Arm vs x86 - Key Differences Explained

With Apple moving away from Intel and making its own CPUs based on the Arm architecture, it is important to understand the differences in the history, architecture, and design philosophies between these two giants.
History of x86 - 0:28
History of Arm - 3:56
History of Apple using Arm - 7:45
Differences - 11:40
CISC vs RISC - 13:30
False Assumptions - 16:07
Future - 19:05
What is virtual memory? - • What is virtual memory...
RISC vs CISC - • RISC vs CISC - Is it S...
Instructions per cycle - • Instructions per cycle...
Introduction to Android app development: www.dgitacadem...
Let Me Explain T-shirt: teespring.com/...
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[@GaryExplains]

I also recommend this written article about this topic: Arm vs x86: Instruction sets, architecture, and all key differences explained - www.androidauthority.com/arm-vs-x86-key-differences-explained-568718/

[@dalezapple2493]

Learned a lot Gary thanks 😊...

[@Yusufyusuf-lh3dw]

@Z3U5 why would that be a big boon to the industry, considering the fact that Apple want to create a large propietory ecosystem that tries to hide everything from everyone including the cpu specs, capabilities and associated technology. Apple is like the boogie man trying to steal the future of computing. But I'm sure they will reach where they where in the 90s

[@Yusufyusuf-lh3dw]

@Z3U5 yes. There are multiple different use cases in the server market and ARM fits into a few of those. If you look at historic data in server segment market share it's not 100% X86 or Power CPUs. There are small % of other architectures. There are even Intel Atom based servers. But the argument that Arm is going to capture huge server market share is totally unrealistic.

[@MozartificeR]

Is it difficult for a company to recompile an app into risc?

[@HungryGuyStories]

Thank you for the informative video! But why, WHY, *_WHY_* does almost every KZbinr hate their viewers ears?!?!?!

[@xcoder1122]

The biggest problem that x86 has are its strong guarantees. Every CPU architecture gives programmers implicit grantees. If they require guarantees beyond that, they have to explicitly request those or work around the fact that they are not available. Having lots of guarantees makes writing software much easier but at the same time causes a problem for multicore CPUs. That's because all guarantees must be uphold across all cores, no matter how many there are. This puts an increasingly amount of burden on the bus that interconnects the single cores, as well as any shared caches between them. The guarantees that ARM gives are much weaker (just as the ones of PPC and RISC-V are much weaker), which makes it much easier so scale those CPUs to a bigger amount of cores, without requiring a bus system that needs to become drastically fast or drastically complex, as such a bus system will draw more and more power and at some point become the bottleneck of the entire CPU. And this is something Intel and AMD cannot change for x86, not without breaking all backward compatibility with existing code. Now as for what "guarantees" actually means, let me give you some examples: If one core writes data first to address A and then to address B and another core monitors address B and sees it has changed, will it also see that A has changed? Is it guaranteed that other cores see write actions in the same order they were performed by some core? Do cores even perform write actions in any specific order to begin with? How do write actions and read actions sort towards each other across cores? Do they sort at all? Are some, all, or none of write actions atomic? Over 99% of the time none of these questions matter to code that you write, yet even though less than 1% of all code needs to know the answers to these questions, the CPU has to stick to whatever it promises 100% of the time. So the less it promises, the easier for the CPU to keep it and the less work must be invested into keeping it. When Microsoft switched from x86 in the fist Xbox to PPC in the Xbox360, a lot of code broke because that code was not legit in the first place. The only reason why this code was working correctly so far were the strong guarantees of the x86 architecture. With PPC having weaker guarantees, this code would only work sometimes on these CPUs, causing very subtle, hard to trace bugs. Only when programmers correctly applied atomic operations and memory barriers, as well as used guarded data access (e.g. using mutexes or semaphores), the code was still working correctly as when using these, the compiler understands exactly which guarantees your code needs to be correct, and knowing for which CPU you are compiling, it also knows whether it has to do something to make your code work correctly or whether it will work correctly "on its own" as the CPU gives enough guarantees for that, in which case the compiler will do nothing. I see code every second day that only works coincidentally as it's being used on a CPU that has certain guarantees but this very same code would fail on other CPUs for sure. At least if they have multiple cores, there are multiple CPUs in the system, or the CPU executes code in parallel as if there were multiple cores (think of hyper-threading). The guarantees of x86 were no issue when CPUs had a single core and systems had a single CPU but they increasingly become an issue with the number of cores rising. Of course, there are server x86 CPUs with a huge number of cores but take a look at their bus diagrams. Notice how much more complex their bus systems are compared to the consumer x86 CPUs? And this is an issue if you want fast CPUs with many cores running at low power, providing long battery life and not requiring a complex cooling system or otherwise will run at very high temperature. And cores is currently the easiest way to scale CPUs, as making the cores run at higher speed is much harder (the clock frequency of CPUs is currently usually below what it used to be before all CPUs got multicore) and it's even harder to make the CPU faster without raising clock frequency and adding more cores as most optimizations possible have already been done. That's why vendors need to resort to all kind of trickery to get more speed out of virtually nothing and these tricks causes other issues, like security issues. Think of Meltdown, Spectre, and Spectre-NG. These attacks used flaws in the way how optimizations were implemented to make CPUs faster without actually making them faster, e.g. by using speculative execution, so the CPU is not faster but it still can perform work when it otherwise couldn't and it it was doing the work correctly, it appears to be faster. If what it has just done turns out to be wrong, though, it had to rollback what it just did and this rollback was imperfect as they didn't clean up the cache, thinking that nobody can look directly into it anyway, so why would that matter? But that assumption was wrong. By abusing another of these tricks to make CPUs faster, branch prediction, it is possible to reveal what is currently cached and what isn't and that way software can get access to memory it should never have access to. So I think the days of x86 are counted. It will not die tomorrow but it will eventually die as in many aspects x86 is inferior to ARM and RISC-V who both give you more computational power for less money and less electric power and this is not a temporarily thing, as no matter what trickery and shrinking they are going to apply make x86 faster, the same trickery and shrinking can also be applied to ARM and RISC-V to make them faster as well, yet on top of that, it will always be easier to give them more cores as well and that's why they keep winning in the long term.

