I ntel x86 vs. Arm: Architecture and all key differences explained

I ntel x86 vs. ARM: Architecture and all key differences explained


ARM is the newest CPU architecture used by all modern smartphones in both Android and Apple devices. However, the Arm processor is also making its way into the computer ecosystem with products like Windows on Arm and Apple’s upcoming custom CPUs for Macs. The war on which we’ll learn who the superior of the two is about to start really soon, here’s everything you might need to know about X86 vs ARM.
Processor Architecture
First, what is a CPU? The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the “brains” of your device, but it’s not exactly smart. A CPU only works when given very specific instructions suitably called the instruction set, which tells the processor to move data between registers and memory or to perform a calculation using a specific execution unit (such as multiplication or subtraction). Unique CPU hardware blocks require different instructions. These tend to scale up with more complex and powerful CPUs. If you want the lowest power CPU, keeping the instruction set simple is paramount. However, higher performance can be obtained from more complex hardware and instructions at the expense of power. This is a fundamental difference between Arm’s and Intel’s approaches to the CPU design.

Photo by Slejven Djurakovic on Unsplash

64-bit CPU Architecture
x86 traditionally targets peak performance over all else which is a key difference with Arm processors who aim for better energy efficiency. In today’s world, we have 64-bit architectures mainstream across smartphones and PCs. This change didn’t come so fast, it was around 2012 that phones also made the transition but this didn’t change the way we use the devices it just made them handle things better. Today both architectures support 64-bit but it’s more relevant in smartphones.

PCs moved to 64-bit well before smartphones, but it wasn’t Intel that coined the modern x86–64 architecture (also known as x64). That accolade belongs to AMD’s announcement from 1999, which retrofitted Intel’s existing x86 architecture.