ARM is also full of legacy instructions which also have to be implemented. ARM isn't a spring chicken in that regard.
> According to Feldman an entirely custom server chip using the ARM architecture takes about 18 months
> and about $30 million. By contrast, it takes three or four-year time frame and $300--400 million in
> development costs required to build an x86-based server chip based on a new micro-architecture.
>
This is a disingenuous comparison at best and completely flawed in its basis and is obviously so to anyone in the industry. Its basically comparing apples to oranges.
> Take a modern A57 core. According to AMD the A57 Opteron is faster than jaguar based Opteron but
> consumes less power. The ARM core performance is ~40% faster, and consumes roughly one half.
>
Faster at what? Its a bunch of market point pointing to nothingness.
> E.g. a x86 decoder is more difficult to implement than an ARM64 decoder, because the former has to match
> instructions of variable length. Also the x86 ISA is full of legacy instructions, which have to be implemented
> in hardware and then verified/tested which increases development costs and time of development.
>
Hate to break it to you, but ARM is also full of legacy instructions which also have to be implemented. ARM isn't a spring chicken in that regard.
> According to Feldman an entirely custom server chip using the ARM architecture takes about 18 months
> and about $30 million. By contrast, it takes three or four-year time frame and $300--400 million in
> development costs required to build an x86-based server chip based on a new micro-architecture.
>
This is a disingenuous comparison at best and completely flawed in its basis and is obviously so to anyone in the industry. Its basically comparing apples to oranges.