[@tvthecat]

Did you just type a fucking novel right here?

[@dariosucevac7623]

Why does this only have 26 likes? This is amazing.

[@lachmed]

This was such a great read. Thanks for taking time to write this!

[@jamesyu5212]

There are so many things wrong in this comment that I’m glad it’s not gotten a lot of likes. Thank God people learn to do actual research than agree to unverified claims in the comments section.

[@xcoder1122]

@@jamesyu5212 People especially need to stop listening to comments that simply make blanket claims of anything being wrong without naming a single specific point that is supposed to be wrong or refuting even a single point. Who says sweepingly, something is wrong, which has ultimately said nothing and can save his know-it-all comment in the future just the same, because apparently he knows nothing, otherwise he would give something concrete from him.

[@ProcashFloyd]

Nice to hear from someone who actually knows what they are talking about. Not for the sake of making youTube content.

[@squirlmy]

I thought specifically for Apple Mac's move to ARM. I've heard theories that are basically "conspiracy" theories! lol

[@mrrolandlawrence]

i bet gary still runs openVMS at home ;)

[@mayankbhaisora2699]

@@mrrolandlawrence I don't know what the hell are you talking about but i get what you are saying :)

[@ragnarlothbrook8117]

Exactly! I'm always impressed by Gary's knowledge.

[@RaymondHng]

@@mayankbhaisora2699 VMS was the operating system that ran on DEC minicomputers (midrange systems). OpenVMS is the descendant of VMS that is developed and supported by VMS Software Inc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS

[@Charlie-jf1wb]

Struggled to find someone who can actually explain something as complex as Arm v x86 in such straightforward terms. thank you.

[@zer0legend109]

I stopped midway saying to myself, why I feel like I was tricked into a college lecture and not noticing it except midway but still liking it

[@SH1xmmY]

You are not alone

[@rhemtro]

doesn't even feel like a college lecture

[@batmanonabike3119]

Wait… clandestinely educating us? Cheeky

[@lukescurrenthobby4179]

That’s me rn

[@macaroni.ravioli]

​​@@lukescurrenthobby4179 me too hahahhaha I'm Cracking up At the Orig commenter above 🤣🤣🤣

[@octacore9976]

There are thousands of useless videos "Apple moving to it's own silicon!!!"...but this is the only video that is actually informative.

[@pranay7264]

sike

[@goombah_ninja]

Nobody can explain it better than you. Thanks for packing it all under 21 mins. I know it's tough.

[@yogevbocher3603]

Just to give a feedback: The pronunciation of the name Dobberpuhl was perfect.

[@seanc.5310]

How else would you pronounce it?

[@zoehelkin]

@@seanc.5310 like South Gloucestershire

[@ivanguerra1260]

I understood rubber poop !!

[@squirlmy]

Of course, he's British, not an American!

[@ricgal50]

Really great to hear someone who knows about Acorn. In 1986 I lived in North-western Ontario (Canada). Our library put in a desk with 6 computers on it. They were the North American version of the BBC Micro, made by Acorn. It was the first computer I worked on. I didn't find out about the ARM chip and the Archimedes until the mid nineties. And it was shortly after that time that ARM was spun off. BTW, Acorn was owned by Olivetti at this time. When I found out about the Raspberry Pi, I got onboard. I had a model A chip, and then I bought a Pi 4 just in time for Covid, so I could use my camera module to have a second camera for Zoom.

[@hi_tech_reptiles]

The possibilities for how this will go and how it will effect the industry or other players in said industry is endless. Very interesting next few years for numerous reasons, this being a big one. Great vid too btw.

