Chip power limits have stimulated
great interest in the ARM processor
ecosystem. Because ARM designs
were optimized for embedded and
mobile devices, where limited power
consumption has long been a design
driver, they have simpler pipelines and
instruction decoders than x86 designs.
In this new world, hardware/software
co-design becomes de rigeur,
with devices and software systems
interdependent. The implications
are far fewer general-purpose performance
increases, more hardware diversity,
elevation of multivariate optimization
(such as power, performance,
and reliability) in programming models,
and new system-software-resourcemanagement
challenges.