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The Mac vs PC War is back on (sprawling newsletter article by Tom Warren about Windows & Arm)

Chiggs

Gold Member
Whether you like it or not, Arm CPUs are about to make a giant splash on Windows. This newsletter article by Tom Warren, which is also paid, is super-long, so I'll just give you the highlights...you're welcome!

---------------------


Microsoft isn’t launching a new version of Windows next week, but what it’s about to unveil could be just as significant. After nearly four years of falling behind Apple’s MacBooks, sources inside Microsoft tell me that the company is confident it can finally beat Apple’s own chips that power the MacBook Air.

On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will detail the company’s “AI vision across hardware and software” at an event hosted at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. It’s a pivotal moment for Microsoft and Windows because it won’t involve the typical chip partnership with Intel that we’ve seen for decades. Instead, Microsoft will set the stage for a summer of Arm-powered laptops thanks to a close collaboration with Qualcomm.

Microsoft has full confidence that Qualcomm's offerings can beat the M3.
I’m told Microsoft has full confidence that Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors will begin a new era for Windows laptops. Microsoft seems to be betting on this being as big of a moment as when Apple launched its first Arm-based laptop chips in 2020.

Apple’s M1 chip quickly upended our concept of mobile performance, changing the world of laptops overnight. The chip was great at macOS tasks, and it could be packaged into a laptop that ran cooler, quieter, and with twice the battery life in a form factor that was smaller than most Windows laptops.

As I exclusively revealed last month, Microsoft expects its latest Surface devices to now be faster than an M3 MacBook Air for CPU tasks, AI acceleration, and even app emulation. If Microsoft and Qualcomm have actually pulled this off, it’ll be a huge leap forward for Windows on Arm. Qualcomm already thinks it has the benchmarks to prove this.

Next week is going to be wild.
It’s safe to assume we’re going to see a flurry of Arm-powered devices next week.

Leaks suggest laptop makers are lining up Arm versions of their most popular machines. We’ve already seen leaked marketing material for Lenovo’s upcoming Yoga Slim “Snapdragon Edition” and Dell’s XPS 13 with a Snapdragon X Elite processor. Samsung is also rumored to have a Galaxy Book ready with Qualcomm’s latest chips, and Asus says it’s announcing an “AI PC” on May 20th — the same day as Microsoft’s event.

Better app emulation than Rosetta 2?!
I’m also expecting to see new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 devices on Monday that use Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips. In internal documents I’ve seen about these devices, Microsoft is touting a faster CPU than the M3 MacBook Air, faster AI acceleration, longer battery life, and faster app emulation than Rosetta 2 — the application compatibility layer that Apple uses on its Apple Silicon Macs to translate apps to work on its own processors.

This time...things are different.
It certainly feels like something has changed this time around, especially given the confidence levels I’ve heard about. A lot of that could be down to Nuvia, a startup that Qualcomm acquired a few years ago. Founded by former Apple chip engineers, Nuvia’s CPUs are the basis for these new Snapdragon X Elite series of chips.

Qualcomm also has a double whammy of chips this time around to help Windows on Arm be a serious competitor to Apple Silicon. In addition to the X Elite chip at the top of the line, the entry-level X Plus chip, with fewer CPU cores and reduced GPU performance, will allow OEMs to create more affordable Arm-powered laptops. Crucially, this X Plus variant will still deliver a promised 45 TOPS of neural processing unit (NPU) performance, an important part of why Microsoft is calling these “next-gen AI Copilot PCs” internally.

Incredible Windows features only available to systems that have certain AI hardware?
AI is a big part of the story Microsoft plans to tell next week.

The NPU, a dedicated processor designed to accelerate AI tasks, will help unlock features inside Windows that will only be available on devices that have these new and more powerful chips.
Microsoft has been secretly working on a range of AI features, including a flagship one codenamed AI Explorer. Described internally as a way to let you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device,” this feature will use AI to capture everything you do and look at on your PC so you can perform “Recall” actions.

