[bryanalves]

I think in a lot of ways this is related to the relative overpowering of desktop computers for daily use. It's been true for years now that computers are highly overpowered for what they are typically used for.

Quad core machine with a million gigs of ram for email and a web browser?

Sure there are LOTS of good reasons for having legitimate CPU power, but a lot of times any random Ghz level processor is going to provide plenty of responsiveness for daily tasks. The only thing I can think of that people typically do that is processor intensive is HD playback, and that is easily accelerated nowadays.

It's not always about absolute performance, it's about "good enough" performance. If ARM is going to supply good enough performance with the additional benefits of being cheaper and more portable, then why NOT use it?

This isn't about ARM versus Intel. This is about having adequately powered portables.

Intel is losing the low-end CPU market. That much is true. But the low-end CPU market is the new middle-end CPU market. I think we are going to see an age where more and more people have "low-end" portables as their main computers. The barrier between low-end, middle-end, and high-end has shifted significantly I think. A few years ago, we all had uses for high-end computers. Nowadays, what would be considered high-end is a waste for most people.

Also, we can't forget the impact of the cloud on this. We don't need a lot of computing power locally now. For many of the types of applications that one would need high cpu for, the cloud potentially provides those solutions for us.

I, for one, don't see myself trading in my desktop at work anytime soon. But I do see myself using my laptop a lot more than my desktop at home. My couch is a lot more comfortable than my computer chair.

[__david__]

> Quad core machine with a million gigs of ram for email and a web browser?

I hear this sentiment a lot, and in general I agree, but the fact is the app with the largest RAM footprint on my laptop is Firefox. Given the proliferation of web-based apps, I don't see the complexity of web browsers going down. We can always use more power.

[zobzu]

And Firefox is actually one of the most memory efficient browsers right now.

What people fail to see is that "just a browser" is a completely idiotic and misinformed statement.

Browsers are probably one of the _most_ complex and powerful app on the system.

Browsers are basically running entiere applications, virtualized, in a sandbox per tab!

Heck, some websites are just not viewable on mobile right now (unfortunately) because mobile jus't aint nearly fast enough. Think WebGL for example. Few mobile browsers support it, but when they do, its pretty slow if the author didnt make a super low polygon and texture count version...

[wvenable]

I disagree. A few years ago, what we had for high-end computers was practically equivalent what we currently hold in our pockets. It wasn't long ago I got my first dual core desktop but dual core CPUs in smartphones and tablets is now standard along with powerful GPUs and lots of RAM. And it's not enough. Every year, each device needs to be significantly more powerful than the last. The idea that we've reached some plateau of mobile computing power doesn't hold up to even recent history.

And that's the real problem for Intel. Mobile computing power is improving an incredible rate -- probably faster than anyone could have predicted -- and soon enough they'll reach a level where ARM and Intel are actually competing at the same level. We're not there yet but it's close. At that point we'll see if Intel has what it takes to stay in the game.

[sliverstorm]

You seem to be operating on the assumption that an ARM CPU can match an x86 CPU in performance clock-for-clock.

While this may be true, it is not necessarily. Just pull out your old 4GHz P4, and see how it stacks up against your modern 3GHz desktop.

The point being architecture has come a long way for x86, and even if they match frequency, ARM will not necessarily come out of the gate capable of matching that.

[plq]

> Quad core machine with a million gigs of ram for email and a web browser?

Sure, web browsers nowadays do much more than rendering html. It's actually among the most complex software package that your computer runs. Especially the high amounts of memory do not go to waste for a heavy web user.