[@ZhangMaza]

Wow I learn a lot just from watching your video, thanks Gary :)

[@GaryExplains]

Glad to help

[@mohammedmohammed519]

Gary, you’ve been there and done that ⭐️

[@jeroenstrompf5064]

Thank you! You get extra points for mentioning Elite - I played that so much on a Commodore 64 when I was around 16

[@GaryExplains]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@thecalvinprice]

My father was working for DEC at that time, and he told me a lot about the Alpha chip and their foray into 64bit before AMD and Intel brought their consumer 64bit chips to market. He also told me about the purchase by Compaq(and subsequently HP) and that a lot of people weren't keen on the purchase as there was concern all their efforts would disappear. These days DEC is barely a whisper when people talk about tech history, but I still remember sitting at an ivory CRT with the red 'DIGITAL' branding on it. Edit: Thanks Gary for the little nostalgia trip.

[@scality4309]

VT-100?

[@tasosalexiadis7748]

The leader designer of the DEC Alpha founded an CPU company in 2003 which Apple bought in 2008 (PA Semi). This were they got the tallent to engineer their own CPUs for the iPhone (starting from iPhone 5) and now the new ARM-based Macs.

[@TechboyUK]

Excellent overview! WIth the CPU race on at the moment, it would be great to have an updated version of this video in around 6 months from now 😊

[@GaryExplains]

I agree. 😀

[@handris99]

I was afraid in the beginning that all I'll hear is history but I'm glad I watched til the end the answers to my questions were answered.

[@TurboGoth]

In your slide listing the major differences in RISC v CISC, one thing that struck ME as relevant because of my interest in compilers and which admittedly may not be particularly worth mentioning depending on your audience, is that RISC instructions also tend to be more uniform in the sense that if you want to do an add instruction, for example, you don't have to really think about what instructions are allowed with which registers. Also, the instruction pointer register is just a regular general purpose register while that register is often special purpose in other architectures. It's awkward and roundabout to even access. Often you need odd tricks like to use Intel's call instruction as if you're calling a function for its side effect of pushing the instruction pointer to the stack. Then from there, you can pop the value off. But in arm, you just have it in one of your normal registers. Obviously, you must beware if you dump random garbage into it that you'll start running code from a different place in memory but that should be obvious. Yet such uniformity can eat space and so the THUMB instructions don't have it.

[@aaaaea9268]

This video is so underrated like lol you explained something I was never able to understand in just 20 minutes

[@dalobucaram7078]

Gary is arguably the best person to explain these kind of topics in layman's terms. Intel will finally get some humolity lesson.

[@lilmsgs]

I'm an ex-DECie tech guy too. Glad to see someone helping to explain their place in history. All these years later, I'm still heart broken.

[@johnmyviews3761]

I understood Intel was a memory maker initially however a Japanese company commissioned intel to develop its calculator chips that ultimately developed into microprocessors

[@jazmihamizan4987]

And the space race too

[@falcon81701]

Best video on this topic by far

[@JanuszKrysztofiak]

I've got an impression memory is (relatively) slower and more expensive TODAY than back then. Then - in the early 1980s - performances of RAM and CPUs were not far apart, so CPUs were not that handicapped by RAM - they could fetch instructions directly and remain fully utilized. Today it is different: RAM is much, much slower than CPU, so CPUs spend a good part of their transistor budgets on internal multilevel caches. Whereas on modern systems you can have 128 GB of RAM or more, the one that actually matches your CPU speed is the L1 cache which is tiny - Ryzen 5950x has only 64 kilobytes of L1 cache per core (32 kB for code and 32 kB for data). I would say the instruction set "density" is even more important now.

[@mayatrash]

Why do you think that is? Because the R&D Intro memory is worse? Genuine question

[@okaro6595]

Very few modern systems have 128 GB RAM. Typical is about 16. 16 GB costs some $50. In in around 1983 typical was 64 KB. It was about $137 which inflation adjusted would be about $410. Sure RAM is not more expensive now.

[@GreenDayGA]

@@okaro6595 L1 cache is expensinve

[@cliffordmendes4504]

Gary, you explaination is smooth like butter!

[@mokkorista]

My cat: trying to catch the red dot.

[@stargazerweerakkody8254]

Did He?

[@deus_ex_machina_]

@@stargazerweerakkody8254 No. Source: I was the cat.

[@taidee]

Very rich in details this video as usual, thank you 🙏🏾 Gary.

[@GaryExplains]

My pleasure!

[@danielcartis9011]

This was absolutely fascinating. Thank you!

[@1MarkKeller]

*GARY!!!* Good Morning Professor!* *Good Morning Fellow Classmates!*

[@GaryExplains]

MARK!!!

[@projectz9776]

Mark!!!

[@jordanwarne911]

Mark!!!

[@AndrewMellor-darkphoton]

this fills like meme MARK!!!

[@-Blue-_]

MARK!!!