This will make everything you do on your PC searchable. The way sources have described this feature to me is that if you saw an image of an elephant a couple of weeks ago but you can’t remember where from, you just ask AI Explorer to bring that memory back to life, and it’ll show you the exact time you saw it and the context. So if you’ve been working with a colleague and discussing a project, you could look at a snapshot of that moment to remember what you were working on and discussing. This idea of recalling memories and snapshots from a period of time is a key part of how AI Explorer works.

What about AMD and Intel?
Most of these new AI experiences will only work on Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips at first, according to leaked code in recent Windows builds. Both AMD and Intel are expected to deliver chips that may support these features later this year. Documentation I’ve seen suggests Microsoft is expecting AMD’s new Strix chips and Intel’s Lunar Lake processors to combine with Qualcomm’s efforts and mean 50 percent of new laptops will ship with more powerful AI chips by the end of 2026.

Dell's Qualcomm-powered XPS flagship
I’ve never seen a giant Dell leak quite like this one before. VideoCardz published a detailed 311-page internal document from Dell that includes all of the testing and planning phases for its new Qualcomm-powered XPS 13. The document not only lays out the intense planning needed for Microsoft’s big Arm push from OEMs but also offers hints that we might be about to see laptops with 29-hour battery life. While it’s dated from August last year, the document also reveals v2 of these latest Qualcomm Snapdragon chips might be arriving in laptops in the middle of 2025.

---------------------

TL; DR
If you think what's happening here is same old, same old, or won't impact desktops and gaming PCs, you're being especially myopic. Arm is coming and it's coming next week.

Remember, laptops have a bigger market share by far when it comes to both Mac and PC
, and with Microsoft looking to emulate Apple in many ways, you had better believe that Arm is going to land in the desktop realm in the next couple of years.

No matter what you think or how you feel, Arm has captured the imagination of chipmakers and tech companies all over the world. It's cheaper to manufacture because you're not wasting silicon on worthless X86 instructions that most people haven't used for 20+ years. And, from a developer far smarter than me in this area:

X86's problem is that to make it fast you need to have long instruction decoder pipelines, correspondingly complicated caches, etc. So the number of transistors the lie between an instruction arriving in the CPU and the ALU that's actually going to execute it is quite large.

Arm doesn't need all this. which is where it wins out. In an age when a good x86 core was needing millions of transistors, Arm was needing only a few tens of thousands for the whole instruction set.

And remember, we haven't even seen what Nvidia is planning when it comes to Arm.
 
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Dacvak

No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
It’s about damn time. I just hope the x86 compatibility layer is actually decent.
 
The kind that people buy everyday.

Not everyone can land 1k PC unless you are loaded.
$1K is not an Apple only thing. If you want any sort of quality laptop you are going to be paying close to that at minimum. The whole Apple tax definitely exists but the most popular products are all priced similar to their rivals.

This isn't the time of $999 MacBook Air vs $400 Windows Laptop, or $999 iPhone vs $399 Android.
 

angrod14

Member
Outside of gaming purposes, I think it's very hard to argue Apple makes the best computers. MacOS stability and reliabilty is unmatched. Windows is a bloated mess. It's also extremely difficult to get infected on Mac, unlike Windows which has more viruses than Wuhan. Privacy is also hell of a lot better on the Apple front: E2E Encryption for cloud storage with NO remote scanning (unlike Onedrive and Google Drive), iMessage features quantum computing cryptography, Safari has Private Relay (akin to onion routing), biometrics never leave the device.

And the design is just, unmatched. The aluminium finish, the impecable packaging, the UI design. The machines are pieces of art, not just computers.
 
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feynoob

Banned
$1K is not an Apple only thing. If you want any sort of quality laptop you are going to be paying close to that at minimum. The whole Apple tax definitely exists but the most popular products are all priced similar to their rivals.

This isn't the time of $999 MacBook Air vs $400 Windows Laptop, or $999 iPhone vs $399 Android.
1k prices do exist, but you won't find lower mac prices. That is the difference.

Your average joe can still find a 1k$ laptop around 700-800$. And their prices drop faster than apple.
 

Chiggs

Gold Member
Ai stuff is nothing burger. If compatibility works with legacy stuff only battery and performance matters.

