skyeyemachine said:
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but what is it about the X86 that generates so much heat/uses so much power versus the ARM architecture? Does the X86 perform many more overhead calculations, or something to that effect? My initial encounter with the Pandora was really the first time I clued in to the different architectures, having only ever much thought about X86 and 64-bit PC chipsets as related to common PCs, and it's made me curious about what makes the different architectures unique (as well as what else is out there).
Imagine you've got a bunch of switches which push a bunch of other switches which push a bunch of other switches in a long line with the last bunch of switches being the output.
At the front, you push a bunch of the switches. It takes energy to push the switches, and each layer of switches increases the amount of energy you need to push on the first switch.
ARM is a simple architecture, there's only a few levels of switches. x86 is more complex, there are more layers of switches, so it takes more energy. More energy means more heat.
Basically. It's a lot more complicated than that, but that should be close enough.