> The more cores added to an Intel chip, the more electricity it uses and the higher price it becomes.
It is much cheaper to produce as few versions of a chip as possible and deactivate cores (e.g. by fuses) for the cheaper versions. Also energy saving functions in processors have become so much better for the last, say, ten years that one has not to care anymore for energy usage of silicon that is not used.
> Sure it would be complex, the Commodore Amiga was complex but people figured out how to program the co-processors, etc.
At that time no less complex design was feasible. With today's technology it is. Why should one prefer to program a convoluted beast over programming a much more clean design?
AI and ML are complicated, many write code for it without knowing how it works by just putting libraries and examples together. Then they notice they only got a 20% success rate so they fiddle with the code until the rate goes higher.
We have so many people warning us about AI, and most of them are famous people who don't even know how it works because of how complex it has become. People often fear what they don't understand.
It is also why some people program in Haskell even if it is more complex than Python or Ruby on Rails.
I am talking about having an ARM CPU as a co-processor to an AMD or Intel system. You could even modify the X86 chips to have an ARM core or two because the design of the ARM chip is simpler than the Intel, which is why the Raspberry PI Zero is only $5 and is on a small circuit board powered by a USB cable.
The need for ARM code comes from mobile devices and in the Post-PC, Post-Microsoft, and Post-Windows era we need to look to alternatives to the way the PC used to work which was simple but out of date.
When JFK talked about going to the Moon, he didn't say it because it would be simple, he said we should do it because it is hard or complex. When he said that he had no idea how the rocket would get to the Moon, etc.
I am talking about a PC/Mobile hybrid using X86 and ARM technology that can run code made for both types of chips. One that both chips can work together as a team by assigning tasks to them.
Imagine if you will, Apple makes a new Hybrid Mac, it has an Intel CPU and ARM Co-Processor. It runs a new version of MacOS that has a virtual environment to run an ARM OS like iOS inside of it and has a touch screen. A developer can use XCode to create ARM iOS apps and then test them on the ARM chip which is the same in the latest iPhone/iPad, etc.
Do you think MacOSX was simple or complex to design? It was based on Unix instead of writing from scratch. It is designed to only work on Apple branded PCs aka Macintoshes. If it were simple to design it would have met the same fate as Copeland and other failures like the Apple Lisa or Apple III. Instead, it took Unix which has a higher learning curve and put the Mac GUI on top of it to make it simpler.
Also, Linux do you think to hack the Linux kernel is simple or complex? Do you read all of the cussing Linus does when someone submits unstable code to it that they never tested? Do you know how hard that is, and to the user they know nothing about it and think it a simple thing?
Do you not know that electronics use math and formulas to work? Do you know that Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry, Calculus I and II, and Differential Equations as well as Linear Algebra are also not simple but complex that students struggle to try and learn? What about Statistics as well as Finacial math? Not simple but complex. There is a lot of complexity done in computers and programs or apps or whatever you want to call it. To the user it appears simple to those of us who went to college and learned data processing aka information systems and computer science we know how complex a computer is. The Amiga was so good because not that it was simple or played video games, but it could emulate the Macintosh with AMax and eve if it has a slower 68000 than a real Mac the co-processors allowed it to run faster than a Mac with a faster chip in it. End users didn't know how complex emulating a Monochrome PC DOS machine, or a Macintosh was, and only saw how easy it was to do so.
We are getting into the Mobile device age and the Internet of Things age and soon Qunatum computers and the Qubits that will change the way computers work and be more complicated than the X86 PCs or ARM based mobile devices are. The future belongs to the complex design that works better than the simple design.
This is the same mistake that most tech companies make, the people who can debug and write programs who are experts that write complex code, design complex computer systems, and make it so there are fewer bugs and fewer design flaws and save the company millions in expenses for better quality control that needs less help desk hand holding support?
Do you ever notice when these people are fired or downsized that quality control suffers? That the OS and apps get bloated and slow, and suffer more bugs and flaws in it, even hackers stealing data like passwords and email addresses because someone didn't sanitize code because management wanted it more simple than complex. That they hired 20something out of college or dropout people to replace the 30+ or 40+ year old experts for less money.
Sure you could say programmers are a dime a dozen, you get 500+ resumes a day for a programmer's job? You go with the person willing to work for less money to cut costs, but the customer suffers.
Did you know why Apple has been more successful than Microsoft? Steve Jobs learned Six Sigma quality control to make Apple hardware and software a better quality than Microsoft's. Microsoft got rid of the experts that made Windows stable or made a good mobile phone and Vista and Windows Powered devices were awful. Microsoft tried to deny it, but buying a Macintosh or iPhone was better than anything Microsoft put out because of quality control. Without Steve Jobs and his experts at Apple, Apple is starting to suffer as Microsoft had when quality was bad.
Google and Amazon had this problem but found a way to fix it by hiring better experts and quality control people.
So tell me did Evolution and Natural Selection makes a simple human brain or a complex one? It made a complex one that we have problems trying to figure it out how it works, while we try to copy it to an AI program as a series of nodes in a grid or matrix. If the human brain was so simple, we couldn't even figure out how to make computers. Yet because it is complex it is a superior design. So if complex is better, why settle for simple?
It is much cheaper to produce as few versions of a chip as possible and deactivate cores (e.g. by fuses) for the cheaper versions. Also energy saving functions in processors have become so much better for the last, say, ten years that one has not to care anymore for energy usage of silicon that is not used.
> Sure it would be complex, the Commodore Amiga was complex but people figured out how to program the co-processors, etc.
At that time no less complex design was feasible. With today's technology it is. Why should one prefer to program a convoluted beast over programming a much more clean design?