I don't know...that example given in the article sounds pretty incredible, especially if it means you don't have to use programs like Recuva that take hours scanning your drives for deleted files.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
I'll need to see some gaming benchmarks.....otherwise....

morgan freeman idgaf GIF
 

Dorfdad

Gold Member
So how does this affect gaming. If apple has ARM and developers are not embracing it why would they all the sudden support in mass for windows? If they did wouldn’t it be helpful for Apple gaming as well since the game would be designed with similar architecture
 
Outside of gaming purposes, I think it's very hard to argue Apple makes the best computers. MacOS stability and reliabilty is unmatched. Windows is a bloated mess. It's also extremely difficult to get infected on Mac, unlike Windows which has more viruses than Wuhan. Privacy is also hell of a lot better on the Apple front: E2E Encryption for cloud storage with NO remote scanning (unlike Onedrive and Google Drive), iMessage features quantum computing cryptography, Safari has Private Relay (akin to onion routing), biometrics never leave the device.

And the design is just, unmatched. The aluminium finish, the impecable packaging, the UI design. The machines are pieces of art, not just computers.
Exactly. I use a M2 MacBook Air as my every day computer outside of gaming (I gotta 4070S/5600X machine for that). The mixture of build quality, display quality, speed, and ease of use is unmatched. I have so much power in a device that's well built with a great display and completely silent as it's passively cooled.

Apple is just one of those companies that people love to have a hate boner for despite not using or owning them most of the time. Don't get me wrong. Apple isn't perfect, and there are some stupid things that they do (Despite owning the new iPad Pro I think the decisions around the keyboard/pencil are fucking stupid, and I think 8GB of RAM even outside a SOC is too low for some models) but overall it's a much better product then it's competitors on average.

1k prices do exist, but you won't find lower mac prices. That is the difference.

Your average joe can still find a 1k$ laptop around 700-800$. And their prices drop faster than apple.
Again. You are getting cheap bullshit for anything less than $800. There is a reason why so many places place the MacBook Air as the best laptop. You can buy a brand new M1 MBA for $699 at Walmart right now. Not used, new. You can also use the free education discount through Apple to get the M2 Air for $899 (doesn't even require you to validate education). Microcenter and Amazon also almost always have MacBooks on sale as well.

You buy cheap shit and you get cheap shit.
 
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Chiggs

Gold Member
So how does this affect gaming. If apple has ARM and developers are not embracing it why would they all the sudden support in mass for windows? If they did wouldn’t it be helpful for Apple gaming as well since the game would be designed with similar architecture

My thoughts on this:
  • The PC market (and Apple's market) is dominated by laptop sales, plain and simple.
    • So, any trends that take root in the laptop world, will eventually make their way over to desktops.
      • Specifically, if these CPUs do well in the laptop world, they will begin to show up in desktops; albeit...supercharged ones like what Apple does with the Max and Ultra.
    • I know it's fashionable to think that giant RGB systems with space heater CPUs and $2k GPUs are what the world uses, but it's simply not the case.
  • If these systems do well enough in gaming, you can expect companies and chipmakers to start leveraging that performance into newer gaming-focused products using Arm.
    • Again, ARM is cheaper to manufacture. X86 has a built-in tax with silicon reserved for instructions that hardly anyone uses.
    • And if Arm can make a dent in Windows, then it will start to capture the gaming market, too.
Remember, Nvidia is entering the fray here. They're going to be making their own Arm-based CPU, and they're most assuredly going to bundle that with an Nvidia GPU. I don't think it's hard to envision what happens next.

Edit: Also not sure I agree that gaming developers haven't embraced Apple's hardware. Personally, I think they have...you have major titles on that platform, like Baldur's Gate 3. And if there's one company that can match Nvdia's ray-tracing performance, it's Apple. And don't forget what a giant Apple is with mobile gaming.
 
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poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Apple is just one of those companies that people love to have a hate boner for despite not using or owning them most of the time.


Again. You are getting cheap bullshit for anything less than $800. .

