What is the difference between an ARM processor and an Intel processor?

Android supports three types of processors (CPUs): ARM, Intel, and MIPS. ARM is undoubtedly the most widely used. Intel is well known for its popularity on desktops and servers, but it has relatively little impact on the mobile industry. MIPS has a long history in the 32-bit and 64-bit embedded fields, and has achieved a lot of success, but the adoption rate of Android is currently the lowest among the three.

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In short, ARM is now the winner and Intel is the strongest rival of ARM. So what is the difference between an ARM processor and an Intel processor? Why is ARM so popular? What processor is important for your smartphone or tablet?

Processor (CPU)

The central processing unit (CPU) is the brain of your smart device. Its mission is to drive your device by executing a series of instructions, including a display, touch screen, modem, etc., to make a mixture of plastic and metal into a shiny smartphone or tablet.

Mobile devices are so complex that processors need to execute millions of lines of instructions to do what people want these devices to do. Speed ​​and power consumption are critical to the processor. Speed ​​affects the user experience and power consumption affects battery life. A perfect mobile device must have good performance and low power consumption.

This is why it is important to choose what kind of processor. A super power-hungry, unresponsive processor will quickly drain your battery, and a sophisticated, efficient processor gives you high performance and long battery life.

In general, the first difference between ARM and Intel processors is that the former uses the Reduced Instruction Set (RISC) and the latter uses the Complex Instruction Set (CISC).

In general, the reduced instruction set is smaller and closer to atomic operations, while the complex instruction set is larger and more complex. The so-called atomic operation means that the work of each instruction can be completed by the processor in one operation, for example, adding two registers.

An instruction of a complex instruction set describes an intent, but the processor must execute 3 or 4 simpler instructions to achieve this intent. For example, you can command a complex instruction set processor to sum two numbers and store the results in main memory. To complete this command, the processor first takes the first number from address 1 (operation 1), then another number from address 2 (operation 2), then sums (operation 3), and so on.

All modern processors use the concept of a so-called microinstruction, which is a collection of instructions inside the processor that describe the atomic operations that the processor can do.

The complex instruction set processor actually executes three microinstructions. For a reduced instruction set processor, its instructions are very close to its micro-instructions, and the instructions of a complex instruction set processor need to be converted into some more compact micro-instructions (like the previous complex instruction set processor for addition). As in the example).

That is to say, the decoder in the reduced instruction set processor (the one responsible for telling the processor what to do) is much simpler, and simplicity means high efficiency and low power consumption.

Manufacturing process

Another major difference between ARM and Intel processors is that ARM has never only designed low-power processors. Its purpose is to design low-power processors, which is their strength. Intel's strength is to design ultra-high-performance desktop and server processors, and it does a good job.

Intel is the boss of the desktop server industry. In the past 20 years, all my PCs, laptops and servers (except one) used Intel processors. However, when entering the mobile industry, Intel still uses the same complex instruction set architecture as the desktop, trying to push it into the smaller processors used by mobile devices.

The average heating rate of the Intel i7 processor is 45 watts. ARM's system-on-chip (including graphics processors) has a maximum on-time peak of about 3 watts, about 1/15 of the Intel i7 processor. Intel is now a giant, hiring a lot of smart people.

Its latest Atom family of processors uses a temperature control design similar to that of an ARM processor, so Intel must use the latest 22nm manufacturing process. In general, the smaller the number of nanometers in the manufacturing process, the higher the efficiency of energy use. The ARM processor uses a lower manufacturing process with similar temperature control. For example, the Qualcomm Xiaolong 805 processor uses a 28-nanometer manufacturing process.

64-bit

For 64-bit computing, ARM and Intel also have some significant differences. Did you know that Intel did not develop a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set. This 64-bit instruction set, called x86-64 (sometimes referred to simply as x64), is actually designed and developed by AMD.

The story is this: Intel wants to do 64-bit computing. It knows that if the 64-bit architecture evolved from its own 32-bit x86 architecture, the new architecture will be very inefficient, so it has a new 64-bit processor project named IA64. This resulted in the Itanium family of processors.

At the same time, AMD knows that it can't make a IA64-compatible processor, so it expands x86 and adds 64-bit addressing and 64-bit registers. The resulting architecture, known as AMD64, became the standard for 64-bit versions of x86 processors.

