DEV Community: Bhavesh Goyal

ARM vs x86: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters in 2025

Bhavesh Goyal — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 17:51:31 +0000

🧠 ARM vs x86: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters in 2025

If you’ve ever read about processors or shopped for a laptop or phone, you’ve likely come across terms like ARM, x86, or even ARM x86. But what do they really mean? Are they different kinds of chips? Is one better than the other?

Let’s break it down in simple terms.

💡 What is x86?

x86 is a processor architecture that comes from Intel, and later, AMD. It's been the backbone of traditional PCs for decades. Think of it as the “classic” processor design you’ll find in:

Most Windows desktops and laptops
Older MacBooks (before Apple switched to Apple Silicon)
Gaming rigs and performance-heavy machines
Many enterprise servers

x86 uses a design philosophy called CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing), meaning it supports many rich and complex instructions. This is great for flexibility and performance, but it tends to be power-hungry.

⚡ What is ARM?

ARM, short for Advanced RISC Machine, is an entirely different architecture that focuses on simplicity and efficiency. It uses RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing), which keeps things lean — fewer instructions, executed faster and with less power.

ARM chips are famous for their power efficiency, which makes them perfect for:

Smartphones (iPhones, Androids)
Tablets
Raspberry Pi and IoT devices
New MacBooks (Apple’s M1, M2, M3 chips)
Some Chromebooks and even servers (like AWS Graviton)

🤔 ARM vs x86: The Showdown

Feature	ARM	x86
Architecture	RISC	CISC
Power Consumption	Low	High
Performance	Efficient	Powerful
Software Compatibility	Requires ARM-compatible apps	Huge library of legacy software
Typical Use	Mobile, tablets, newer laptops	Desktops, gaming PCs, traditional laptops

ARM is winning mobile and making serious moves into desktop and server territory. x86 still rules the world of traditional computing, but that dominance is fading.

🌀 What About “ARM x86”? Is That a Thing?

Not really.

There’s no such official architecture called “ARM x86.” What people often mean by that is:

“An ARM-based device that can run x86 software using emulation or translation.”

For example:

Apple’s Rosetta 2 lets ARM-based Macs run older x86 Mac apps.
Windows on ARM devices can run some x86 apps through emulation (but with performance hits).

So while you can run x86 software on ARM chips sometimes, it’s not ideal and often slower.

🧬 Why Should You Care?

Knowing the difference helps you make better decisions when buying a device:

Want better battery life? → Go with ARM (like M1 MacBooks or ARM Chromebooks).
Need to run older apps or games? → Stick with x86 (Intel/AMD).
Developers? → You’ll want to know if your app needs to be recompiled for ARM.

TL;DR

x86 = Traditional, powerful processors from Intel/AMD.
ARM = Efficient, modern processors dominating mobile and gaining ground in laptops.
"ARM x86" = Not a real thing — just ARM running x86 apps via emulation.

👋 Hope that helps! If you’ve got thoughts, questions, or processor preferences — drop them in the comments!

Octahacks 3.0

Bhavesh Goyal — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 17:48:37 +0000

OctaHacks is the annual flagship event of DSC, Chitkara University, where innovators get an opportunity to merge their creative ideas with their technical skills to build something exemplary. It's a place where your ideas will get acknowledged.
This November, OctaHacks is back with it's third edition, OctaHacks 3.0. Expect more than 36 hours of inspiring panel discussions, working and collaborating on futuristic and empowering tech products, networking opportunities with budding developers and lots of fun!

History

Octahacks was started in 2018 with having a vision of encouraging the young innovators at the National level to build something exemplary. Something that will make the life of the community easy to live in.

Octahacks = Octa + Hacks

The title of this Hackathon itself implies about the Eight different tracks that are available in which you can brainstorm and think-design-build something innovative.
The list of tracks available is:-
1.Smart-City
2.Security
3.Fintech
4.Health
5.Environment
6.Education
7.Business
8.Women Security

How to Register?

