Windows 8 provides you two model of tablets. The mainstream tablet that use ARM Processor for its computing need and the “performance” tablet called a Slate that use x86/x64 processor for its computing need. In Windows 8, you can see clearly that the Slate outperform the mainstream Tablet through the support of desktop application like Office and DirectX game, while the arm tablet only works with Windows 8 Modern UI (formerly Metro) only.
ARM grows from Smartphone world, so they really care about power efficiency. Meanwhile the x86 Intel grows from PC, so they really care about performance. Nowadays, they meet in a “tablet world”. ARM improves its performance, and Intel improves its power efficiency. When we talk about tablet many of the computing power just need small portion of computing power that ARM can handle. In the first round ARM architecture win the battle because several reason
- Tablet application is dedicated for ARM Architecture, user doesn’t see additional benefit by using x86 since the software is designed for ARM architecture
- Android, IPad, and Surface runs on ARM Architecture, only small portion of tablet use x86 platform such as Asus slate or Acer Iconia W.
- The on-chip model in ARM architecture is already widely used for embedded system such as ATM, Audio Kit, GPS Device, Smart TV and others,
So why looking into Intel x86 platform for the tablet. This article assumes that the performance of x86 can be useful for several scenarios. the assumptions is based on several previous researches such as
- Kondakci and Yilmaz (2010). In the research, it is shown that the Intel x86 outperform the ARM platform for remote security evaluation protocol (RSEP) in Embedded System. The Intel performs 16.75-29.51 faster than the ARM. It means that the x86 platform more faster to execute the security activity like RSEP.
- Ou, et al (2012) shows that the ARM cluster provides more energy efficient rather than Intel cluster. However, the research doesn’t measure the performance of the production system that use hard disk or SSD. The research uses the SD card during the limitation of Panda Board.
- OSNews (2012), Intel Atom family has better performance in browser rendering than ARM. Take a look with the video
To be continue 