Of course they're different but when it comes to area, power and performance, it's not a huge difference. It's an incremental improvement, not a quantum leap.
I don't understand this digression at all. Yes, ARM64 chips have approximately the same performance envelope as ARM chips. How is this relevant to anything in this discussion? If anything, it's an argument against tablet-level SoCs. Tablet-level SoCs have poor performance, so they want a better chip?
I don't understand the comparisons to ARM world at all. These people want to make an open (to the extent possible) ARM64 laptop. The ARM64 market is extremely scarce. There are very few chips, and even fewer are for sale. If you're not a huge player, almost nothing is for sale (yet). Those chose the available chip that has acceptable performance and requires fewest binary blobs.
Is there any ARM64 (!!!) SoC of comparable performance that requires less than of fewer blobs than this chip, and is for sale? If yes, I want to see it. If not, I don't understand the point of this discussion. Note that I mean actual SoC for sale, not some kind of board. And by available for sale I mean available in small number today, and without having to sign away your soul to buy it.
Dude it's a totally new ISA. The assembly might look similar but it's got a totally different register set, instruction set, and memory model. It's definitely a quantum leap.
