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TL;DR: Intel turned down the opportunity to make the iPhone's chip and gain a foothold in the mobile market. A more direct source, from Intel's own CEO (at the

• wmf 11y ago
  Anything in Intel that's not x86 gets killed by internal politics. Somehow Intel didn't understand that when they bought it.
  • alanh 11y ago
    Eh, don’t forget the external forces. Remember Itanium vs AMD’s x86_64?
    • dogma1138 11y ago
      Itanium died because it was a very niche architecture Intel was working on their desktop/common server x64 line when AMD came out with Athlon64 which more or less won because it's desktop performance over the Pentium 4. Itanium was a RISC-y endeavour by Intel and it had it's problems but you can't really say it died because of x86_64.
      • skylan_q 11y ago
        Itanium was a RISC-y endeavour by Intel and it had it's problems but you can't really say it died because of x86_64. Microsoft adopted it and dropped IA-64 like a hot potato. Intel dropped Yamhill and other projects that attempted to bring IA-64 to the desktop as soon as they realized MS wanted x86-64. Performance didn't factor in because AMD would have never had the chance to provide the world all the CPUs it wanted (supply constraints)
        • dogma1138 11y ago
          I think you are mixing a few things here Yamhill was supposed to be a x86_64 CPU (under license from AMD) it was dropped in favor of promoting Intels own IA64 instead. http://www.geek.com/chips/intels-otellini-says-no-to-yamhill-549157/ http://www.geek.com/chips/intels-otellini-says-no-to-yamhill... Microsoft dropped support for IA64 only a few years ago with Windows Server 2008 R2 being the last OS that supported it due to the limited market share. This was quite long after Intel has killed IA64 internally on it's own.
      • cdf 11y ago
        Itanium was a trojan horse to get their rivals to give up on MIPS/Alpha/UltraSparc development. As soon as those CPUs lost all traction, Intel dumped Itanium as well. Intel was never serious about the Itanium. Considering how performance sensitive it ought to be, Intel chose to build Itaniums on older manufacturing processes. The fact that Itanium performance was hopeless should not have been a surprise.
        • cperciva 11y ago
          Intel chose to build Itaniums on older manufacturing processes They didn't have any choice. Itaniums were big, and their defect rate on newer processes was too high to get any yield on chips that size.
      • hhw 11y ago
        Itanium was EPIC, pretty much the opposite of RISC. Intel bet on compilers being good enough to tell the CPU which branches it could execute in parallel, and lost that bet.
  • nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Perfect example with their best replacement for x86: the i960. It was one of most impressive compromises I've seen from the time period in terms of speed, reliability, and security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960 Some variants are still in production mostly for legacy purposes but not the one (MC) I wanted. Too bad. http://www.intel.com/design/i960/index.htm http://www.intel.com/design/i960/index.htm
    • pjmlp 11y ago
      Why have you posted that link?!? Now I will have to research about BiiN and Intel iAPX 432. :)
      • twoodfin 11y ago
        Start with the classic! Performance Effects of Architectural Complexity in the Intel 432 https://www.princeton.edu/~rblee/ELE572Papers/Fall04Readings/I432.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~rblee/ELE572Papers/Fall04Readings...
        • pjmlp 11y ago
          Thanks!
        • nickpsecurity 11y ago
          Yep, yep, the other important one. Of course, one could read this along with the i960 and System/38 papers to see if any good ideas pop up.
      • nickpsecurity 11y ago
        I posted it a bunch. I usually post it, Burroughs B5000, and capability-systems (includes AS/400 predecessor) links [1] together. Intel's i432 was an amazing attempt to clean-slate the machine of future. Safe, manageable, and consistent from the ground up. Just overdid it in terms of hardware requirements and certain components should've been firmware for easier improvements. The i960/BiiN system improved on that by greatly reducing complexity of the hardware. It was a fast RISC system, had all kinds of error detection, supported HA configuration, and had 432's object-descriptor protections. Object- and page-oriented system. I expect our computer security and reliability situation on Wintel might have turned out differently given what highly-secure systems did with x86's shitty segment/paging/ring combo and HA with lock-step. Note: A Slashdot article on legacy systems once knocked the F-35 for using old i960 CPU's. Thought that was stupid idea. I think designer was probably thinking too many steps ahead with the market ruining it for him/her. [1] http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/levy/capabook/index.html http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/levy/capabook/index.html [2] http://craigchamberlain.com/library/blackhat-2007/Moyer/Extras/Piromposa_Embody-Defeating_Buffer_Oveflow_Prevention_Hardwar.pdf http://craigchamberlain.com/library/blackhat-2007/Moyer/Extr...
