iPad2 thread

[cheezy321]

i like my ipad 2 but anything from Intel will smoke ARM in pure performance. ipad 2 is still 1024 x 768 which is like from 10 years ago in PC time. and the battery isn't that great. i've had 2 iphones that were turned into ipods and the battery life jumped as soon as the 3G radio stopped being used.

only reason ARM is doing well is that their tech is good enough for most people and good enough always wins. just like intel vs Sun and others in the 1990's

Wow, so many things wrong with this. Show me a tablet with a better battery life. Oh wait, you cant. Show me a phone with a better battery life. Oh wait, you cant.

 

[alent1234]

ARM might beat the Atom in energy efficiency but it's at the expense of performance. it's not advertised but a lot of TV's use Atom because it's faster than ARM. and it was Boxee that switched from ARM to Atom at the last minute before shipment last year.

ARM is sold as System on a chip with RAM and GPU on one unit. SB is now closer to this and the battery life improvement in laptops from Core i 2010 was amazing. it's just that people don't really need all that power in a tablet or mobile device so ARM wins all the design wins over Atom. and with ARM tablets the entire system is more energy efficient by design than Atom since atom uses traditional chipsets, etc.

forgot the details but there were some features that ARM only got in A9 or will get in the next version that Intel has had for years. i think it was out of order execution

ARM is better than Atom for what people want, but raw power CPU's like Core I or the 2011 versions will smoke ARM any day

 

[MrX8503]

i like my ipad 2 but anything from Intel will smoke ARM in pure performance. ipad 2 is still 1024 x 768 which is like from 10 years ago in PC time. and the battery isn't that great. i've had 2 iphones that were turned into ipods and the battery life jumped as soon as the 3G radio stopped being used.

only reason ARM is doing well is that their tech is good enough for most people and good enough always wins. just like intel vs Sun and others in the 1990's

Dude what are you talking about?

1. Intel doesn't have anything to compete with ARM
2. iPads, iPhones, and Macbooks get better battery life than their competitors
3. ARM is doing well because their SoCs are powerful and efficient
4. Intel Atom is a pig compared to ARM, its going to be awhile for Intel to scale their Atoms down

ARM might beat the Atom in energy efficiency but it's at the expense of performance. it's not advertised but a lot of TV's use Atom because it's faster than ARM. and it was Boxee that switched from ARM to Atom at the last minute before shipment last year.

ARM is sold as System on a chip with RAM and GPU on one unit. SB is now closer to this and the battery life improvement in laptops from Core i 2010 was amazing. it's just that people don't really need all that power in a tablet or mobile device so ARM wins all the design wins over Atom. and with ARM tablets the entire system is more energy efficient by design than Atom since atom uses traditional chipsets, etc.

forgot the details but there were some features that ARM only got in A9 or will get in the next version that Intel has had for years. i think it was out of order execution

ARM is better than Atom for what people want, but raw power CPU's like Core I or the 2011 versions will smoke ARM any day

Do you have no concept of how much power Intel CPUs draw? Just so you know, cellphones don't run plugged into the wall like a computer, mediaplayer, or a TV.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Dude what are you talking about?

1. Intel doesn't have anything to compete with ARM
2. iPads, iPhones, and Macbooks get better battery life than their competitors
3. ARM is doing well because their SoCs are powerful and efficient
4. Intel Atom is a pig compared to ARM, its going to be awhile for Intel to scale their Atoms down

ARM's SoCs are efficient but they are hardly powerful. A single core Atom is still faster than a dual core Cortex A9 and Atom is extremely weak by x86 standards. IMO something like AMD's 9w Ontario APUs would be perfect for tablets, it's still pretty energy efficient but it gets you considerably more cpu and gpu performance than ARM offers.

 

[Ns1]

..

 

[DivideBYZero]

Only a dick would compare desktop CPUs to Mobile ones. No names...

 

[alent1234]

back in the day Intel was the ARM against Big Iron. Wintel won because it gave the features people wanted against the evil of mainframe computing and time sharing. people had local computing power locally.

all the mainframe and Sun Sparc admins said Wintel sucked because it wasn't 64 bit or whatever and watched as Microsoft and Intel destroyed the market with what were really crappy products and fixed them later

same here. performance wise ARM sucks compared to normal Intel CPU's and Atom. but ARM devices have the features people want in a mobile device and mobile is king now because it's the next tech revolution in bringing computing power closer to the user. and no one needs all the power of a Core i CPU in a mobile device. or even an Atom

 

[DivideBYZero]

Thanks for the history lesson, but this is about the iPad, not the downfall of the domination of z/OS.

