Now, other manufacturers aremaking similar chips.
What Is an Arm Processor?
Arm processors are the ones based on designs by the homonymous British company.
Arm-based CPUshave been used in smartphones for almost two decades.
your gear’s CPUis almost surely one of those, made by Intel or AMD.
But both companieshaven’t launched anything “revolutionary” in a while, and competitorssaw this as an opportunity.
Since then, both the Arm-based processors andWindows support for ithave evolved.
ChromeOS, which has been becoming increasingly popular,has supported Arm processors since day one.
However, performance was never a selling point for these devices.
This certainly contributed to some people viewing Arm processors as inadequate for serious mobile computing.
Apple was the first computer manufacturer to make a huge move on Arm-based processors.
Apple Silicon Macswere promised to be more powerfulthan their Intel counterpartsfor the most part, that has been true.
Joe Robinson / How-To Geek
Qualcommhas been making computer processors for a few yearsnow.
However, the best computers with Snapdragon CPUs are roughly equivalent toentry-level x86/x64 laptops.
With therecently announced Snapdragon Elite X, Qualcomm promises enough performance to fight AMD, Apple, and Intel.
Mediatek, another smartphone processor manufacturer, also makes CPUs for computers.
But, contrary to Qualcomm, its Kompanio chips focus on entry-level laptops, like theLenovo IdeaPad Slim 3.
Thefirst Windows RT tablethad an NVidia’s Tegra CPU, as did many Android phones/tablets at that time.
TheNintendo Switchuses one to this day, and the company still makes Arm processors for corporate customers.
And even more companies want their piece of cake, too.
AMD primarily designs computer CPUs, and for years has beenIntel’s only competitorserious competitor.
How Are Laptops With Arm Processors Different?
All of this, of course, begs the question.
What will a Windows-based laptop with an Arm processor look like?
We can look at existing laptops and extrapolate from there.
Laptops using Arm processorsdiffer from other portables mainly in battery life and the ability to run mobile apps.
Performance used to be a significant factor, but things have changed.
Let’s talk about each aspect.
Because Arm-based CPUs use less power, they allow devices to last longer on battery.
Apple’s Arm-based laptops have excellent all-day battery life.
A welcome side effect of the lower power requirement is that Arm processors produce less heat.
This allows for slimmer laptops, and enables fanless designs.
Performance-wise, Arm processors for computers have mostly been a “good enough” situation.
However, Apple Silicon Macsblow Intel ones out of the waterfor almost every task.
However, more and more apps now run natively on Arm CPUs.
As an example,almost the whole Adobe Creative Cloud supports Apple Silicon Macs.
Windows users arelimited to Photoshop and Lightroom(butthe GIMP image editor has an Arm version).
Gaming is a similar affair.
Windows, surprisingly, is behind on that.
With the new wave of Arm-based Windows computers, that might change.
Simply put, apps made for Arm processors don’t perform well on Intel or AMD CPUs.
Arm-based PC processors sidestep that particular limitation and allow mobile apps to run natively and smoothly.
We have a template for how efficient and powerful Arm processors can be with the Mac.
It’s only a matter of time before Arm processors bring similar performance gains to the PC world.
