ARM vs X86?
 

hello, all!

hey, i'm so excited to see that while i've been waiting on the 100Dollar OLPC and the $199USD eeePC to materialize, the N800 price has dropped right into that price range! i'm seriously thinking about the N800, but i'm curious to know how the ARM processor compares in speed to X86 CPUs. what does 330mHZ translate as for someone who is unfamiliar with ARM?

is the N800 going to seem disappointingly slow for someone who is used to looking at the world through a blazing (winky-wink-wink) 750mHZ desktop?

TIA

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

If you really don't need the small form factor of n800, one thing to consider about an x86 machine is the *much* easier ability to port applications to it.

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

Well, IMHO the N800 has most applications I need (that is just my opinion though!), so porting is not an issue. Where ARM excels over x86 is in battery life. There is no way any x86 portable would last as long as the N800 does :)
As for speed... it really does depend on what you're expecting -- one should not expect too much out of a 400MHz (with the new OS, not many applications for it though, but I'm pretty sure there soon will be) machine. Having said that, quetoo (Quake II) runs very fast, and movies play without hitches (on the whole). Most web sites show up pretty nicely and at a decent speed. Just my 2p.

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

none of these machines will be good for video editing or simulating the LHC.

for web browsing they are ok.

the screen size and input methods will be more of restriction in what you can do than the CPU speed.

what do you want to do with it?

the n800 is great for lecture notes (using xournal (physics so lots of equations and diagrams, keyboard is no use)). also great as a media player. if you wanted to type stuff then something with a full sized real keyboard would be good. the OLPC is an amazing machine (i saw one in the summer and LUGradio live)

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

the small form factor is a great part of the appeal. and i'm not worried about tons of applications, as i want to use it simply as portable access to the internet for the most part. i want to be one of those connected hipsters i see at the coffee shop :-) if i can store a few songs and photos on it, that's good too.

seriously, though, thanks, people, for the quick and friendly responses. i think i understand what the N800 is and isn't and i've been using Linux on the desktop for several years (currently got Puppy Linux on this aging box), but i'm just wondering if the 330 (400?) ARM feels pretty fast to most users or if xxxARM = xxxX86.

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

Heat and power consumption...

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

I have found that 330 MHz is pretty snappy for web-browsing, word processing, etc. I use it to listen to music while I work on it. I watch movies on it (though I convert them. I haven't tried not converting them; it might work.) All of these tasks seem to happen easily and smoothly. While I am looking forward to the 400 MHz upgrade in December, I don't think that I really NEED it.

On the other hand, I have a 1Ghz x86 that I often find to be sluggish.

Let me put it this way: Of all the things I would change about the N800, speed and memory are at the very bottom of the list.

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

For most applications, going from x86 to ARM is just a matter of recompiling. Since you're going to use the maemo SDK anyway, who cares about the target processor?

-Jonathan

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

Try compiling a few different things from source and you will find that unless they are simple or small projects, there will be some issues you will have to deal with because of ARM. For example, try compiling Firefox in the maemo SDK. Many things need tweaking or changing because ARM is not the top priority for developers and it takes longer for bugs to get fixed.

Many apps will compile just fine. But x86 does have the advantage over ARM for *some* projects where you choose to build from source yourself.

Re: ARM vs X86?
 

I'm more with bokubob on this. It's pretty obvious that the GCC compiler is better tested for the x86 CPU, but the compiler supports dozens of CPUs and for the vast majority of applications it produces pretty good code for all the targets. Firefox is _not_ your usual application, it's definitely in the quite small 'huge monster' division.

IMO the problem with porting to the N800 has very little to do with the ARM cpu, it's much more about having to be ported to a) 800x480 screen, no mouse, b) gtk+ v2 if it doesn't use that already, and c) Hildon (but if you can live without the Hildonization you can even get away with skipping this step).