You buy cheap shit and you get cheap shit.
Yep can't imagine why people would dislike Apple and the extremely pleasant people who use their products.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
Exactly. I use a M2 MacBook Air as my every day computer outside of gaming (I gotta 4070S/5600X machine for that). The mixture of build quality, display quality, speed, and ease of use is unmatched. I have so much power in a device that's well built with a great display and completely silent as it's passively cooled.

Apple is just one of those companies that people love to have a hate boner for despite not using or owning them most of the time. Don't get me wrong. Apple isn't perfect, and there are some stupid things that they do (Despite owning the new iPad Pro I think the decisions around the keyboard/pencil are fucking stupid, and I think 8GB of RAM even outside a SOC is too low for some models) but overall it's a much better product then it's competitors on average.


Again. You are getting cheap bullshit for anything less than $800. There is a reason why so many places place the MacBook Air as the best laptop. You can buy a brand new M1 MBA for $699 at Walmart right now. Not used, new. You can also use the free education discount through Apple to get the M2 Air for $899 (doesn't even require you to validate education). Microcenter and Amazon also almost always have MacBooks on sale as well.

You buy cheap shit and you get cheap shit.

That's fine if you don't mind 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage. Looking at bestbuy, I can't find a Macbook that has 1 TB and 16GB RAM for under $1500. Sorry but that's just ridiculous.
 

Chiggs

Gold Member
That's fine if you don't mind 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage. Looking at bestbuy, I can't find a Macbook that has 1 TB and 16GB RAM for under $1500. Sorry but that's just ridiculous.

This is definitely why I'm interested in these Windows Arm laptops. Let's see what they can do and at what price point.
 

feynoob

Banned
Again. You are getting cheap bullshit for anything less than $800. There is a reason why so many places place the MacBook Air as the best laptop. You can buy a brand new M1 MBA for $699 at Walmart right now. Not used, new. You can also use the free education discount through Apple to get the M2 Air for $899 (doesn't even require you to validate education). Microcenter and Amazon also almost always have MacBooks on sale as well.

You buy cheap shit and you get cheap shit.
So loaded people get the best deal
vince vaughn cmt awards 2016 GIF by CMT Music Awards
 

Topher

Identifies as young
This is definitely why I'm interested in these Windows Arm laptops. Let's see what they can do and at what price point.

Going to get interesting once AMD and Intel drop their chips later in the year. Competition on the PC side will be welcome.
 

Chiggs

Gold Member
Going to get interesting once AMD and Intel drop their chips later in the year. Competition on the PC side will be welcome.

I think the whole PC market is about ready to get disrupted and that can only mean good things for consumers. Arm vs X86, Windows vs Mac...bring it on.
 
Can't wait to check my 29 hours battery status in the same fucking menu as audio and wi-fi. Nutella outdid himself with that one.
Described internally as a way to let you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device,” this feature will use AI to capture everything you do and look at on your PC so you can perform “Recall” actions.

This will make everything you do on your PC searchable. The way sources have described this feature to me is that if you saw an image of an elephant a couple of weeks ago but you can’t remember where from, you just ask AI Explorer to bring that memory back to life, and it’ll show you the exact time you saw it and the context. So if you’ve been working with a colleague and discussing a project, you could look at a snapshot of that moment to remember what you were working on and discussing. This idea of recalling memories and snapshots from a period of time is a key part of how AI Explorer works.

I would expect nothing less from the retards that enabled recent files display by default.
 

LordCBH

Member
Can't wait to check my 29 hours battery status in the same fucking menu as audio and wi-fi. Nutella outdid himself with that one.


I would expect nothing less from the retards that enabled recent files display by default.

Windows 11 is already bloated with a shit ton of useless apps, last thing I want is ai shit getting baked into it scanning everything I do. Putting copilot on it without asking me was already too far.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
They tried this before. I have my doubts. It will end up being chrome book level of cheapness trying to get the price down below 1k with plastic shells, slow ssds, and bad screens.

And by the time they get anything out apple will be on the m5 lol.