  • Gibbon1 11y ago
    My take is Intel doesn't really understand markets where they need to fight for market share. They invest in something, it doesn't become a large profit business in a few years so they kill it. Customers see this and passively/actively avoid Intel products when possible. Passive avoidance: Customer doesn't even think to consider what products Intel is offering. Active avoidance: Tries not to spec Intel products when possible. The internal politics part comes from this scenario. Say someone makes a good proposal, spend $20 million. In return a get product line worth 100 million yr gross and $40 million net. Manager thinks, $100 million a year isn't going to get me a VP position at a $50 billion dollar company.
    • erichocean 11y ago
      > Say someone makes a good proposal, spend $20 million. In return a get product line worth 100 million yr gross and $40 million net. Manager thinks, $100 million a year isn't going to get me a VP position at a $50 billion dollar company. You could also be describing execs at Apple.
      • Gibbon1 11y ago
        Friend of mine worked at Apple in the period between Jobs 1.0 and Jobs 2.0. He described an environment of management 'wolf packs' slowly destroying everything. Stuff like this, guy gets promoted as a manger of a group. Proceeds to force out current employees and replace them with his associates. Then abuse the review process to boost one of those to a higher position in the company. Playing the game right they all move up in 18 to 24 months. All fun and good except the groups they pass through are trashed in the process.
• dogma1138 11y ago
  They don't need Atom, as far as mobile devices go they are bringing Core to ARM's power envelope. You can get Core M CPU's today with 3W power envelope with considerable performance lead over most ARM SOC's. Intel has made a bet that it would take just as much time for ARM to reach x86 level of performance as it would take Intel to bring x86 power consumption down to SOC levels. Now Intel can play on both sides with their low power x86 parts, Xeon-D with upto 16 cores and Core-M in 2c/4t configuration.
  • rasz_pl 11y ago
    That core M will be $1xx compared to $1x-2x for ARM chips.
    • dogma1138 11y ago
      That's economy of scale I don't see a reason for it to be more expensive the Apple A8x had a higher transistor count than an 8 core Core i7 Haswell-E CPU. Also I'm pretty sure that high end SOC's that end up in iPhones, Galaxy S's and the like cost more like the Core-M than the 20$ or so you would pay for a MediaTek SOC.
      • rasz_pl 11y ago
        mediatek socs are actually $4(this is a price from 2014, when Intel had to match that $4 price while subsidizing Atoms), and that includes pmic. $20 is a price for a hieng quad core chips.
      • bravo22 11y ago
        I've design with Intel Atoms and ARM chips. Atoms are very bloated and require a lot of external support to get up and running. Intel's firmware/boot support is atrocious. They still have PC OEM's in mind. ARM chips on the other hand are much easier/cheaper to design for. The SoC is better integrated and targeted towards a low overall BOM cost. Core M is worse than Atom.
      • mtgx 11y ago
        Not true at all. If Intel could do that: 1) they wouldn't have replaced its Core-based Celerons and Pentiums with Atoms to increase profits - and they sell those for $110-$160 2) they wouldn't have licensed Atom IP to Rockchip and other low-end chip makers, essentially pursuing an ARM-like IP-revenue model (for which they would've made peanuts and didn't pan out anyway).
• skylan_q 11y ago
  But the thing I don't understand is why Intel gave up on XScale, their ARM-compatible effort This isn't the first time Intel sold off a slice of itself. I remember AMD doing this many, many times. For over 40 years, the form factor didn't matter. All that mattered was having the fastest and most performant CPU in the entire world. There was a real demand to crunch numbers and move bits since the 70's, so that's the world Intel, AMD, and everyone else knew. To sell off a division that sold low-power chips for tiny margins in an industry that never, ever, ever explodes (until it did) was just plain normal. He would have gotten pressure and funny looks from the industry and shareholders if he didn't sell it off.
