First Phones with Intel Chips to Hit in 2011

[JMcEntegart]

Cell phones these days are based on some pretty powerful CPUs. Indeed, if a phone doesn't have a 1GHz processor, it's considered out of date before it even launches. It's also an increasingly competitive market and it's one Intel is about to enter.

First Phones with Intel Chips to Hit in 2011 : Read more

 

[zanny]

And suddenly the voices of hundreds of batteries cried out in pain.

1 ghz arm in phones right now running at max frequency not only makes any droid, iphone, htc device a molten brick of hand scorching heat, but it will kill a battery in an hour or less. More powerful processors arn't really the answer right now, since the 1 ghz line isn't even sustainable for a realistic time period yet.

 

[nforce4max]

Hmmm interesting so long prices drop and Apple stops screwing people so much then all is good.

 

[mavroxur]

@Zanny - Have you never heard of power management?

 

[wcooper007]

whats even better is if he would read all the stuff on the moorestown he would see that it can be used for 6 hours or be standby for 60 hours and thermal envelope is where it should be so he is just talking out his Arse ya know

 

[JimmiG]

[citation][nom]mavroxur[/nom]@Zanny - Have you never heard of power management?[/citation]

In that case, neither have the companies mentioned. I love my HTC Desire, but he's right. It does get rather warm under high CPU load, and the battery life could be better. If you use it like a phone, it's fine. But if you use it like a laptop, the battery will last as long as that of a laptop.

However with Intel's manufacturing technology, and everything integrated into one tiny chip, a charge might last a full day of heavy use, even with a 1 GHz Atom.

 

[exodite]

[citation][nom]Zanny[/nom]And suddenly the voices of hundreds of batteries cried out in pain.[/citation]
It really isn't that bad.

Intel may change things until release but reading the various articles regarding Moorestown and trying to gather impressions from the few hands-on experiences that's been had it seems the first generation of Moorestown is pretty much on par with the Snapdragons of our time.

Both in power and... er, power draw.

Intel does offer a welcome addition to a market mostly dominated by ARM-derivatives but it doesn't look like their impact is going to pull many 'ooh's or 'aah's ATM.

 

[drakefyre]

That phone looks way too long.

 

[schmich]

[citation][nom]Zanny[/nom]And suddenly the voices of hundreds of batteries cried out in pain.1 ghz arm in phones right now running at max frequency not only makes any droid, iphone, htc device a molten brick of hand scorching heat, but it will kill a battery in an hour or less. More powerful processors arn't really the answer right now, since the 1 ghz line isn't even sustainable for a realistic time period yet.[/citation]
You have to understand that different people have different needs...if you just want to call then by all means get that Samsung phone that lasts 2 months on standby. Current 1Ghz phones neither get super hot nor just last an hour or less. I can even play Quake III Arena for way more on my Galaxy S.

The Intel chips use more energy but 1) you can pack bigger batteries (current ones are quite small in size), 2) replace batteries and I'm sure those who need that processing power most likely won't be running something for long. At one point we'll reach similar to laptop speeds and at that point would you say that laptops that only last a few hours are crap?

 

[zanny]

would you say that laptops that only last a few hours are crap?

If you buy the laptop to use in a mobile environment or over the course of a workday, yes.

The problem with most of the 1 ghz + smartphones on arm is that the ratio of frequency to power consumption is more exponential than linear.

My point is intel needs to look into throwing out the most energy efficient per cycle processor if they want to make a splash in the smartphone market.

Atom is close, but they need to go further.

Also, q3 arena isnt processor intensive and your phone has dedicated graphics.

A realistic application of what I mentioned is thus : you record a video, want to put it on youtube asap (ex: a silly stunt or something) and the video is >3 - 4 mins in size, by the 30 second mark the processor is probably at maximum frequency, and the conversion will take around 2 - 3 minutes. Those 3 minutes can easily kill 10% of a battery with the processor running at full clock.

 

[exodite]

[citation][nom]Zanny[/nom]Atom is close, but they need to go further.[/citation]
Enter Moorestown?

I'm sorry if I misunderstand you but going by your posts it seems you haven't read up on Moorestown. It's a smartphone processor with significantly improved power envelope over Atom - on par with the high-end ARM Cortex A8 chips of today in performance and power usage.

One of Intel's mentioned design goals for Moorestown were 'working to idle', which is to say provide a quick power state ramping and high performance so a task can be completed quickly and the processor reduced to an idle state once more.

