Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter (opens in new tab)

If Microsoft can get Qualcomm to implement some of the same chip tricks Apple pulled off for x86 emulation performance they can use it for a potentially somewhat compelling laptop package. It's a tough ask though, as Qualcomm seems mostly to just use pretty vanilla ARM designs. And I don't expect anyone but Microsoft to be interested in taking that plunge.

> Every year with these Arm flagship chip announcements, the company also includes a wild design for a giant mega-chip that usually never gets built.

That being said, this 14-core figure is when doing a full-Arm SoC (with Arm internal bus). SoC vendors are still allowed (AFAIK [0]) to do their custom interconnect that goes higher than that

[0] there have been rumors seen here that Arm is pushing towards a model where SoC vendors must do all-Arm components. That still sounds weird to me, and I'm not witnessing any actual effect of this, so I still highly doubt it.

It's sad.

Finding this was helpful to me, as I can never keep track what is a fast (eg, Xeon equiv) type arm chip, and what's a low power embedded (Atom equiv) and what's a laptop / desktop chip.

> but these launch events have a history of making performance claims that don't align with what actually arrives in consumers' hands.

Sigh. Both are factually wrong.

First point, Where the heck did that 63 percent came from? The iPhone 14 is about 38% faster. With much larger die size, and larger cache.

Second point implies ARM is lying. When ARM is the only company that gives precise reading of their benchmarks and ISO performance. How about asking that from any other manufacturers.

My guess is that for hardware you should ignore Ars and only read Anandtech or other site who goes into deep dive. Ars is fast becoming Engadget or just another blog.