To Register for Octahacks 3.0 you can visit www.octahacks.tech from where you will be redirected to DevFolio .Firstly, you will have to create an account, then setting up your profile and then registering for this Hackathon.
You can participate in a Team (max 4 members) or participate as an individual.
If you are stuck anywhere you can refer

Judges

To Judge the innovative projects out.
1.Kamal Vaid
Google Certified Android Developer | Technology Lead
at Infosys | GDE For Google Assistant
2.Vrijraj Singh
Organizer, GDG Jalandhar | Google Developers Expert
for Firebase & Web Technologies
3.Tushar Srivastava
Technical Project Lead at Huawei Technologies India
4.Niharika Arora
GDE for Android | Contributor @ Aarogya Setu | Active Community
Contributor | Gold Medalist
5.Mohit Uniyal
Instructor and Product Engineer at Coding Blocks | Mentor
@TensorFlow at Google Code-in.
6.Suraj Kumar
SDE-2 @V-Comply

Mentors

To guide you throughout your journey.
1.Sai Siddartha Maram
SDE Intern @Invento Robotics
2.Saurabh Thakur
SDE @smallcase, GSoC 19 @AOSSIE
3.Chetan Kaushik
Product Engineer at GOJEK | Founder at TheAlgorithms | GSOC'17 @FOSSASIA
4.Harsha Vardhan
Software Engineer at Microsoft IDC | Student Researcher
5.Vedant B.
Research Intern @UPenn | Chair IEEE CIS | Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador | Data Scientist
6.Abhay Sharma
Frontend Engineer @Smallcase
7.Madhur Gupta
Android @bim | GSoC'20 @Wikimedia
8.Jai Kathuria
Developer • Learner • Designer
9.Nikhil Bansal
Android Engineer @Mutual Mobile | Open Source Contributor | Tech Speaker | Mentor and Reviewer
10.Sagar Choudhary
SDE-II @Airmeet | Mentor and Project Reviewer
11.Ayon Roy
Speaker | Doing ML Deep Learning AI Data Science Python @ FinTech | Hackathons | Internships | Community @ Kaggle Days

Student Mentors

Fun-Time

To give this virtual hackathon a real feel of offline one we will be having game nights.
To relieve out the stress our Team will be hosting some quizzes & games with live streaming on YouTube.

Prizes

Making this Version 3.0 bigger than previous versions,Prizes worth 4 Lacs will be distributed. The goodies and the swags will be directly shipped to your given shipment details.

For more Details you can visit us at www.octahacks.tech.
You can mail your queries at help@octahacks.tech
Till then stay tuned @dsc_ciet.

Basic Commands of Linux.

Bhavesh Goyal — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 17:09:05 +0000

Recommended
Installed virtual box and ubuntu.||System Dual booted with Ubuntu.

Basic Terminologies to start with:

Kernel − The kernel is the heart of the operating system. It interacts with the hardware and most of the tasks like memory management, task scheduling and file management.
Shell − The shell is the utility that processes your requests. When you type in a command at your terminal, the shell interprets the command and calls the program that you want. The shell uses standard syntax for all commands. C Shell, Bourne Shell and Korn Shell are the most famous shells which are available with most of the Unix variants.
Commands and Utilities − There are various commands and utilities which you can make use of in your day to day activities. cp, mv, cat and grep, etc. are few examples of commands and utilities. There are over 250 standard commands plus numerous others provided through 3rd party software. All the commands come along with various options.
Files and Directories − All the data of Unix is organized into files. All files are then organized into directories. These directories are further organized into a tree-like structure called the filesystem.
Basically you can think of directory as a folder in your system.

Basic commands of Linux:-
1.pwd:-To check the present directory in which you are working
right now.

2.ls:-To list the files and directories stored in the current
directory/folder.
Some extensions are:-
ls -l:-To list in the some details of the files in a list format.
ls -a:-To list all the files of a directory including the hidden files.
ls -ld:-To list all the directories within a present directory.

3.cd:-To change the current directory to another.
Some useful commands of this:-
cd ..:-To move to directory that is one level up of pwd.
cd /:-This command is used to change directory to the root directory, The root directory is the first directory in your filesystem hierarchy.
cd ~:-To move back to the home directory.
cd -:-To visit last directory.
cd dir_1/dir_2/dir_3:-This command is used to move inside a directory from a directory.

