The final ISA showdown: Is ARM, x86, or MIPS intrinsically more power efficient?

[Archean]

The final ISA showdown: Is ARM, x86, or MIPS intrinsically more power efficient?

The RISC vs. CISC argument should’ve passed into history a long time ago. It may still have some relevance in the microcontroller realm, but has nothing useful to contribute to the modern era. An x86 chip can be more power efficient than an ARM processor, or vice versa, but it’ll be the result of other factors — not whether it’s x86 or ARM.

 

[dividebyzero]

I read this a few days ago whilst finishing up researching some backround info for an article I was writing. Nice to see that that people are now noting and quantifying the convergence of perf/watt with RISC SoC's taking on complexity and x86 reaching down to ULV devices. There is also a new MIPS player on the horizon ( Imagination Tech's 64-bit Warrior I6400) that I was eager to see run through some tests- guess I'll have to wait a little longer.