[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“Why ARM? There is currently a battle taking place at
the low-end. Intel has moved extremely fast with its low-power,
high-performing Atom CPU, one which delivers more performance at a
given clock speed than the original Pentium 4s did. Still, the
battle at the low-end is in performance and battery life, with a
heavy bent on battery life. With ARM, the technology is so
pervasive that it has seen a tremendous amount of optimization. In
fact, individuals can go to the ARM website and custom build their
own CPUs in any quantity they want, thanks to the design efforts
validating all of the available options.“ARM-based products often provide commensurate levels of
performance, when compared to VIA C7M or Nano CPUs, or Intel’s
Atom, and often times with greater battery life.“ARM-based CPUs–first introduced in 1985–are now the most
prolific CPUs in the world. Over one billion new mobile phones are
sold each year, and 98% of them use at least one ARM-based CPU on
the inside. They are also found in iPods, hard drives, routers, and
all kinds of low-power, high-speed computational devices. There are
clocked versions, and clockless versions, which do not use anything
other than standby power — unless there is work to be done.”