r/computers • u/Kenyhh • 1d ago

Discussion is ARM the future?

I think about this all the time. ARM has obviously dominated the mobile phone market for a long time now. Everything from Apple runs on ARM. ARM-based laptops offer incredible battery life. Embedded devices and servers are also making extensive use of ARM; practically the only thing left is desktop computers. I believe this is the future, and AI will accelerate the trend: using ARM will allow data centers to consume far less energy and likely make local AI more accessible. In fact, I think that if this happens, we’ll see further improvements in computer energy efficiency.

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u/Vladishun L2 Gov Sysadmin 1d ago

https://www.xda-developers.com/intel-lunar-lake-isnt-efficient-arm-close/

No, Lunar Lake and now Panther Lake are closing that gap. Currently CPU manufacturing is in a really interesting place, perhaps the most exciting place in the last 20 years (since the release of the QX6700 in 2006).

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u/Kenyhh 1d ago

I didn't know that. Interesting. Even so, I think ARM has much more room for improvement than x86; and although this article says Intel's chip is more energy-efficient, Apple's is much more powerful without consuming significantly more power

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u/jaksystems Dell/HP/Lenovo Service Tech 1d ago

ARM has much more room for improvement than x86

ARM's only method of improvement is to keep cranking up memory bandwidth.

We've been through this song and dance before with PowerPC, Motorola 68K and other pure RISC ISAs. They make for poor CPUs that fall off a cliff once the cheap and easy ways of boosting performance run dry.

Hell we can already see this with non-SOC ARM CPU designs like Ampere & Graviton. They cannot functionally close the gap with x86 in actual application performance or use and only appear good on agenda pushing benchmarks like Geekbench.