Date: 2025-05-25

Simplicity and power

You want to move from A to B.

ARM moves one clean step, precise and efficient. x86 takes a complex
detour, unsure, heavy, carrying unnecessary baggage.

The difference is not magic, it's design philosophy. ARM is the
warrior who knows the battlefield, who strikes with one clear motion.

x86 is the legacy general, with many advisors, many steps, many voices
slow, power hungry.

ARM's instructions are simple, fast, direct. It wastes no cycles, no
energy. Every transistor flip is meaningful. The result is less power
used, less heat, more silence.

x86's complexity adds weight. Instructions hide many micro-operations
inside. The CPU works hard translating legacy commands into modern
action.

ARM's power efficiency isn't a compromise, it's a choice to serve you
quietly, obey your intent without waste. Your machine should be
a tool, not a circus.

This is not just about CPUs. Look at your keyboards or mouse. HHKB,
a minimal, no-nonsense hero's keyboard, eats about 7 mA of power.

HyperX Alloy Origins 60, a flashy gaming keyboard, sucks 33 mA without
christmas tree feature. Switch the RGB on and it jumps to 200 mA,
wasting energy just to flash lights. That's 30 times more power just
for light show, never mind the more powerful microcontroller inside.

What makes the microcontroller inside consume 5 times more power?
Is it hardware, materials, firmware? Mostly, it is complexity and
design choices. A powerful ARM chip running bloated firmware will
never sip power like a simple 8-bit MCU with a lean, efficient
routine. But often manufacturers skip optimization, they use a bigger
chip, more features, more code, less care, and power leaks everywhere.
The same with x86 versus ARM. Just noise, waste, and empty specs.

Every transistor flip is meaningful. The result, less power used, less
heat, more silence. Every hidden operation is noise. Your system, your
mind, your machine, deserve clarity.

The difference between a 7 mA keyboard and a 33 mA keyboard is not
just silicon. It's discipline. It's craftsmanship.
Other option is stupidity, laziness, greed and botch. This "powerful"
trashware is just materialized complexity dressed as feature.

Real engineering respects power budgets, or memory, disk space. Real
minimalism knows what's needed and cuts everything else out.
Efficiency is engineering, not just architecture, even x86 can be
efficient and ARM can waste power like drunken sailor. Difference here
is intent in design from the start in ARM, while tunning later in x86.
To achieve efficiency in x86 you need huge complex stack of nonsense
to achieve just what ARM already has the time it is born. So x86 still
just hides complexity behind smarter management. The simplicity should
be baked into the hardware, not patched on with firmware.

There is difference between being lean and simple by nature or by
compromise. This article is not about power consumption, nor
comparison of different architectures. Those are just examples.
If you use Raspberry Pi 5 as server or personal computer it is
excellent, efficient, well engineered. If you put the board to some
plastic or alluminium box and use it as the heart of a keyboard, that
would be trashidity. And that's the difference. It would be as stupid
as using some simple 8-bit microcontroller as your computer.

Minimalism is not just about power savings, though that often follows.
It's about reducing everything to its essential parts. The hardware,
the software, the interface, so nothing stands between you and your
intent. Simple machine is more transparent. This is why minimalism is
a rebellion against complexity, not just an energy-saving trick.
Simple more power hungry machine is winner here over power efficient
complex monster.

So, the question isn't which is more power efficient on paper, but
which lets you truly own your computing. Which lets you strip away
noise until only what matters remains. The answer is the one that's
simple, because simplicity is power.

Simplicity or complexity are stories of hardware and firmware working
in harmony, or fighting each other. It's not just a spec on a sheet,
it's freedom. Again, it's not about watts, but about you. Everything
around you is your extension, so chose carefully.

As everything else, this is just not something visible, meassurable on
the surface. You have to go deeper to find out the difference.

Choose simplicity. Choose intent.