4.touch:-To create blank files.

5.cat:-To create files with content and to show the content of the file.
It has two situations:-

No such file pre-exists in the directory:- It will create a file & you can enter the content.
File pre-exists with the same name in the directory:- It will display the contents of that file.

6.wc:-To get a count of the total number of lines, words, and characters contained in a file.
Syntax:-wc filename
Output:- 2 19 103 filename
This implies that it has 2 lines,19 words,103 characters and name of the file is 'filename'.

7.cp:-To make a copy of a file.
Syntax:-cp FILENAME COPIED_FILE_NAME
cp filename copyfile:-This will create the file in the same directory named copyfile which is the copy of filename.
Syntax:-cp FILENAME DESTINATION
cp filename /home/Desktop:-This will create a copy of file named filename at the mentioned location i.e Desktop.

8.mv:-To change the name of a file or a directory.
Syntax:-mv old_file new_file

9.rm:-To delete an existing file.
Syntax:-rm filename1

10.mkdir:-To make a directory.
Syntax:-mkdir dir1

11.rmdir:-To remove a directory.
Syntax:-rmdir dir1

Note − To remove a directory, make sure it is empty which means there should not be any file or sub-directory inside this directory.

12.grep:-To search something(any pattern of characters) in a file.
Synatx:-grep "Helllo" filename
This will search for "Hello" in the file named filename and will display all the lines of that file that contains "Hello" in them.

Thanks for reading.
Will be back soon with some more commands.

Web Development Guide For Absolute Beginners!!

Bhavesh Goyal — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 16:22:42 +0000

Have you wondered how the websites are made? What skills or tech-stacks are required for making a website? 🤔 🤔

If your answer is "YES", then this is the write place for you.
I will try to keep the answer as simple as possible.

First of all we need to know about the basics of anything before going ahead, so we will start with the 3 basic components or the backbones of Web-Development.

A basic Website is nothing but a blend of HTML , CSS & JavaScript only.

The basic structure of every Website consists of webpages that are made up of atleast two components i.e. HTML & CSS .

Right Now, You will be like that

That's all sounds good but where to start?

So answer to this quite simple. You can begin with:

1.HTML(HyperText Markup Language) 🤔

What basically HTML does is that it is used for structuring the website. How it will look, how different things will be placed, how much will be their dimensions and all. this is all taken care of by HTML and with this we can structure our webpage which will in-turn make our website!

Our structure of the website is done!💯

Now we will proceed with to styling. Like you will not like to have a cloth which is not styled or looking an old one. You will simply like it to be styled it in your own way. Here CSS comes to action!

2.CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) 🤔

We are done with structure. For styling the 'Simplest' and the 'Most Powerful' tool is CSS. With it you can style your webpage in the way you wanted. Different features can be added to enhance you website looks and all. CSS itself is a complete package for styling. Nothing more required as such for styling.

Now our structure and styling part is done.💯

But it is like you structured a Toy car, designed it to the best looks but your car is not moving.

This is the place where the JS comes for the rescue!

3.JS(JavaScript) 🤔

Basically JS will make your website internactive. For example, you go over a region in the site, it will respond to you either depending or independent of your action. In short it will make your site internactive and responsive.

Now that's all fine but where are the resources!

Resources

Best Ever Known Resources for the three are 🙂:
1.MDN Docs(Mozilla Developer Network-Documents)
2.W3Schools
3.Video Tutorials:
The Complete Web Development Bootcamp by Angela Yu.
(Recommended by ❤️)

1.The things that you will be learning please try to implement that practically by making some projects(like Websites).
2.Your HardWork will definitely pay-off 💯. The more you do,The more you get!
3.As a beginner please master these 3 skills only!! then switch to some frameworks or libraries like BootStrap and all!

Hope you liked it!✌️
I am happy that you read this article till this line and might have taken a little bit of knowledge.
Thanks for reading!!🙏