[@numtostr]

Hey gary, your videos are awesome. I am waiting for some more rust videos. Last rust video helped me to get started in rust lang.

[@lolomo5787]

Its cool that gary takes time to read and replies to sensible comments here even if his video is uploaded months or even a years ago. Other channels dont do that.

[@GaryExplains]

I try my best.

[@cypherllc7297]

I am a simple man . I see gary, I like the video

[@taher9358]

Very original

[@1MarkKeller]

Even before watching ... click

[@ΝικοςΡαμαντανης-χ6ο]

@@1MarkKeller MARK!!!

[@ercipi]

Its like going to a seminar but for free! Thanks a bunch.

[@Delis007]

I was waiting for this video. Thanks

[@realme-em3xy]

Me 2

[@adj2]

Absolutely beneficial I learned a lot. I still have a lot more learning to do. Definitely subscribed and will be pulling up other videos that you’ve done for additional information.

[@jinchoung]

surpised you didn't mention the softbank acquisition. all my arm stock got paid out when that happened and it kinda surprised me. totally thought I'd just get rolled over into softbank stock.

[@patdbean]

Yes, £17 a share was a good deal at the time, I wonder what they would be valued at today.

[@autohmae]

@@patdbean they benefited from the price drop of the Pound because of Brexit.

[@patdbean]

@@autohmae SoftBank did yes, but ARM themselves (I think) have always charged royalties in USD.

[@vernearase3044]

Well, it looks like Softbank is shopping ARM around ... hope it doesn't get picked up by the mainland Chinese. As for stocks, I noticed I was spending waaaayyy too much on Apple gear, so I bought some Apple right after the 7-1 split in 2014 to help defray the cost at IIRC about $96/share.

[@Cheese-n-Cake16]

@@vernearase3044 The British regulation board will not allow the Chinese to buy ARM, because if they do, that would be the death of ARM in the Western world

[@BeansEnjoyer911]

Subbed. Just straight up information easily explained. Love it

[@madmotorcyclist]

It is interesting how the CISC vs. RISC battle has evolved with Intel's CISC holding the lead for many years. Unfortunately, Intel rested on its laurels by keeping the 8086 architecture and boosting its operating frequencies while reducing the chip size production down in nm levels. Thermal limits with this architecture have literally been reached giving Apple/ARM the open door with their approach which now after many years has surpassed the 8086 architecture. It will be interesting to see how Intel reacts given their hegemony control of the market.

[@STohme]

Very interesting presentation. Many thanks Gary.

[@GaryExplains]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@roybixby6135]

And everyone thought Acorn was finished when it's RISC Archimedes computer flopped...

[@pilabs3206]

Thanks Gary.

[@sathishsubramaniam4646]

My brain has been itching for few years now whenever I hear ARM vs Intel, but I was too lazy. Finally everything is flushed and cleared out.

[@diegoalejandrosarmientomun303]

Arm or Amd? Amd is the direct competence of intel regarding x86 chips and other stuff. Arm is another arquitecture, which is the one covered on this video

[@binoymathew246]

@Gary Explains Very educational. Thank you for this.

[@alexs_thoughts]

So what would be any arguments in favor of the Intel (or X86 in general) side of the situation?

[@tophan5146]

Unexpected complications with 10nm.

[@RickeyBowers]

IPC and higher single-core speed.

[@Robwantsacurry]

The same reasons that CISC was developed in the first place, in the 1950's memory was rare and expensive, complex instruction sets where developed to reduce the ammount of memory required. Today memory is cheap but its speed hasn't improved as fast as CPU's, a RISC CPU requires more instrucions hence more memory access, so memory bandwith is more of a bottleneck. That is why a CISC CPU can have a major advantage in high performance computing.

[@snetmotnosrorb3946]

Compatibility. That's it really. x86 has come to the end of the road. The thing is bloated by all different design paths taken and extensions implemented over the decades, and is crippled by legacy design philosophies from the 70s. Compatibility is really the only reason it has come this far, that is what attracted investment. PowerPC is a way beter design even though it's not much newer, but it came in a time when Wintel rolled over all competition in the 90s combined with insane semiconductor manufacturing advances that only the biggest dogs could afford, and thus PPC didn't gain the traction needed to survive in the then crucial desktop and later laptop computer markets. Now the crucial markets are server and mobile devices, places where ARM has a growing foot in and totally dominates respectively. Now ARM is getting the funding needed to surpass the burdened x86 in all metrics. The deciding factor is that x86 has hit a wall, while ARM has quite a lot of potential still, and that is what ultimately will force the shift despite broken compatibility. Some will still favour legacy systems, so x86 will be around for a long time, but its haydays are definitely counted. @@RickeyBowers ARM has way higher IPC than x86. No-one has ever really tried to make a wide desktop design based on ARM until now, so total single core speed is only valid now a few more years.

