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With all the success ARM is enjoying in the mobile market, including tablets PCs, smartphones, and just about every handheld device you can think of, it's somewhat surprising the company hasn't had a 64-bit instruction set up to this point. That's about to change. ARM just disclosed some technical specs of its new ARMv8 architecture, the first to include a 64-bit instruction set.
The new architecture consists of two main execution states, AArch64 and AArch32. As the name implies, the AArch64 is the one that introduces a new A64 instruction set for 64-bit processing, while the AArch32 state supports existing ARM instruction sets.
"With our increasingly connected world, the market for 32-bit processing continues to expand and evolve creating new opportunities for 32-bit ARMv7 based processors in embedded, real-time and open application platforms." said Mike Muller, CTO, ARM. "We believe the ARMv8 architecture is ideally suited to enable the ARM partnership to continue to grow in 32-bit application spaces and bring diverse, innovative and energy-efficient solutions to 64-bit processing markets."
ARM says initial support for a range of open source OSes, applications, and third-party tools is already in development. Microsoft called the new instruction set a "significant development for ARM and for the ARM ecosystem," while Nvidia said "the new ARMv8 architecture will enable game-shifting breakthroughs in devices across the full range of computing," smartphones and supercomputers included.
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Gezzer
October 28, 2011 at 4:03am
First off I'm not really all that knowledgeable about the internal workings of a server. I know that there are different types of servers for different needs. But from what I've been lead to believe one of the problems with the current versions of server CPUs is that they don't excel when called to do a very large number of small calculations and are very power inefficent due to they're megalitic CISC structures.
Secondly while most current consumer level computers are 64bit with 64bit OSs, in truth it's still not that important for the majority of what people use computers for and we would still get resonable performance in a 32bit enviroment. On the other hand servers needed and went 64bit a longtime ago because of the way the server CISC CPUs are structured. They needed large memory and storage pools to keep the CPUs feed with data so 64bit was the locigal next step.
So if ARM SoC are the much more efficent RISC processor but would reguire a much larger number of processors to egual the processing power of a CISC CPU where does the need for a 64bit ARM SoC come in? I'm not sure it's really needed. Maybe a 64bit IO controller chip, but each ARM SoC? Would a four core ARM SoC be able to crunch data fast enough that it needs the same 64bit data pools that 64bit CISC CPU does? Wouldn't going 64bit be moving away from the high efficent SoC that has been ARMs major strength?
I don't know and I could be wrong, but this sounds like a bullet point feature more then anything to me.
Ghost XFX
October 28, 2011 at 2:36am
After AMD's failure with Bulldozer at launch, could ARM smell blood in the water? Whatever the case might be, business is about to pick up.....
Device Unknown
October 27, 2011 at 5:59pm
ohhh boy, here we go. I am betting the farm that ARM will be my processor in my PC within 5 years!
