Hardware ARM set to take 13% of PC CPU market?

We talk to research firm IDC about ARM's potential to break into the PC processor market.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/05/09/arm-13-percent-pc-cpu-market/1

 

**hugs ARM shares**

 

Hmmm... If that all goes through and we end up with windows on ARM with an Nvidia tegra powered system, does that meas we will get DirectX on it as well?
This could be interesting. I wouldnt mind some Diablo 2 or other old games on a low power system like that, or even on a tablet.

 

Minecraft on the go!

 

Meh... Even if the ARM arch is faster, John Doe will always buy Intel "because it's faster"!! It's like when ATI had the HD5000 series and had no competition from nVidia I saw lots of people buying nvidia cards. The brand is all, and Intel is like Microsoft. It's own brand is so powerfull that people buy it, even if there are better alternatives.

 

If AMD can only achieve 18% market share with x86 processors, it's hard to see how ARM can achieve more than a fraction of that with a completely different architecture.

 

huge and clunky x86 being power efficient? ROFL.

but the problem with ARM's RISC architecture is that it usually is not backwards compatible. that is why x86 (and CISC philosophy) succeeded in the area that backward compatibility matters more than power efficiency.

 

hugs acorn a4000

 

Because there hasn't been an ARM version of Windows before. Isn't Windows 8 supposed to support ARM?
AMD have lost out to Intel as Intel's high end chips perform better and Intel's lower power chips use less power than AMD's.
However the minimum level of performance people need isn't changing much (browsing, office docs etc) and ARM CPU are fast approaching that minimum level. They're no there yet, but they will be soon. ARM will be able to beat Intel on power usage, assuming the manufacturers that use ARM can scale down their manufacturing process to match Intel's new 22nm within a reasonable time frame. That means the low performance end of the market will be open to them in a way it never was for AMD.
Of course, now we have Fusion which might shape up the market. But even that will fail if ARM can meet the minimum performance levels low end users need as x86 will always use more power than ARM.
To me AMD's best hope is still Fusion, but the need Global Foundries to shrink their manufacturing process to match Intel's quickly. With out that, Fusion is doomed to fail against Intel no matter how much better the design is than Atom.

 

probably comes down to what is considered a "PC" as well.
A Blackberry (or iphone...or android phone) can do things my PC ten years ago couldn't.
Also netbooks and Tablets...considered PC's?

 

exactly what i was thinking. the majority of people see playing hd video as a performance pc (not here, but in the real world).

 

It doesn't look too great for VIA does it? ARM approaching the low power market from below, and AMD approaching from above!

 

Good luck to ARM, but if they go down this path, we are most likely looking at the end of ARM being a British owned company.

Time and time again, British tech companies get bought out by the big boys once they are about to achieve critical mass and become a market leader.

 

This is nothing but great news - ARM being a licencer rather than a manufacturer will alow companies to build on the platform, specifically to meet the demands of the PC user.

Nvidia developing an ARM based PC CPU, I wish them luck, more competition the better. Intel clings to its x86 licenses like the preverbial stuff to a blanket - a decent entry into this territory with an ARM based product would not only be a 'two fingers' wave to Intel for being anticompetitive but also will hit them in market share for their lack of vision and forward thinking.

There are a lot of things that need to work and come into mainstream in a timely fashion if the 2015 prediction is to stand (Win8 OS being the bees knees with ARM Compatable Directx, ARM PC CPU's delivering our dreams of what they will be (22nm, integrated swtichable embeded GPU, low power etc...), Intels 3D transistor not changing the rules of the game ....... so all things considerd, I say KUDOS to all parties involved in this massive project, wish you every success and good luck.

 

That would be interesting. VIA has always suffered with it's Nano CPU's as VIA isn't a name people know. Nvidia is. It'll be interesting to see how they fit in.

 

Page 2, paragraph 2 - software software

I genuinely hope that ARM succeed in this move towards the PC market. It is nothing but good news for the end user.

 

Getting more power-efficient is the way to go for sure, aslong as the software we're used to stays the same.

If ARM manages to create hardware that let's people use their usual software (office, graphics, games, etc.) then they might be on to something. Otherwise it'll be crippled too much and people will still buy x86-based desktops instead.

 

This is the key to it all. A large part of x86's entrenchment is due to the massive investment in x86 software, both in financial terms and in terms of the sheer amount of code written for x86.
Applications can, of course, be recompiled for ARM or rewritten when necessary; but convincing people and developers that it's worth their time to do that will be the hard part.

The only way I can think of people using their existing x86 software on ARM CPUs without recompiling is with some sort of abstraction layer or dynamic recompiler like they use in console emulators; but the performance loss in doing that would surely render the strengths of an ARM processor worthless.

Just getting an ARM version of DirectX on an ARM version of Windows isn't going to make your existing PC games work on an ARM CPU and more hardware fragmentation is the last thing the PC games market needs. For these entirely selfish reasons I would personally prefer not to see ARM gaining significant share of the desktop computing market; even if it means leaving us in Intel's x86 stranglehold.

 

well there are some big name companies like HP talking about in 2-3 dropping their PC line with current setups ie Intel and AMD and switching over to ARM WebOS based desktops and laptops because well its true in that the average consumer doesnt need much and anyone who needs more would just go higher end, even Apple is in a similar thinking pattern. So it should be interesting what we see in the next 2 years

 

With Intel ready to start using trigate I don't think ARM will even manage 13% of the PC CPU market. Now some people will argue that ARM could make their own trigate. Well sure that's easy to say that but it took Intel 10 years to develop trigate and make it work in manufacturing. If you think ARM can pull off an implementation of trigate that quickly then you are kidding yourself. x86 is here to stay and it will only spread as time goes on. This is the end of ARM popularity, not the beginning.