[@AdamSmith-gs2dv]

@@Robwantsacurry Single core performance is also better with x86 CPUs, for ARM CPUs to accomplish anything they NEED to have multi threaded programs other wise they are extremely slow

[@rene-jeanmercier6517]

This is an EXCELLENT review for some one who programmed with an Intel 4004 way back when. Thank you so much. Regards, RJM

[@GaryExplains]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@RoyNeeraye]

10:52 *Apple

[@GaryExplains]

Ooopss! 😱

[@hotamohit]

i was just reading it at that part, amazing that you noticed it.

[@jacobfield4848]

Nice information.

[@Caesim9]

The big problem of Intel is that they invested heavily in branch prediction. And it was a wise move. Their single core performance was really great but then Spectre and Meltdown happened and they had to shut down the biggest improvements. Their rivals AMD or ARM invested more in multicore processors. They aren't affected by these vulnerabilities and so Intel has a lot of catching up to do.

[@autohmae]

Actually, lots of architectures were effected by Spectre and Meltdown, but especially Intel the most. They effected at least: Intel, AMD, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC. But not: RISC-V and not Intel Itanium. At least RISC-V does things in a similar way but not all the things needed to hit into the problem. But in theory new designs of chips could have been affected too. Obviously they know about these things now, so it will probably not happen. Different processors series/types/models of each architecture were affected in different ways.

[@Yusufyusuf-lh3dw]

Intel did not discard any of their prediction units or improvements because of spectre meltdown problem.

[@MarthaFockerMF]

Thanks for the info dude, its comprehensive, but a little bit too much on history part. Anyway, its a great vid! Keep it up!

[@TheSahil-mv3ix]

Sir ! When will ARM v9 arrive ? Are there any dates or assumptions ? What will be it like ?

[@MiguelAngel-rw7kn]

Rumors says that the a14 will be the first one to implement it, so ARM should announce it before Apple. Maybe next month?

[@official_ashhh]

Brilliant explanation of x86 vs risc architecture.

[@correcteur_orthographique]

Silly question : why haven't we uses ARMs processors in PC before ??

[@Rehunauris]

There have been ARM powered computers (Raspberry Pi is best example) but it's been hobbyist/niche market.

[@Ashish414600]

because people don't want to rewrite everything! ARM architecture is dominant in embedded system market,in SOCs, you won't see x86 architecture popular there. For PCs, it's opposite. Intel already dominated PC market so it's hard for any company to develop a system for entirely different architecture. The S/W developers (especially the cross compiler designers) will surely have headache, but if Apple is successful, it will indeed bring a revolution, and challenge Intel monopoly in pc!

[@correcteur_orthographique]

@@Ashish414600 ok thx for your answer.

[@augustogalindo8687]

ARM is actually a RISC architecture, and there is information about it in Grove’s book (Ex Intel CEO), he claims Intel actually considered using RISC instead of CISC (current Intel chips architecture) but he decided against it because there was not much of a difference, consider we are talking about a time where most computers where stationary and didn’t need to be energy efficient, so it made sense back then to keep on with CISC. However, nowadays energy efficiency has become very important and that’s where ARM is taking an important role.

[@afriyievictor]

Tanx Gary you are my favorite IT teacher

[@gr8bkset-524]

I grew up using the 8088 in engineering school and upgraded my PCs along the way. I worked for Intel for 20 years after they acquired the multiprocessor company I worked for. I got rid of most of their stock after I stopped working for them and I saw the future in mobile. These days, my W10 laptop sits barely used while I'm perfectly happy with a $55 Raspberry Pi hooked up to my 55" TV. Each time I use my W10 laptop it seems to be doing some scan or background tasks that take up most of the CPU cycles. Old Dinosaurs fade away.

[@Agreedtodisagree]

Great job Gary.

[@yash_kambli]

Mean while when we could expect to see risc-v isa based smartphones and PCs. If someone would be bring out high performance , Out of order, deeper pipeline, multi threaded risc v processor then it might give tough competition to ARM

[@GaryExplains]

The sticking point is the whole "if someone would be bring out high performance , Out of order, deeper pipeline, multi threaded RISC-V processor". The problem isn't the ISA but actually build a good chip with a good microarchitecture.

[@shaun2938]

Microsoft and Apple wouldn’t be spending billion on changing to ARM if they didn’t feel that ARM could keep up with x86 development while still offering significant power savings. Where RISC-V is still an unknown. Saying that, by supporting ARM it would most likely make supporting RISC-V in the future much easier.

[@AnuragSinha7]

@@shaun2938 yeahI think compatibility won't be big issue because they all can design and make it backward compatible.

[@autohmae]

RISC-V will take a decade or more, I think it will mostly be embedded and microprocessors for now and it could take a huge chunk of that market. And some a predicting RISC-V will be used in the hardware security module market

[@carloslemos3678]

@@GaryExplains Do you think Apple could roll their own instruction set in the future?

[@nellydupree7235]

Big shout out to all my fellow students from the 80s and 90s who were forced to use both monochrome green BBC Acorn computers and then Archimedes computers too!

