ARM: We Are More Appropriate for Android Than Intel
ARM just reported a solid earnings result with licensing revenue of about $192.3 million for Q3.
During the call, CEO Warren East responded to some concerns that Intel is now entering ARM's processor market within the Android ecosystem much more aggressively.
While he recognized that Intel is pouring huge resources into making its Atom chips work on Android, he told analysts that ARM's product architecture is "more appropriate" for Android systems and will continue to be "more appropriate" than Intel's products. One of the major advantages East sees for ARM are Mali (acceleration) cores, which are beginning to ship into the market now. "We are expecting tens of millions of Mali products shipping in 2011, driving the maturity of that ecosystem."
ARM reported 1.9 billion ARM processors shipped in the third quarter of 2011. 1 billion of those chips were shipped into mobile phones and mobile computers, the company said. Cortex A processor shipments were up 300 percent year-over-year. East also disclosed that dual-core Cortex-A9 chips can now be found in 14 percent of smartphones that shipped in Q2.
On concerns that Intel is moving to 22 nm processors, and that the company is heavily relying on its manufacturing process as competitive advantage, East responded that ARM processors at 28 nm will be "happening really very, very soon." However, 28 nm processor won't account for a substantial margin of the market for 18 to 24 months he noted. 20 nm products are "a couple of years out as well", East told analysts. He did not seem to be especially worried about Intel's 22 nm processors.
Indeed, look at what happened when AMD got off with the best processor (athlon)... took intel a while but then came core and now sandy bridge and those designs are indeed powerful (Maybe even too powerful, i predict the sales of the next gen will have a harder time since few pieces of software pushes the SB to the limit today)
I seem to remember an event very similar to this in 2006. Things did not end very well for a certain processor manufacturer.
If ARM is smart, they will keep out a sharp eye.
Intel is king of x86, a proprietary Intel CPU architecture. AMD is the queen of x86, and VIA is the court jester of x86. Everything else other than x86 is dominated by... somebody else.
Last read, Intel is working on a new architecture for Atom.....hardly a simple "revamp"....more along the lines of Prescott(utter garbage) to Conroe....
1) ARM licenses out there architecture, and these companies have a lot of variation on the original design.
2) ARM has penetrated the entire smartphone and tablet market, at least to an extent that most will consider coding for ARM far more quickly then Intel when considering mobile apps.
3)Integration- there are more antennas and extras attached to ARM and its variants then there are in Intel's design, meaning less chips to draw power.
I do not doubt that Intel will have a interesting product, but I think it will be just a start, Monopoly tricks wont work here, everything Intel bundled up to drive out competition before happens to be very close to what there ARM rivals are integrating directly into there hardware now. In this way we can say that Intel is being hit by its own trick, the only difference is the impact effects the power draw, not the dollar cost... then again ARM chips are dirt cheap
Likewise, AMD has known all along what Intel is capable of but you will never hear them admit defeat. They will always divert attention to where their strengths are (GPUs, Fusion/APU, etc.).
Don't get what I am saying confused though, I am not saying Intel will take over ARM's low power mobile market share. Only Intel knows how well their future chips perform. What I am saying though is that ARM will never admit to the public that they are worried about Intel.
this could very well turn into tablet/smartphone version of intel vs amd- this time with arm vs intel vs amd(joining much much later with both arm and x86 chips). this is good news for users - possible price drop, competition(finally) in the android ecosystem, so on.
there is another chance that apple might choose to use intel chips in their future phones in case intel's chips are successful, and sell even more overpriced iphones.
however all these depend on intel's success in designing smartphone cpus with superior grapice and power saving capabilities(current intel gfx sucks imo) not on intel's superior production capabilities.
Naturally ARM isn't terribly worried about Intel's production process technology either as ARM doesn't actually produce any chips or need to invest in fabs. They design chips, and it's partners, all industry giants that dwarf Intel, are those that bear the burden of those investments. And as long as they can see a potential profit in the market they will continue investing in it.
you have to remember, this is an x86 processor coming into a land scape where nothing is x86 compatible.
regardless of phone, damn near everything is arm compatible, from iphone to android, and its likely only windows will be x86, and only really in the tablet devices, because its x86 compatible it will run real programs, but it has no phone apps, so i cant see it doing well there, and probably be irrelevant for another 4-6 years. BUT at the same time, we are seeing arm getting powerful to the point where servers are looking into them as an alternative, for being cheap and power friendly.
unless a x86 phone comes out with unprecedented support (it wont) than arm has noting to worry about, because it will canablize desktop, laptop, and server cpu sales soon.
and even than, a better x86 processor for tablets, and phones, would be amds apus, graphics that intel wishes they could have, and more than enough power to get other things done, maybe not as fast as intel, but we are talking about seconds shaved off, not minutes.
crush... no, that implies that intel didn't play dirty.
intel made a bad cpu line, and amd had a great one
intel made venders chose them over amd, by making their processors cheaper if you didn't use amd.
and even today, intel has the better cpus, but not by much, we are literally talking about 10% in most cases, up to 50% when threading is done 100% right (rare) and in many cases, a phenom II can beet a similarly priced sb, or at least match it close enough that there is no difference.
correct, but i honestly think that was more due to intel wanting an integrated solution apposed to separate card, am i correct there or not? because if intel wanted a separate card, its hard to see they couldn't come up with something, given they have great minds working there.