But the thing here in the article is completely wrong anyway. It's not the MacBooks that they need to beat. It's the ultra powerful coming mass consumer level iPads and iPhones and those are only a few years away.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
I think the whole PC market is about ready to get disrupted and that can only mean good things for consumers. Arm vs X86, Windows vs Mac...bring it on.

Yeah, I'm for it. Shit is too boring. We need more nerd fights.
 
Whether you like it or not, Arm CPUs are about to make a giant splash on Windows. This newsletter article by Tom Warren, which is also paid, is super-long, so I'll just give you the highlights...you're welcome!

---------------------




Microsoft has full confidence that Qualcomm's offerings can beat the M3.


Next week is going to be wild.


Better app emulation than Rosetta 2?!


This time...things are different.


Incredible Windows features only available to systems that have certain AI hardware?


What about AMD and Intel?


Dell's Qualcomm-powered XPS flagship


---------------------

TL; DR
If you think what's happening here is same old, same old, or won't impact desktops and gaming PCs, you're being especially myopic. Arm is coming and it's coming next week.

Remember, laptops have a bigger market share by far when it comes to both Mac and PC
, and with Microsoft looking to emulate Apple in many ways, you had better believe that Arm is going to land in the desktop realm in the next couple of years.

No matter what you think or how you feel, Arm has captured the imagination of chipmakers and tech companies all over the world. It's cheaper to manufacture because you're not wasting silicon on worthless X86 instructions that most people haven't used for 20+ years. And, from a developer far smarter than me in this area:



And remember, we haven't even seen what Nvidia is planning when it comes to Arm.

Instructions that could be dropped at any time if Intel decides to pull out X86S.

Also, it only applies to laptops and other lower watt machines.
 

Chiggs

Gold Member
Instructions that could be dropped at any time if Intel decides to pull out X86S.

Also, it only applies to laptops and other lower watt machines.


1. And yet, they haven't.

2. Which is what dominates the computer market in terms of sales, by and large...which is why we're seeing this push for Arm.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
These arm vs x86 discussions, or "how arm is gonna DESTROY x86", are very harebrained. So i'll just leave this video here for people interested:



All the usual arguments you see on why ARM is better than x64 are made by people who do not understand anything about chips. From the "20 year old instructions!" to the "save silicon!" to even "more energy efficient!" are all utterly wrong or mischaracterized.

The reason you see tech companies like Apple adopting these ISAs is because RISC-V is open source and free while ARM has cheap licensing. Its easy to do R&D for them compared to x86 which requires a lot more expertise that would be impossible to catch up when compared to a company like Intel with decades worth of experience.

So yeah, most big tech just doesn't want to give money to Intel and AMD. That's it.
 
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StereoVsn

Gold Member
That's fine if you don't mind 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage. Looking at bestbuy, I can't find a Macbook that has 1 TB and 16GB RAM for under $1500. Sorry but that's just ridiculous.
Honestly it’s worth it. Yes, the pricing is dumb and what they charge for RAM and SSD upgrades is even dumber, but if you use iPhones and iPads, it’s all insanely well integrated.

I use iPad as my 2nd display for my MacBook and can attach my phone to use as a camera. All native. I can take messages and calls seamlessly across the devices.

Performance on battery is excellent and unlike Windows laptops doesn’t drop off. Battery life is damn good. Build quality is top notch and so on.

Yeah, I paid like $2K for my 14” Mb Pro on a BestBuy sale, but that’s best laptop I ever used.

And really well built Windows laptops are pushing $1,500+ anyways so it’s not like you are comparing $700 to $2K. Look at say Dell XPS, comparable HPs or Samsungs or even new ASUS.

Hell, even with gaming it’s not too bad as I run Paradox games natively, BG3 and more.

It’s not without its faults, but overall it’s worth it. And I have been using high end work laptops for a long time. My current Windows workstation is quite a bit more expensive than my personal Mac. Really wish I could have 16” MBPro instead as cost would have been comparable.
 
I've been on Apple Silicon with my M1 MacBook Pro for almost 4 years now. A laptop that runs on passive cooling and never uses its fan, gets 2-3 days of battery life.

