Friday 27 February 2015

For Industrial Computers, ARM or x86?



Image from http://windowsquebec.com/2013/08/03/intel-x86-vs-arm-quelle-plateforme-choisir/



ARM processors means low power consumption which are making progress into the single-board industrial computer market, even as Intel, AMD and Via make lower power x86 chips. Cost, performance, and virtualization are other parameters moving implementation. The GE Intelligent Platforms (formerly Radstone) creates both Intel and ARM-based single board computers (SBCs), and is market them into vision-based object ID tracking where heavy number-crunching is done on Nvidia Kepler graphics cores. 

“You can have a distinct Nvidia GPU with 384 Kepler cores and an Intel Core i7 for 100W, and you can get an Nvidia Tegra K1 with quad ARM Cortex-A15s and 192 Kepler GPU cores for 10W: reduced performance but more Gflop/W, so superior for mobile,” GE product manager Simon Collins told Electronics Weekly. “For a lot of customers, they can’t tell the difference between Intel or ARM solutions as they are [GPU] source code compatible, so ARM is a careful choice because it allows low power.”

 Detailed information at http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/design/embedded-systems/arm-x86-industrial-computers-2015-02/