Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on December 2, 2014 7:33 pm wrote:
> dmcq (dmcq.delete@this.fano.co.uk) on December 2, 2014 5:32 pm wrote:
> > It seems ARM have decided that atomic operations are a good idea
> >
> > http://community.arm.com/groups/processors/blog/2014/12/02/the-armv8-a-architecture-and-its-ongoing-development
> >
> > they are sticking a whole load of atomic operations into their 64 bit ARM architecture as
> > well as the current acquire and release and memory exclusive ones. I'd guess so the operation
> > can be exported to the cache or whereever and done there quickly but it is interesting that
> > they think it worthwhile to implement these as well as all the other special memory operations
> > they have. They will now have a quite amazing range of memory access operations.
> >
> > The link also describes a number of other additions they are making, they seem to be targetting
> > large systems. Still no transactional memory or decimal floating point like POWER yet though ;-)
>
> Hmm. Interesting in light of the rumors (RUMORS!) that the mythical large screen iPad is
> due in about six months and with an A9 (rather than the expected A8X) SoC. That certainly
> gives one (admittedly not overwhelming) reason why Apple might want to rush forward with
> a new core faster than expected, and perhaps why the A8 was so much just a tweaked A7.

I think that we should realize that the world does not spin only around iDevices and Apple. In my point of view this is more geared towards larger systems and servers rather than tablets and phones.

Apple could be interested more though if they planned on using ARM-based systems for laptops or small desktops where multi-threading and the such are much more heavily used and based upon.