Moore’s Law Is Becoming Irrelevant

We have always been about efficiency, miles per gallon instead of top speed. That’s actually what matters. Mobile is an easy example: you know that phone is constrained because it’s battery powered.

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Meh. I like to decide what matters to me when I build a computer. The CEO of the company selling a different kind of processor making a statement about "what really matters" is kind of obvious.

There’s nothing intrinsic in the architecture which stops you [from] being at the high end of performance. Traditionally ARM has found a lot of opportunity in things like mobile phones, where you don’t want to have something which is super high-performance because it consumes more power or real estate. But if you pick another design point, like a computer, the battery’s going to be a lot bigger so you can use more energy. It’s like having a car with a bigger fuel tank. If the only fuel tank you want to put on your car is a small one, then you have to be quite efficient. If someone wants to build a Ferrari and have a bigger fuel tank, then fine, you can make the engine do more. The ARM microprocessor was never designed for mobile in the first place. It ran a computer with a Windows-type operating system before Microsoft ever had Windows, called RISC-OS. There’s nothing inherent in the microprocessor architecture that says you can’t have computers and keyboards and mice.

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I agree there is nothing intrinsic in the architecture that keeps ARM from being at the high end of performance. There is also nothing intrinsic that keeps AMD from being at the high end of performance. But Intel dominates the raw processing power. At the end of the day, whether the limitation is intrinsic or not matters far less than who has implemented the best technology... When it comes to power, Intel has it in spades.

I think ARM fits in a lot of places in home computers (for what most people in my family use them for). There are a lot of people still who like having a lot of power under their desk however, and ARM would only disappoint there. ARM is not gaming, image processing, video conversion, etc.

While sometimes reserved, the article is often rather optimisitic as well.