I love raw power.
Because of this, I've been a little skeptical about Windows on ARM. I believe that the main reason for running a desktop operating system is to be able to effectively do work quickly and efficiently, and both AMD and Intel are the names that come to mind when talking about performance desktop CPUs.
Having said all of that, though, there is always innovation in every category of technology. ARM processors are becoming more and more powerful as time goes on and people use their mobile devices for more than just a quick round of Rat on a Scooter, and today, we're starting to see just how powerful they really can be.
Members of the gang over at Phoronix decided to pit a 1GHz, dual-core TI OMAP 4660 against a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, both running Ubuntu 12.04. The results are pretty surprising, too. While the OMAP has a lower clock rate, it also has double the cores – this helped the ARM-based chip achieve faster audio encoding and similar H.264 video encoding times.
While ARM isn't quite on par with the latest Atoms from Intel, these benchmarks are certainly making me feel better about the future of Windows on ARM, and desktop operating systems in general running on the architecture. I just hope that when ARM chips become faster than their x86 brethren that Microsoft will reconsider the WOA limitations.
[Phoronix]