It's nice to see WIndows finally joining the ARM party but it still remains to be seen if Windows on ARM is less shit than Windows on x86. I'm pretty spoiled by how nice Mac OS is these days for laptop use.
 
Until arm can play my pc games. Then idc. Don’t get me wrong. It cool for a laptop. But as for a desktop. When arm can do that, truly take over in my desktop, then I’m all aboard. Just don’t see it anytime soon tho
 

Chiggs

Gold Member
These arm vs x86 discussions, or "how arm is gonna DESTROY x86", are very harebrained. So i'll just leave this video here for people interested:



You posted a 1 hour video, which is a response to an article that nobody here has posted or referenced...and in which in no way invalidates anything said by Tom Warren in his article, which is about Windows pushing Arm. It also doesn't invalidate the improved cost of manufacturing argument or why everyone and their mom is jumping on the Arm train. AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm...you name it.

Edit: Oh, for fuck's sake...they even reference that fucking Chips and Cheese article. I'm done.

Edit 2: Haha, these guys are actually trashing X86 in this video, too. Did you actually watch the whole thing? Serious question.

Until arm can play my pc games. Then idc. Don’t get me wrong. It cool for a laptop. But as for a desktop. When arm can do that, truly take over in my desktop, then I’m all aboard. Just don’t see it anytime soon tho

Have you ever heard the phrase, "one things leads to another?"

 
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Topher

Identifies as young
Honestly it’s worth it. Yes, the pricing is dumb and what they charge for RAM and SSD upgrades is even dumber, but if you use iPhones and iPads, it’s all insanely well integrated.

I use iPad as my 2nd display for my MacBook and can attach my phone to use as a camera. All native. I can take messages and calls seamlessly across the devices.

Performance on battery is excellent and unlike Windows laptops doesn’t drop off. Battery life is damn good. Build quality is top notch and so on.

Yeah, I paid like $2K for my 14” Mb Pro on a BestBuy sale, but that’s best laptop I ever used.

And really well built Windows laptops are pushing $1,500+ anyways so it’s not like you are comparing $700 to $2K. Look at say Dell XPS, comparable HPs or Samsungs or even new ASUS.

Hell, even with gaming it’s not too bad as I run Paradox games natively, BG3 and more.

It’s not without its faults, but overall it’s worth it. And I have been using high end work laptops for a long time. My current Windows workstation is quite a bit more expensive than my personal Mac. Really wish I could have 16” MBPro instead as cost would have been comparable.

Don't get me wrong bro. I'm not an Apple hater by any means. Macs are extremely well made and I love the device integration. If their base Macs were 16GB memory and 512GB storage and the upgrades were halved then I'd probably still be using Mac, but as it is even with their Mac minis taking a base 8GB/256GB to 16GB/512GB costs $400. I'm just not paying those prices any more.

I've switched to Samsung for phone, tablet and watch. They do a good job with integration and work well with Windows. Not as good as Mac, but good enough.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Oh, don't worry. I will....and then I'm posting every single X86 critique they have, which sure seems to be a lot.

Which, of course, you didn't mention at all...strangely.
Feel free, they do have a few criticisms after all. This isn't some bajulating video like most pro-arm articles are.
 
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Drell

Member
I'm not very technical but I know X86 is from the computer science's prehistory (the 70s). Maybe is it time to use more modern architectures widely and let that very american way of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" behind?
 

Guilty_AI

Member
I'm not very technical but I know X86 is from the computer science's prehistory (the 70s). Maybe is it time to use more modern architectures widely and let that very american way of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" behind?
The competing architechture you're seeing here is from the same time-frame and has been used all this time even if it gained more popularity recently.

So don't worry, you'll be using prehistoric computer science tech either way.
 

Drell

Member
The competing architechture you're seeing here is from the same time-frame and has been used all this time even if it gained more popularity recently.

So don't worry, you'll be using prehistoric computer science tech either way.
According to Wikipedia: X86 was introduced in 78 and ARM in 85. At the speed progresses were made back then and still are, I'm sure it's a sufficient gap to call this prehistory vs beginning of modern architectures.
 
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