Intel CEO Takes Shot at Apple's A7
Intel’s new CEO Brian Krzanich stood behind his company’s products yesterday when fielding questions from analysts.
Mobile is proving to be pretty big business and with Apple’s latest chip, the A7 already deployed in the latest round of iDevices, Intel will be facing some stiff competition in that space. Even so, Intel’s new CEO Brian Krzanich, stood behind his company’s products yesterday when fielding questions from analysts.
“If you take a look at things like transistor density and you compare, pardon the pun, apples-to-apples and you compare, say, the A7 to our Bay Trail, which is a high density 22 nanometer technology, then our transistor density is higher or more dense than the A7 is.” Krazinich said. ”It's a good product...but we do see the Moore's Law advantage from 28 to 22 nanometer as an example, when you compare dense technologies to dense technologies.”
That may be, but Apple’s A7 chip is the first 64-bit processor in a consumer smart phone, and that’s also an ecosystem where, despite some market share losses to Android, the Cupertino-based tech giant has had little trouble competing. By producing their own silicon instead of buying from one of the other fabs, Apple's been able to tailor their hardware and their software and cut out more than a few middlemen.
While it's unlikely that the latest line of Intel Atom chips or their low-power Haswell processors will be convincing Apple to convert from producer to consumer anytime soon, the fight is still on for general market share for tablets and Ultrabooks.
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They didnt rip anyone off. They leased the design from ARM. Thats how ARM works, they design a whole range of cpu blocks, and then lease out the design to anyone who wants it.
Thats why ARM chips are in everything, well everything that doesn't require a beefy cpu. From washing machines to phones.
Some? Android controls 80% of the smartphone market. MS only has about 10% more of the desktop market and they've been widely dubbed a monopoly for over a decade.
"Apple's been able to tailor their hardware and their software and cut out more than a few middlemen"
Yikes, usually one of the biggest advantages of cutting out the middleman is being able to avoid giving said middleman a cut of your profits. I guess they evidently aren't using this cutting-out-the-middleman to end up charging the user less. Then again, Samsung is in the same boat on this...
As per the article's content, is this a shock? One way or another, Apple is competing. This guy isn't even being all that derogatory, just pointing out some technological advantages his company has over Apple's.
I thought Samsung was making the A7 chips?
They didnt rip anyone off. They leased the design from ARM. Thats how ARM works, they design a whole range of cpu blocks, and then lease out the design to anyone who wants it.
Thats why ARM chips are in everything, well everything that doesn't require a beefy cpu. From washing machines to phones.
It's only a matter of time before they ditch Intel for the MacIntosh, and use their own designs as well. It makes no sense to have different instruction sets on the computers, as it adds more development time, and increases software costs.
On top of that, Intel charges a pretty penny. With the volumes Apple ships, and the fact they already have to design processors for iOS, the Mac will be heading in that direction as quickly as they can move ARM upstream.
To the guy with the percents, you are the greatest of greatest morons dude. Windows has monopoly with only 10% market share? Are you serious here ? You should stop making an idiot if yourself. MOST desktop PCs are in fact running Windows OS ranging from XP to 8.1 ....
And, first of all Android is not at 80% market share, its on 60 but i see what you did there. Also the market share of android means absolutely nothing. The market share is not so high because people like android, it's because android is put on every 50$ "smartphone", there are not much options at this class. There are not as much high-end android devices. They are getting stomped by the iPhone and the iPad....get your shit straight before making ridicilous comments
The only android manufacturer that is doing good is Samsung and that is only because they have models in every price range
Butthurt much fandroids?
And honestly, if anyone can comment on a competitor's CPU design or implementation, it's Intel...they've earned the right to.
That said, we'll have to wait for Merrifield to see how Silvermont compares against Cyclone.
@stevejnb: not sure why you're comparing the smartphone market to the desktop market. And no, I don't think Android's numbers are that high globally, at least from what i remember last. I could check, like Lachezar Tsochev has apparently, but i'm too lazy.
The A7 is a good product. And Apple has done some great stuff here. This is good for everyone, as it will make everyone pick up their game. I'd think even the 'Haters' would cheer the A7 on, is it will make their own favorites push harder.
In the x86 market Intel were always able to dictate by virtue of having the money and better tech, AMD were never really able to sustain a period of advantage as ultimately even when ahead Intel were making more money. Perhaps it was AMD setting high prices that Intel now charge that ultimately did send AMD down. In the mobile market Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple and ARM etc will not allow Intel to enter and dictate, the current mobile technologies are better implemented than what Intel has to offer.
not to veer off the topic but that is an interesting thought on Apple using their own ARM chips for their entire line (at least that's what I assume you meant)....
Since Apple did set the stage in introducing 64bit ARM chips into the wild... maybe the next iteration could bring some direct competition to Intel's PC products
(caveat.... am NOT an apple fanboi......never was.... but seriously do think that ARM's 64bit processors are gonna shake things up for both Intel and AMD .... p.s. yeah I'm an AMD fanboi though... )
I don't think Apple will ever consider buying OEM chips and molding their device around them. I'm not a fan of Apple by any means, but there's a reason why their user experience indices are so high, and why they can net so much speed with a processing platform that is slower in clockspeed and only a dual core relative to most other ARM processing platforms in mobile devices. Because they integrate their entire product internally, and do the processor design in-house in order to best implement it.