 

[purbeast0]

I think alent1234 is losing by like 37 points in this thread.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Only a dick would compare desktop CPUs to Mobile ones. No names...

If you were referring to my post Ontario is hardly a desktop part, MSI has allready announced a tablet using it.

 

[senseamp]

ARM's SoCs are efficient but they are hardly powerful. A single core Atom is still faster than a dual core Cortex A9 and Atom is extremely weak by x86 standards. IMO something like AMD's 9w Ontario APUs would be perfect for tablets, it's still pretty energy efficient but it gets you considerably more cpu and gpu performance than ARM offers.

9W power is nice for PC space, but would be laughed out of the building in mobile space. It's a whole order of magnitude bigger than where you need to be for a slim form factor and competitive battery life. This is why the x86 tablets you see are thick, heavy, have cooling vents, etc.

 

[Munky]

Indeed. If the NGP turns out to be even better than this, I dare say it might just surpass PS3.

Hahaha... surpass the PS3 in processing power? Surely you're joking.

 

[zerocool84]

Hahaha... surpass the PS3 in processing power? Surely you're joking.

For the small screen, they could make it extremely close since you don't have to use high rez textures and it's much lower rez screen so you could get pretty damn close to it.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Hahaha... surpass the PS3 in processing power? Surely you're joking.

Surpass PS3 in graphics quality.

Raw processing power in PS3 is nice, but it's useless when the system barely has any memory to store large computational results.

 

[smartpatrol]

Wow.

ARM rules not because it's "good enough", but because it's by far the best when it comes to power consumption.

Intel doesn't even come close. There's a good reason that there isn't a single Intel-powered smartphone. It's not because people don't want or need the performance of an Atom chip. It's because such a phone would have to weigh 3 pounds and be the size of the original Motorola cell phone in order to have enough battery life to last half a day.

 

[DivideBYZero]

If you were referring to my post Ontario is hardly a desktop part, MSI has allready announced a tablet using it.

Nope. Not referring to your post. Don't think I even read your post.

 

[MrX8503]

ARM's SoCs are efficient but they are hardly powerful. A single core Atom is still faster than a dual core Cortex A9 and Atom is extremely weak by x86 standards. IMO something like AMD's 9w Ontario APUs would be perfect for tablets, it's still pretty energy efficient but it gets you considerably more cpu and gpu performance than ARM offers.

The key is performance/watt and AFAIK ARM beats Intel.

 

[Pliablemoose]

LOL, so much for self control, just ordered a 16GB 3G 2nd gen...

 

[zerocool84]

LOL, so much for self control, just ordered a 16GB 3G 2nd gen...

3-4 week wait???

 

[runawayprisoner]

3-4 week wait???

No. Current order ships in 4-5 weeks.

 

[Pliablemoose]

No. Current order ships in 4-5 weeks.

Yep, am hoping I don't get delayed further by supply chain problems...

 

[Aikouka]

Yep, am hoping I don't get delayed further by supply chain problems...

Why not just keep a look out locally for one? You'll probably have the most luck at Target, Best Buy or Wal-Mart since most people flock to the Apple Store to get them :\.

 

[yacoub]

It would help to know the delivery schedules for any of those stores. I've heard at Best Buy they actually get separate shipments just of the iPad2 so it doesn't necessarily come when regular shipments might.

 

[Pliablemoose]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4225/the-ipad-2-review

Anand's review is up.

 

[runawayprisoner]

I feel they did their absolute best to not ignite any flame war between Android and iOS in the comment section there. Credits and criticisms were given where due as fairly as possible.

And I agree with the closing comment. You need to wait for Honeycomb hardware to catch up, or iOS software to improve if you are camp-neutral. If you are camp iOS, iPad 2 is no brainer. If you are camp Android, I guess the message is clear: wait for another Android tablet that has better hardware than the XOOM.

And I suppose we all know Apple is hosting WWDC very soon...