We don't have the retail chips in hand of course and it seems we'll have to wait until 2011 until we do but going by what little information that's currently available there seems to be no reason for discounting Moorestown just yet.

 

[ckj]

Intel is way too late to this game and they aren't ready for the fierce competition they will face. They've tried to enter this market in years past and failed as they will this time.

 

[Guest]

So Intel is getting into the Phone OS business now? Are they really going to try and compete with Apple and Google with an App Store?

 

[walt526]

[citation][nom]stm1185[/nom]So Intel is getting into the Phone OS business now? Are they really going to try and compete with Apple and Google with an App Store?[/citation]

Do you not understand the distinction between hardware (e.g., a processor such as Intel's Moorsetown) and software (e.g., an operating system such as Android or iOs)?

 

[zerapio]

Like walt mentioned before me this article is about a CPU (or SoC) but yes, Intel is in the phone OS buisiness with MeeGo and app store with AppUp.

[citation][nom]stm1185[/nom]So Intel is getting into the Phone OS business now? Are they really going to try and compete with Apple and Google with an App Store?[/citation]

 

[chodaboy]

[citation][nom]stm1185[/nom]So Intel is getting into the Phone OS business now? Are they really going to try and compete with Apple and Google with an App Store?[/citation]
I gave you a thumbs down for being dumb, but alas, I re-read the article and noticed that is says "Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS". Sorry, can't un-thumb-down you.

 

[jkflipflop98]

[citation][nom]stm1185[/nom]So Intel is getting into the Phone OS business now? Are they really going to try and compete with Apple and Google with an App Store?[/citation]

Yes. I have very little faith in Intel's upper management at this point. They'll do something to fuck this up. I can guarantee it.

 

[scifi9000]

It's not the chip that's a prob, it's the batt

 

[eddieroolz]

Instead of boosting power of CPUs so fast, we should be focusing on battery improvements.

 

[dEAne]

CPUs will go smaller, faster then the battery consumption gets smaller too.

 

[jimmysmitty]

[citation][nom]Zanny[/nom]And suddenly the voices of hundreds of batteries cried out in pain.1 ghz arm in phones right now running at max frequency not only makes any droid, iphone, htc device a molten brick of hand scorching heat, but it will kill a battery in an hour or less. More powerful processors arn't really the answer right now, since the 1 ghz line isn't even sustainable for a realistic time period yet.[/citation]

I would agree if it were not for the new capabilities of Moorestown. It shuts off all the unneeded parts of the processor when used for certain things such as music.

When playing music, it will only use the needed parts of the processor, sound and encoders/decoders, to give that. That alone will represent a awesome battery life and according to (take with a grain of salt) Intel will give 48 hours of music playback. And thats not even on 32nm yet, just 45nm from what I have heard.

As for OS, its good to have more choice and this might help pull us away from the crappy phone company OSes. I really hate what they put on the phones. So limited. But we have to see this to find if its any good.

As for the CPU, I for one am open to it. I hope it pushes the market and opens up more innovation. Plus it is shown playing Doom 3 which means even better than PS2 graphics on a mobile.

 

[seboj]

but we do know the LG-manufactured GW990 features a 5-inch screen with 720p HD video playback,

5" display?! Who cares about GHz and battery life, christalmighty, I'm going to need bigger pockets in my jeans!

 

[biofrog]

That 5" display looks unwieldy and unnecessary.

Not to mention, when you start adding screen real-estate then throw in a higher dpi resolution display, you start pushing a large amount of pixels for every screen refresh. All that adds up to a lot more power use despite the best efforts of CPU/GPU power management.

 

[Guest]

As long as MID/cellphone users do not start demanding windows based cellphones, no reason they should, x86 will probably be locked out of that market.

Windows is the primary reason why x86 is so popular. With x86, half the silicon and power consumption is to be compatible with legacy code.

ARM does not have to deal with that much legacy, so intrinsically ARM is more efficient and cheaper to produce.

However 20 years ago it was the same deal, PowerPC was supposed to bury x86 because it did not have to deal with legacy code it was a much more efficient design. Given the intrinsic disadvantage x86 had, Intel still kicked the crap out of IBM and powerpc, because intel could afford to spend $10 for every $1 IBM spent on R&D.

Same thing can happen in the mobile space, ARM has an intrinsic advantage, however Intel may throw massive amounts of cash into mobile R&D and trump ARM. However this time ARM will put up a much better fight than PowerPC did in the 90s.

 

[deltatux]

I'd still rather stick to ARM phones.