[@friendstype25]

The last school project I did was on the development of Elite. Such a cool game! Also, planet Arse.

[@dutchdykefinger]

never heard of that planet, is it close to uranus?

[@technoman8219]

@@dutchdykefinger hah

[@hypoluxa]

Great overview and explanation of the current situation. Very helpful.

[@Flankymanga]

Now we all know where Garry's knowledge of IC's come from... :)

[@Nayr7928]

Hey Gary, I'd like to know more about how Metal, Vulkan and OpenGL works differently. Can you make a vid about it? Your vids of how things work are very informative.

[@TurboGoth]

Ha! Wow. The finer points in how an API is designed and a comparison of APIs that achieve similar goals but are designed by different groups is a tough one. But I would like to add a perspective on this question since I've toyed with Vulkan and OpenGL. And, really Vulkan is OpenGL 5. Kronus, the creator of OpenGL wanted a reset in their API and going between the OpenGL versions in a somewhat graceful way was getting too awkward so they reset the API and went with a new name. Now, to bring Metal into the conversation, it should be noted than Vulkan is effectively an open Metal since Metal is Apple's but it took the same approach in that they are very heavy in their rigid establishment in how the software is to work with the configuration of the display settings so that the runtime conditionals inside the API to cope with any changing conditions are minimized. And this allows for very efficient communication between the application software and the hardware. Also, Vulkan (and perhaps Metal too - I don't know, I've never actually programmed in it - i'm no Apple fanboy) consolidates the compute API with the video API so that you can run number crunching workloads on the GPU with a similar API as you could use to draw images to the screen. And this lets you see the GPU as a more general data crunching device that only happens to crunch data on the same device where it is ultimately displayed. OpenCL is another API that gives this capability (to crunch data) but it is a more narrow view of GPU capabilities in that you don't use graphics through it. But Vulkan can be quite complicated because of all the burdensome setup that is to be established so as to simplify the runtime assumptions and this can really be a huge nuisance for a learner. Using OpenGL as of version 3.3 or so will make your journey easier. But OpenGL ES 2.0 or 3.0 will make it easier still so you can avoid the major OpenGL API drift as of the programmable shaders era which completely changed the game. Before that, there was something referred to as the "fixed function pipeline" and that's ancient history.

[@denvera1g1]

Everyone comparing ARM and Intel, no one talking about ARM and AMD Like the Ampere Altra(80 core) VS EPYC 7742(64 core). Ampere is 4% more powerful, and uses 10% less energy making it 14.4% more efficent than AMD. But some people might point out that for AMD to compete with an 80 core, they have to pump more power into their 64 core which uses disproportunately more energy, than poerformance it improves, i'll be REALLY interested to see how a fully 7NM AMD EPYC where that space savings from a 7nm IO die instead of 12nm makes room for two more 8 core CCDs for a total of 80 cores. Some might argue, that if AMD had used a fully 7nm processor and had 80 cores, they would be not only more powerful, but also more efficicent(less energy for that power)

[@scaryonline]

So what about threadripper Pro? Its 20 percent more powerful than intel platinum 58 core

[@denvera1g1]

@@scaryonline Doesnt it use more power than epyc because of higher frequency?

[@gatocochino5594]

I found no independent benchmarks for the Altra CPU, Ampere claims(keyword here) their CPU is 4% more powerful IN INTEGER WORKLOADS than the Epyc 7742. Saying the Ampere Altra is ''4% more powerful(...) than AMD'' is a bit misleading here.

[@JamesOversteer]

Gary you are awesome. I had no idea Xscale was off the back of arm. So much history.

[@skarfie123]

I can already imagine the videos in a few years "The fall of Intel"... Sad...

[@WolfiiDog13]

I don't think it will fall. But it will take a huge hit, specially if the PC market also moves to better architectures

[@stefanweilhartner4415]

they need to do some RISC-V stuff because the x86 world will die. that is for sure. just a matter when. they tried to push their outdated architecture in many areas where they completely sucked. in the embedded world and mobile world nobody gives a fuck about intel x86. it is just not suited fot that market and that market is already very competitive. intel just wasted tons of money in that regard. at some point they will run out of money too and then it is too late.

[@WolfiiDog13]

@Rex yes, legacy support is the reason I don't think they will fail, and just take a huge financial hit instead, nobody is gonna immediately change their long running critical systems just cause the new architecture is better performing, when stability is key, you can't change to something new like that and expect everything to be fine. But you are wrong to think ARM is just "for people", actually, we already have big servers running on ARM for years now, and it works perfectly fine (performance per watt is way better on these systems). Also, quantum computers will not be substitute for traditional computing, it's more like just an addition with very specific applications, not everyone will take advantage of this, I think we will never see a 100% quantum system working, it will always be a hybrid (I could be wrong, but I also can't imagine how you would make a stable system with such a statistical-based computing device, you always need a traditional computer to control it).

