Rather, they maintain and license their architecture to other companies who in turn build processors that use the ARM instruction set. But for me, the most interesting advantage is the ability to run ARM machines without the proprietary firmware present with x86 chips.ĪRM is an Architecture Licensed to Many ManufacturersĪRM doesn’t make any chips themselves like the x86 manufacturers like Intel do. They can often be passively cooled, avoiding need to be actively cooled, unlike many AMD/Intel machines that often have noisy or bulky fans. These RISC machines use fewer instructions and perform with much more thermal efficiency than their x86 competitors. But in the real world of ARM processors the road ahead will decidedly long, windy, and forked.Įven ignoring tedious nitpicks that the distinction between RISC vs CISC is more blurred now than it was “back in the day”, RISC machines like ARM have a natural leg up on the x86 CISC machines built by Intel and AMD. ARM processors, which have been steadily increasing their user share for years but are seeing a surge of interest since the recent announcement by Apple, are poised to take over the personal computing world and hopefully allow us some relevant, modern options for those concerned with freedom and privacy. Luckily, there’s a dark horse in the race in the personal computing world that gives us some hope that one day there will be an x86 competitor that allows their users to have a free firmware that they can trust. The IME or PSP have access to memory, storage, and the network stack even if the computer is shut down, and even after the computer boots they run at such a low level that the operating system can’t be aware of what they’re really doing. Without libre firmware there’s no way to trust anything else, even if your operating system is completely open-source. We harp on this a lot, but it’s worth repeating that it’s nearly impossible to get free, open-source firmware to run on them thanks to the Intel Management Engine (IME) and the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP). Any modern computer with an x86 processor, whether it’s Intel or AMD, is a lost cause for software freedom and privacy.
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