The IA64 project is not a success, and is now largely abandoned. Intel finally adopted AMD64. Intel's current mobile solution is a 64-bit processor that uses a 64-bit instruction set (somewhat different) developed by AMD.

ARM's story is very different: After seeing the mobile device's need for 64-bit computing, ARM released the ARMv8 64-bit architecture in 2011, which is the result of several years of work for the next-generation ARM instruction set architecture. In order to develop a concise 64-bit architecture based on the original principles and instruction set, ARMv8 uses two execution modes, AArch32 and AArch64.

As the name implies, one runs 32-bit code and one runs 64-bit code. The clever aspect of ARM design is that the processor can seamlessly switch between the two modes during operation. This means that the 64-bit instruction decoder is completely new, without having to take care of 32-bit instructions, and the processor is still backward compatible.

Heterogeneous computing

ARM's big.LITTLE architecture is an innovation that Intel can't replicate at the moment. In the big.LITTLE architecture, the processors can be of different types. A traditional dual-core or quad-core processor contains the same 2 cores or 4 cores. A dual-core Atom processor has two identical cores that provide the same performance and have the same power consumption.

ARM has introduced heterogeneous computing to mobile devices via big.LITTLE. This means that the cores in the processor can have different performance and power consumption. Use a low-power core when the device is up and running, and use a high-performance core when you run a complex game.

What does this do? When designing a processor, consider the adoption of a large number of technical designs that determine the performance and power consumption of the processor.

Both Intel and ARM processors use pipelines when an instruction is decoded and ready to execute. That is to say, the decoding process is parallel.

The first step is to read the instruction from the memory, the second step to check and decode the instruction, and the third step to execute the instruction, and the process is repeated. The advantage of the pipeline is that the current instruction is in the second step, the next instruction is already in the first step. When the current instruction is executed in the third step, the next instruction is in the second step, and the next instruction is in the first step, and so on.

In order to execute instructions faster, these pipelines can be designed to allow instructions to be executed in the order of the program (out of order). Some clever logic structures can determine whether the next instruction depends on the result of the current instruction execution. Both Intel and ARM provide out-of-order execution logic structures, and it is conceivable that this structure is very complex. Complexity means more power consumption.

Intel processors are chosen by designers to add out-of-order logic structures. Heterogeneous calculations do not have this convenient problem. The ARM Cortex-A53 is implemented sequentially, so the power consumption is lower. The ARM Cortex-A57 uses out-of-order execution, so it's faster but consumes more power. Processors using the big.LITTLE architecture can have both Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 cores, depending on the specific needs of the core. When synchronizing mail in the background, there is no need for high-speed out-of-order execution, only when playing complex games. Use the appropriate core at the right time.

In principle, the more complex logic structures in the processor, the higher the performance, the less efficient, the higher the instruction pipeline is, including the floating-point unit, single-instruction multi-data logic (SIMD) (such as ARM's NEON and Intel). SSE/MMX), and a level 1 cache secondary cache.

For each Atom system-on-a-chip, Intel offers only one solution, while ARM and chip partners offer chips that can be configured in a variety of ways.

compatibility

ARM is currently the leader of mobile processors. ARM's partners have shipped 50 billion units to the mobile and embedded markets based on ARM-based designs. For Android, ARM has become the standard, which is a problem for Intel and MIPS.

Although Android's main programming language is Java, developers can use existing code (such as C or C++) to develop applications. These fixed platform applications are usually compiled into ARM processor programs, not all compiled into Intel or MIPS processor programs.

To solve this problem, Intel and MIPS use special conversion software to convert ARM instructions into instructions used by their processors. This of course will reduce performance.

MIPS and Intel currently claim to be compatible with approximately 90% of applications in the Play Store. For the 150 most popular apps, the compatibility rate is 100%. On the one hand, the compatibility rate is very high, on the other hand, it shows that ARM's dominant position makes other processor designers need to provide a compatibility layer.

to sum up

Manufacturing a processor is a complex business. ARM, Intel and MIPS are working tirelessly to provide the best technology to mobile devices, and it is clear that ARM is the boss. With low power consumption, concise 64-bit design, heterogeneous computing, and as a standard for mobile computing, it seems that ARM will remain its dominant position.

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