[@autohmae]

@the1919 coreteks probably already has one ready :-)

[@autohmae]

@Rex You did see ARM runs the #1 top 500 super computer, right ? And Amazon offers is for cloud servers and ARM servers are being sold more and more. Not to mention: AMD could take a huge chunk of the market from Intel. More and more AMD servers are being sold now. All reducing Intel's budget.

[@karancastelino5714]

Great video Gary

[@GaryExplains]

Thanks 👍

[@bigpod]

nanometer litrography doesnt mean anything when comparing 2 CPUs from different manufacturers because they define what they mesure as litography differently, aka intel CPUs will have more density of components at the same litograpjy size and even 1 size smaller from another manufacturer like tsmc

[@ILoveTinfoilHats]

Intel's talks with TSMC show's that Intel's 10nm is actually similar to TSMCs 6nm (not 7nm as speculated) and Intel's 7nm similar to TSMC 5nm.

[@l.lawliet164]

Not true, the power consumption is different, intel can have the same density, but still use more power, because have bigger transistors

[@bigpod]

@@l.lawliet164 how does that work if you go by transistor count (thats the density) intel can put at their 10nm litography same number of transistors in same space as TSMC 6nm, they just count different components(component that consists of multiple transistors)

[@l.lawliet164]

@@bigpod that's true, but their transistors are still bigger that's why you see better power consumption for tsmc even if they both have the same density... this means Intel pack process is better, but there transistor is worse. Performance can be equal, but consumption can't

[@l.lawliet164]

@@bigpod This actually give intel the advantage, because they can get same performance with a worse component and also more cheap.

[@trendyloca2330]

Thanks for the whole story that was awesome.

[@GaryExplains]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@stephen7715]

Absolutely brilliant video. Thank you for sharing

[@professoraarondsouza5255]

GARY EXPLAINS QUITE WELL!

[@girishwarraohanchate2223]

your the youtuber i always love to watch.your videos are always educative and informative.

[@taher9358]

And his videos aren’t flooded with music

[@1MarkKeller]

The Professor is a professor!

[@SeetheWithin]

Very nice video and full of details! Keep those coming!

[@shobeirasayesh6378]

Many thanks Gary and appreciate your effort and time to research on the contents in this video.

[@GaryExplains]

My pleasure!

[@jF-sp8lo]

just quick on the x86 history, the 8086 was 16 bit and expensive so they released a more affordable 8088 chip in 1979 that only had an 8 bit data bus (much cheaper than 8086) so more popular, also AMD made 8088 4.77 Mhz clone chips with 10Mhz turbo (first PC i ever built) and clone 8086's (Clones started way before your listed 386 clones). I like that you mentioned Cyrix even though they where so unstable I only built one. The AMD64 has to do with patents not just that they where there first.

[@zer0legend109]

Awesine explanation, but I would appreciate some pictures at least beside the slides something between the slides and graphs and tables would make it easier to consume it on the go instead of watching it as a lecture

The biggest difference is that x86 is an obsolete architecture, while ARM is still being actively developed. I would think that a comparison between AMD64 and ARM would make a lot more sense.

[@GaryExplains]

Did you watch the video?

[@bibekghatak5860]

Nice video and thanks to Mr Gary for the enlightenment .

[@GaryExplains]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@InkDrop.]

Thanks Gary

[@ymxina]

Very smart and detail explanation. Thx Gerry

[@GaryExplains]

Glad it was helpful!

[@bruceallen6492]

80286 had segmentation, but it did not have paging. I think OS/2 would smoke a cigarette waiting for segment swaps. 80386 had segmentation swaps and paging. Paging was the what the engineers wanted. Beefier MOBO chips were needed to support DMA while the CPU continued to execute code. 8086 machines smoked during the DMAs with DOS.

[@glasser2819]

Brilliant ✌️ Thank you for making sense of the current silicon architecture challenges 👍

[@TCOphox]

Thanks for converting those complex documentations into understandable English for plebians like me! Interesting things I've learnt so far: * AMD made direct Intel clones in the beginning. * Intel is forced to use AMD's 64bit. implementation because they couldn't develop their own successful one. * Intel has made ARM chips and has a license for ARMv6, but sold its ARM division off. * Apple had a much longer history with ARM than I expected. * Imagination went bankrupt so Apple bought lots of their IP and developed their own GPUs from there. * Apple was the first to incorporate 64bit into smartphones.

[@8bitchiptune420]

That’s a great lecture, Sir. Thanks

[@mummoorthy6511]

Thanks for your video explains support 👏👏

[@steelmm09]

Excellent gary thanks for the great videos

[@GaryExplains]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@detroid89]

Very informative Gary. Cheers!

[@junaidsiddiquemusic]

Finally someone knowledgeable ❤️ thanks for sharing this information with us.