  • petecox 11y ago
    Well by the same token AMD is entering the ARM chip business. 7 years ago they sold their Imageon GPU to Qualcomm, which is now going gangbusters inside every Snapdragon-based phone.
    • kogepathic 11y ago
      Adreno is an anagram of Radeon.
• rasz_pl 11y ago
  Atom is doing 'great'. Intel spend over $7 billion(1) subsidizing Atom in hopes chinese vendors would use it, they rarely did. Finally in 2015, partially driven by fear of prosecution for price dumping against native Chinese silicon manufacturers, they entered into a 'cooperation'(2) with gov run semiconductor giants, and by cooperation I mean Intel gave them 1.5B, free Atom license and committed to spend $5.5B on flash fabs in the mainland. Intel also also promised to shareholders they would stop subsidizing Atoms ... which didnt last that long (3). 1 http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/07/after-intel-spent-billions-to-subsidize-40m-android-atom-tablets-microsoft-releases-office-only-for-arm http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/07/after-intel-spent-... 2 http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-doubles-down-on-mobile-with-1-5-billion-china-investment/ http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-doubles-down-on-mobile-with-1... 3 http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-to-chinese-electronics-company-xiaomi-lets-make-a-deal/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-to-chinese-elec... Latest Atoms are almost usable, and you can get passable quad core 4GB ram/64GB flash tablet for $160 (Chuwi Hi10).
• chm 11y ago
  This is meta, but you can make the quoted text more readable if you add a newline after some X number of words, like this: Otellini said Intel passed on the opportunity to supply Apple because the economics did not make sense at the time given the forecast product cost and expected volume. He told The Atlantic, "The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do... At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. "It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought."
  • rpgmaker 11y ago
    Oh, so that's how it's done? I always thought there was a formatting rule I was missing. Thanks.
    • chm 11y ago
      It could be done automatically as it is indeed confusing. Each new line still needs 4 spaces though... I think!
  • pohl 11y ago
    One downside of this is that it becomes very unreadable on small devices (the user has to horizontally scroll back and forth to read each line, ugh) Representing quoted text in italics does not suffer that downside.
    • chm 11y ago
      Oh, I never noticed this as I use an app to read HN (forgot the name).
• fulafel 11y ago
  > why Intel gave up on XScale The gist of the Digital Semiconductor acquisition was that DEC had kicked Intel's ass in circuit design but turned out to have insufficient volume to be profitable, so Intel and DEC agreed to move DEC onto the upcoming Itanium and DEC could get rid of their bleeding edge but money losing semi business. Alphas and XScales were both remarkable feats - on high performance and low power end, respectively. DEC agreed to kill Alpha and move to Intel's Itanium - but Intel had no existing ARM style product at the time.
  • coredog64 11y ago
    Intel was essentially forced into buying XScale from Digital via a legal settlement. DEC sued Intel for uncompetitive behavior (and looked likely to win). I don't think Intel really wanted ARM and so made half-hearted attempts at selling it.
  • slededit 11y ago
    The Alpha's extremely weak memory order gurantees would have doomed it in the multicore market. Its hard enough to get multi threaded code correct on X86.
• ghaff 11y ago
  I was an industry analyst at the time and I think the short answer is that Intel made the decision to pursue an x86-everywhere strategy. They thought 1.) That it would benefit them if there was a the same x86 architecture from server to mobile and 2.) They thought Atom would meet mobile requirements. (1) was doubtless true. But (2) didn't pan out. One can find slides from IDFs etc. at the time with Intel trying to buttress its x86-everywhere arguments by showing that Flash ran more consistently on small devices when they were x86-based. In retrospect, Atom was mostly wish fulfillment. I can't say whether this was an execution issue or whether the strategy was intrinsically doomed to fail.
• kjs3 11y ago
  I believe the easy answer is that they thought they could adapt x86 to all markets, and that became the strategy. More complicated is that Intel came into the mid-90s with several "next generation" architectures, some that weren't solely developed at Intel. XScale came from Digital and had IP from ARM. i960 was a joint venture with Siemens. And they still had the i860 which by this point it was clear was never going to meet expectations in the market. So when the x86 folks said "Intel should put all it's wood behind our arrow", politically they were fighting groups that were weakened by NIH or who'd already for all practical purposes failed. Probably didn't hurt that Pentium was doing quite good and P6 was looking good on the horizon.