Comfruiters: Where computer chips meet Apples
What was that sonny? Apple is going to use their proprietary custom silicon in their laptops? What was that? You don’t know the full implications of that? Well listen up my digital dudes, its not that I care for Apple or their products, but rather, the entire industry is going to hop onto Tim Cook’s pickup truck and follow this trend.
So anyone with Intel-igence knows that the computer processor inside you computer comes from Intel as evident by the “Intel inside” sticker. So all computer processers comes from intel? WRONG! So all computer processors work the same. RIGHT… but may I sprinkle that with a hint of WRONG. You see, computer processors come in two types
x86 processors
and
RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) processors
x86? x86 sounds like ET’s brother. But no, disheveled reader, x86 is a type of processor. It’s key qualities include… fast processing speeds, high power use, and the ability to run x86 programs. (Windows, MacOS and all the programs that run on them are x86 based) So this hunk of a processor is your grandma, good at chess but uses a lot of energy to do so. How about we take a RISC and review the other processor type. RISC is the type used in phones, microcontrollers and most likely anything that is not a conventional laptop/desktop computer or server. RISC can provide speeds on par with x86 chips whilst providing much much much much less power usage. RISC is your Lance Armstrong, good at biking good distances with great power. (Although the processor engineers left out the doping scandal)
Common types of x86 chips:
All of Intel’s chips like the i3, i5 and i7.
All of AMD’s chips.
Common types of RISC chips:
ARM based processors.
All of Apple’s phone processors.
Pretty much all smartphone processors. (Most portable electronics have them except for laptops or the tablet imposter Surface Pro)
Microcontrollers.
Your samsung smart fridge has one.
Small applications
So then I pull the paper slip out of the fortune cookie, and instead of giving me advice, it poses a question. “Why then do we still use x86 if RISC is better?” Well, from the techno-Bill Nye side, there are thousands if not millions of programs that currently do not run on RISC. If something like Microsoft Word wants to run on RISC, it has to be ported over and basically rewritten entirely which is a lot considering Microsoft Word just gained the incredibly complex “save to desktop” function. So NO Windows or Mac programs will run on RISC. RISC and x86 is an apples to apples comparision because Apple is going to switch out the x86 Intel chips with custom made Apple RISC chips which are used in their phones.
DONATE TO MY PATREON; MY STIMULUS CHECK WAS DELIVERED TO THE WRONG HOUSE AND MY NEIGHBOR IS REFUSING TO GIVE IT UP