[@ddd12343]

Talking about porting of apps from programmer perspective: can x86 to ARM shift be done automatically? I've read many comments pointing that Apple moving to ARM might have some problems with actually convincing app developers to move to ARM. Apple is also offering special ARM based prototype computers for programmers just for testing so they could be ready for release of ARM Mac. Why is that? Isn't that a matter of simple app recompilation? Can't Apple do that automatically for apps in its store?

[@gaborenyedi637]

The instruction -> uops translation does not really counts. It inevitably takes some transistors, but currently there are so many transistors that it does not really count (say 1%). Compared to the total power consumption of a real computer (not a phone, but a notebook or a desktop) it is next to nothing. The much higher power consumption comes from many other things, like huge cache, AVX (yes, you use it much, check what a compiler produce!), branch prediction, out-of-order execution, hyperthreading and so. Some of these can be found in some ARM chips, but they mostly don't have them.

[@GaryExplains]

The difference is that those 1% of transistors are used ALL of the time. It doesn't matter how much space they take relatively, but how often they are used. Like putting a small wedge under a door and saying "this door is hard to open, odd since the wedge is only 1% of the whole door structure".

[@TurboGoth]

RE:"I used to work for DEC". You're legit old-school! And here I figured all this background stemmed from lots of drudging old readings from the past! Wow. Well, I really do appreciate your easy discussion of all these topics that span chip architecture. And I would ask for some discussion on the Alpha (starting with 21064) to press you with your unique background. That architecture certainly must have made Intel sweat given the incredible speeds. LITERALLY incredible, as in, I literally did not believe the numbers I was seeing. I think they were doing 333 mhz while Intel was at 50 or so. I remember dismissing it as impossible. And by the time I might have been able to gain enough info on it, I had already dismissed it as irrelevant when I learned that its different ISA made it an apples and oranges comparison with x86. And I only gained the perspective to appreciate the Alpha ISA long after Alpha had become a historical footnote. I should mention the latest literature that I have crossed mention of the Alpha and that is the RISC-V architecture book which mentions the goal to dodge the undesirable end of abandoning an architecture and the nuisance/expense for everyone invested in the platform.

[@TurboGoth]

I'm sorry, I got too excited and lost the direction of a sentence. I *would* ask... EXCEPT I know it would be an irrelevant bore to most of your audience since it *IS* just a historical footnote.

[@-zero-]

interesting video, btw can you make a video series on the working of cpu? maybe you made a video about binary but never went into full depth of how the adders work into making a "cpu"

[@GaryExplains]

Did you watch the videos in my "How Does a CPU Work" series??? kzbin.info/aero/PLxLxbi4e2mYGvzNw2RzIsM_rxnNC8m2Kz

[@-zero-]

@@GaryExplains yes i have watched them, i would like to learn more in depth on what goes inside the cpu, like how do transistors and adders process the binary and work thier way into assembly language

[@GaryExplains]

That is hardware circuit design and not something I particularly enjoy, I am more of a software person. You would need to find a hardware and/or logic channel for that kind of thing.

[@GaryExplains]

Yes, Ben Eater's channel is a good place to go for that stuff.

[@ashfaqrahman2795]

You can take up a course on Coursera called "NAND to Tetris". Basically you build a 16-bit CPU using NAND gates (Part-1) and write minimal software to add life to the hardware using a custom-made programming language (Part-2).

[@sopek1427]

Was looking for such a vid. Nice.

[@prince-op2ff]

Garry please explain concept of pipe lining in processors

[@GaryExplains]

I cover that in the IPC video linked in the description.

[@walid6329]

I would love a video made by you about Moore's law. And thank you for the videos, they did help me a lot in my studies ❤️

[@northshorepx]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/f2XcgZihZp6WpJo

[@vernearase3044]

"There are no better Bonds than I."

[@GariniAlon]

Thank you

[@yepo]

4:06 I just love how the UK's BBC was involved with computer literacy. Imagine if a major TV network in the USA got involved and helped kids to code.

[@chomskyhitchens]

Yeah, that was back in the day when the BBC was a brilliant service to the country - now it is a pathetic shadow of its former self, pandering to the lowest common denominator and nonsensical identity politics

[@xrafter]

@@chomskyhitchens FACTS

[@scality4309]

@@chomskyhitchens In broadcast land they still set the standards i think.

[@natjes6017]

Great explanation, really enjoyed it!

[@GaryExplains]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@reikken69]

what about RISC-V? heard it is quite different from the ARM architecture.....

[@saisrikargollamudi7892]

Amazing video!

[@GaryExplains]

Glad you think so!

[@rodrigopepe4630]

Thank you so much!

[@progtom7585]

Brilliant, thanks Gary

[@pilabs3206]

There is one major thing to answer: some papers and people in general, state than the ISA doesn't have any real impact on efficiency, it's just related to the microarch. If that's true all the ARM thing is clearly only useful bc we have many makers instead of 2, that's all. And then we have a major problem if Nvidia buy ARM... Maybe Risk-V is more alive than ever since this facts..