NVIDIA Says It Will Deliver ARM CPUs Spanning PCs to SCs

[DeepDayze]

This is *great* news for open source.... since it creates a nice fracture in the market that is very difficult to deal with in distributing blob software. Open source, of course, can be compiled to run on anything, with the exception of assembly code (which is relatively very little).

In the short term, people who switch to arm will end up FORCED into open source for basic utility. In the long term, a lot of users will find themselves needing two separate computers to run all the blob software they want to run, and this will lead to protests and a greater demand for open source.

And when everything is open source, the day of linux will finally come and the evil ms will be crushed

The ARM chips can be made quite powerful enough for even desktops so this would indeed be a great thing! MS will be vanquished hopefully

[Apopas]

@Apopas:
Go search for AMD E-350 (aka. Fusion) laptop, and you'll have it (1366x768) on 10.1" or 11.6". 'bout battery life, well, they said it last for 10 hour..

Lenovo, Acer, and HP. You can search on engadget.com.

Interesting but the laptop I have now says 8 hours battery life. Practicaly it lasts for 4 hours with the brightness to maximum. So I believe this one will last 5-6 hours as well. I want more, so ARM is the way to go

[popper]

Removable keyboard with extra battery (8+8 hours total), Tegra2, 1280x800, Android 3.0 (I will change that to Debian or Ubuntu ARM inmediately, whatever comes first).

look at the http://projects.powerdeveloper.org/project/imx515/805
it may or not be usable on Tegra2 sometime with a bit ow work but if so it will give you a speed boost even without any NEON SIMD routines being added to different apps yet.

[prunc]

Unfortunately, no more so than they are forced to ship GPL graphics drivers for current desktop systems.

Than what is this article talking about when is sais GPL compliant drivers in smartphones and tablets.

http://www.networkworld.com/communit...gpl-compliance

[AHSauge]

I am sure we'll see Intel (and Microsoft) move aggressively to protect the x86 architecture. Microsoft might put out a bastardized version of Windows for ARM to effectively cripple the ARM CPU's enough to convince consumers and manufacturers to drop ARM netbooks/desktops. Intel might even look to find ways to streamline the x86 microarchitecture even more to realize more performance gains to really compete with ARM.

I doubt that. Not that I don't think Intel (and maybe MS) might try that, but the problem really isn't performance. The normal stuff people do, surfing, checking the mail etc., don't require that much performance, and "anything" will do just fine. What is a problem is battery life, or more precisely, the power consumptive architecture x86. Unless something radical is done about it (which is difficult in x86), an ARM netbook is going to have several hours longer battery life than a competing x86 netbook. That is something the end user will care about, and they will care enough about that to choose the ARM one. So unless MS really makes a messy port of windows to ARM (aka intentionally makes it power consumptive), we are going to see at least more ARM netbooks and probably desktops too. Even if MS do sabotage the port, running Android is a real option, as it's increasingly known to the end user.

[staalmannen]

I doubt that. Not that I don't think Intel (and maybe MS) might try that, but the problem really isn't performance. The normal stuff people do, surfing, checking the mail etc., don't require that much performance, and "anything" will do just fine. What is a problem is battery life, or more precisely, the power consumptive architecture x86. Unless something radical is done about it (which is difficult in x86), an ARM netbook is going to have several hours longer battery life than a competing x86 netbook. That is something the end user will care about, and they will care enough about that to choose the ARM one. So unless MS really makes a messy port of windows to ARM (aka intentionally makes it power consumptive), we are going to see at least more ARM netbooks and probably desktops too. Even if MS do sabotage the port, running Android is a real option, as it's increasingly known to the end user.

They can also be more light-weight and silent than x86-devices. The AC100 is passively cooled (no fans and no openings for dust etc), is half as thick as other 10 inch netbooks and half as heavy (800 grams).

[devius]

The AC100 is passively cooled (no fans and no openings for dust etc), is half as thick as other 10 inch netbooks and half as heavy (800 grams).

The other day I saw one of those in a shop. I was really impressed by how light it is, but I wasn't so impressed by the feeling that I was handling a cardboard computer. The thing was so flexible and "plastic-y" that it seemed one of those fake computers they use in furniture shops. If they make it more sturdy it will cause a much better impression.
Anyway, ARM in low power pcs seems interesting, but let's just hope they don't suffer from "GMA500" syndrome.

[runeks]

I am currently a proud owner of a Toshiba AC100 (a Tegra2 "smartbook"), which I dual boot between Ubuntu-ARM and Android. I am currently trying to run as many PTS tests as possible on this device (currently from the Ubuntu-ARM on a SDHC card, not decided if it is worth it to try to flash it to the eMMC instead). I would love to try to do similar benchmarks under Android for comparisons. The general feeling is that Android is way faster than Ubuntu, but this may be due to proprietary driver issues etc, which may lead to an unfair comparison.

Could you post the output of glxinfo? Perhaps both in Ubuntu and from Android as well (not sure if that's possible, but I hope it is). Do you know if it has accelerated graphics?

[...] What is a problem is battery life, or more precisely, the power consumptive architecture x86. Unless something radical is done about it (which is difficult in x86), an ARM netbook is going to have several hours longer battery life than a competing x86 netbook. That is something the end user will care about, and they will care enough about that to choose the ARM one. So unless MS really makes a messy port of windows to ARM (aka intentionally makes it power consumptive), we are going to see at least more ARM netbooks and probably desktops too. Even if MS do sabotage the port, running Android is a real option, as it's increasingly known to the end user.

I had the impression that the display uses most of the power, so that a less power hungry CPU will have little impact. But I don't have any numbers to back it up... Do you know how much power the display uses, since you expect battery life to be improved by "several hours"?

[Thatguy]

The ARM chips can be made quite powerful enough for even desktops so this would indeed be a great thing! MS will be vanquished hopefully

Really ? This is news to me since they have half the mips performance per cycle of a x86 cpu. Which is why we are all still using x86 based designs.

[deanjo]

Really ? This is news to me since they have half the mips performance per cycle of a x86 cpu. Which is why we are all still using x86 based designs.

If you are using MIPS as a benchmark then you truly have no clue. The instruction count for a particular program is completely dependent on the nature of the program and the instruction set architecture. What one architecture may require 20 instructions to do may only take 10 on another architecture. It's an apples and oranges comparison.