Intel Says it Will Out-Wrestle ARM in Power Usage
The Intel Atom to soon be the smartphone processor of choice?
The fastest growing segment in processors right now is in the smartphone space, and this segment is dominated by ARM at the present moment. Intel, never to leave the CPU space up for grabs, is gunning for ARM using its Atom-based technologies.
Intel CTO Justin Rattner told Reuters that the chip giant will make a chip that will be more miserly on power than what ARM can offer right now.
"With (our) Moorestown processor we equal them on standby power, in the next generation Medfield we will equal them on active power," Rattner told Reuters in an interview.
Not only that, but Intel said that it has tricks up its sleeve that will give it the upper hand.
"I expect us to just pull away after that because we have a fundamental technology advantage, which they don't have," he said.
Rattner didn’t seem to share what the advantage might be, but we are guessing that it might have something to do with the company's massive R&D budget.
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Damn.. intel's back to destroy the competition. oh well somebody's gotta do it..
Cmon Qualcomm, you've been great thus far!
Tricks like forcing the phoone manfacturers to use only use their chips or loose huge discounts, guess time will tell!
ofc they can reduce size and power. atom cpus are way too powerfull for smartphones. power, size, speed - all can decrease if needed. but the main question is: wheres amd?
Wasn't there an article about nvidia gunning for this market as well?
Can't see ARM being totally wiped. They produce processors for different instructions sets where as Atom runs the x86 instruction set which is supposedly heavier and harder to implement. Also the graph doesn't take into account ARM won't stand still and not improve themselves. I can also assume that the last "trump" will be some sort of fusion with GPU and CPU in one package. With phones playing more games and HD content I guess its only time before bigger dedicated GPU's are needed. One package saves power and to my knowledge ARM doesn't have a GPU solution to integrate into processors
intel intel everywhere
poor man to go nowhere
Better late than never.
Im sure most of their budget goes into R&D, because marketing is definitely not one of their strongest suits. Not that they really need to. They seem to have their fingers in just about everything - like Foxconn.
Android doesn't need x86 instruction set, so Snapdragon and Hummingbird should go multicore with advanced power saving and they will compete with success against Intel.Increasing multitasking capabilities and complementing with something like ION platform will be a winning combination in the growing tablet-PC market.
Intel vs Rest of the World!
Competition = Lower prices = good
Can't see ARM being totally wiped. They produce processors for different instructions sets where as Atom runs the x86 instruction set which is supposedly heavier and harder to implement. Also the graph doesn't take into account ARM won't stand still and not improve themselves. I can also assume that the last "trump" will be some sort of fusion with GPU and CPU in one package. With phones playing more games and HD content I guess its only time before bigger dedicated GPU's are needed. One package saves power and to my knowledge ARM doesn't have a GPU solution to integrate into processors
ARM is improving also, dual-cores are coming. They have GPU integration, at least the Snarpdragon has it and it's a year old (maybe AMD gpu). And don't forget the radio integration, intel will need that too.
Exciting read.
Well, Intel, bring it on then!
Competition leads to faster development so welcome Intel to the playing field as far as I am concerned.
ARM will react for sure. but they are ahead for the moment, they have the market and the experience. Intel is new for the phone/mobile market in the same sector where ARM is.
So its good for both of them, it will be good to see AMD in this market too!
go competition go !
"With (our) Moorestown processor we equal them on standby power, in the next generation Medfield we will equal them on active power,"
I hope Intel knows ARM's next generation solution or they will be in a uphill battle. Hey Intel, how does it feels being in the other side (e.g AMD).
Lets see what other "tricks up its sleeve" Intel has beside unfair and deceptive business practices.
It could be better for us consumers....the more the merrier
... ARM and upcoming AMD's bobcat is making intel $#it in tha pants...
Let's just hope Intel doesn't completely blow away the competition and get into a mindset like they were before AMD or any other company offered them any competition. We all know they will bleed us dry with no competitors.
I"d be curious to see how this turns out. If Bobcat from amd does well and ARM can keep thier lead or at least if they do lose thier lead keep up and intel keeps up thier race for smartphone/netbook/tablet processors then we all win by nto only the drive for them to improve thier tech to compete but also to compete in price
good news all around
Competition is best for everyone. I just hope it doesn't turn into an Intel bribery fest with manufacturers.
Android doesn't need x86 instruction set, so Snapdragon and Hummingbird should go multicore with advanced power saving and they will compete with success against Intel.
One of the significant advantages about the Android platform is that it relies on Java for most user-installed software. Meaning the platform can embrace both next-generation ARM processors as well as Moorestown/Medfield without any significant app fragmentation.
I hate intel, greedy bastards trying to put everyone out of business.
Force complete platform upgrades on every generation (even sub-generation) of products.
They have assured me that I will never buy any of their products ever again.
This is another reason why I think smoothstone (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-arm-cpu-smooth-stone,11172.html) is going to have a hard time.
Isn't the x86 instruction set already depricated in favor of the new SSE standards?
Intel will have to make something that can run the ARM instruction set (sort of the industry standard for low power devices....)
And yes, the snapdragon uses an AMD graphics core....something else Intel fails to stay competitive in is graphics cores....
If this will bring down prices of competitors....let Intel try it out
Got to love competition. Intel's seems confident and I'm confident that they can and will succeed with thier battle with ARM. Or at least I hope so. Im tired of shelling out so much legal tender for these phones, maybe the competition can bring better products at lower costs, like it does in the desktop box world
Intel sold their Xscale/StrongArm tech. They knew they had the Atom coming out. At the time I could not believe they would sell off ARM unit. They sold it to Marvell Technology Group in June 2006.
Interesting to see ARM reply to this. Intel is very confident in wining this competition. ARM is already dominant in the mobile and embedded electronics market such as PDAs, mobile phones, digital media and music players, hand-held game consoles, calculators and computer peripherals such as hard drives and routers. I guess intel is just aiming for the mobile market. Like rcreed stated, "Competition will bring better products at lower cost". which is true.
Wasn't there an article on Toms a while go about the moorestown chips that explained that they will attain the majority of the power savings by switching off parts of the chip when it is not in use? Kind of like segmenting the chip. All ARM needs to do is copy this design feature and they are ahead again.
Competition is good for the consumer, and the advancement of technology in general. However, ARM processors are very inexpensive to make, which Intel has not commented on. Intel will have to negotiate some deals to get these chips into the most frequently bought phones. They will also need to tip-toe to avoid another anti-competitive (AMD/Intel) faux pas.
I have no doubt they have wonderful technology, and they know how to market their products. But with the already widely accepted ARM chips, Intel will have an uphill battle. In any case, the consumers will be the winners.
...and then here comes AMD with Bobcat, rated for 1-10w. If only they'd expand their customer base like Intel has, they could gain a lot of market share.
Back on topic, though, I do honestly expect Intel to come out ontop. ARM just doesn't have the sheer power that Intel is holding right now. I don't expect them to butcher ARM by a wide margin, but maybe I'll be wrong on the whole thing and maybe ARM will pick up the pace.
Just my $0.02.
buy sandybridge get moorestown free