UK to Get Intel-powered Motorola Droid M

Interesting. Tom's, please do benchmark it. It'll be the first ICS + Medfield phone.

I wonder if that means the Xolo X900 and the Orange San Diego will get ICS around that time too?

The CPU wars between ARM and Intel are about to get intense. I find it odd that just UK gets this phone, and they don't get the normal version. It would be much more exciting to see them go directly at each other.

otacon72More competition is always a good thing. Unfortunate we have less now in the US since AMD can't keep up with intel.
I totally agree. Have an old AMD 64 processor that rocked when it came out...and now AMD really doesn't have anything that can compete with Intel at almost all price points (namely quad-core i5's).

I'm really looking forward to see Intel duke it out with ARM, that should translate into better phones/tablets for all of us.

fudoka711I totally agree. Have an old AMD 64 processor that rocked when it came out...and now AMD really doesn't have anything that can compete with Intel at almost all price points (namely quad-core i5's).I'm really looking forward to see Intel duke it out with ARM, that should translate into better phones/tablets for all of us.
AMDs competitiveness depends entirely on what you do and if you're willing to do more than stock performance. Even at stock, Intel can't touch AMD in highly threaded performance per dollar at any price point where AMD is at. With overclocking, AMD can also beat Intel easily in the sub i5 market. For the more adventurous who are willing to also overclock the CPU/NB frequency (controls L3 cache frequency, Intel doesn't let you change this with their CPUs and AMD leaves theirs at a mere 2.2GHz) and use PS Check or a less advanced core disabling technique or even mere thread affinity changes, AMD's FX-61xx and FX-81xx can give even the i5s a run for the money in lightly threaded (IE gaming and most other workloads) performance.

The FX-81xx CPUs can compete with the K Edition i5s even when both i5s and the FX CPUs are overclocked to the maximum safe frequencies when the FX's are given the extra work of overclocking the L3 cache and optimizing core configuration. The AMD CPUs are far more power efficient when used this way, but still in turn for being cheaper than the similarly performing Intel solution, they'd probably still use more power, especially when the Ivy Bridge i5s and i7s are considered instead of just the Sandy Bridge models. If Haswell lives up to the hype and brings back the flux-less solder instead of the crappy paste, then Haswell should have no trouble fending off Piledriver even when all of the tricks are pulled out on it.

Doing something like that with your CPUs isn't even mainstream for enthusiasts and I acknowledge that fact, however, that doesn't stop this from working for those who do it.

More on topic:

AMD is also supposedly making a very low power consumption version of Piledriver. Whether or not it will be used in phones and/or tablets rather than just netbooks and very low-end notebooks and desktops, I don't know, but it might end up being a player in the phone/tablet market too. Given that AMD has made their stance against joining those markets earlier, I doubt it, but who knows?

Regardless of what AMD does, I'm really interested in how Intel does. I have no doubt that they'll give ARM some very serious competition. Intel is not one to be underestimated and disregarded. Intel has proven that they can do their job under pressure quite well when necessary and when not pressured, they still do great. I like what I've seen so far with Medfield and if these phones have a dual-core Medfield CPU or a single-core with a new architecture and a die-shrink to 22nm (it's not like Ivy Bridge is selling overly well anyway), then they should have no trouble keeping up with the best that ARM has available at this time.