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I think things have changed since clayton christensen wrote his book on disruptive innovation. Intel is very much aware of disruptive innovation, and is really

by ippisl 16y ago

I think things have changed since clayton christensen wrote his book on disruptive innovation. Intel is very much aware of disruptive innovation, and is really trying to compete on the low end, see the celeron processor ,and the efforts intel is putting into lower cost, lower power atom processors .

rbanffy 16y ago
It takes a lot of balls to put a low-margin product to compete with your cash cows. I doubt many Intel execs are willing to sacrifice their short-term bonuses for the survival of the company after they left or retired.
- ippisl 16y ago
  Clayton christensen, in his book , recommended to assign disruptive innovation projects, to seperate business units.I remember that the celeron development was one of the highest achievement of the israel intel branch. so maybe they implmented christensen's advice.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    IIRC, it was the Pentium M that came from the Israel branch. The first Celerons (again, IIRC) were common Pentium IIs without cache in the processor cartridge.
    - ippisl 16y ago
      "What Intel did was set up a separate business unit in Israel down at the low end. They have a product called the Celeron chip which is much cheaper and came in at the low end of the market. " http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~cs671/interview.doc http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~cs671/interview.doc
hga 16y ago
Kudos for the theme of your analysis, but is Intel really serious enough about the Atom? I haven't looked in quite a while, but when I did one of the big problems was that the chipsets they provided were not optimized for low power and consumed more than the processor itself. Have they corrected this, especially for the mobile market? Then there's the question I have WRT to it being a horse race; as I understand it: The Atom is in-order superscalar, 64 bit (all recent versions), faster than anything from ARM and consumes more power. The Cortex A9 is out-of-order, 32 bit, slower than the Atom (don't know how that might play out with ARM 2-4 cores) and of course consumes less power. On a speed/power basis, ARM still wins.
- ippisl 16y ago
  I don't know about the chipset issue, and yes this is an important point. But the biggest move that points to the seriousness of their approach , is moving to selling ATOM cores at TSMC. selling cores is a low margin business, but it makes sense to enable fast time to market , and high integration, which are important for consumer products. That of course that doesn't mean that intel would win, but i think they seriously try.
  - hga 16y ago
    WHOA! OK, absolutely yes, Intel is deadly serious about this market given that they did that. On the other hand it looks like they've got a customer demand problem with this attempt: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/a-tie-up-between-intel-and-tsmc-fizzles/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/a-tie-up-between-in...; the partnership is on "hiatus" as of the end of February but Intel hasn't given up. And on the third hand, much of the commentary I found on the net suggests that Intel has a disruptive technology problem here. Until they have a few notable successes that may be the way to bet, however hard they are trying.
    - ippisl 16y ago
      except for tsmc , intel also works hard on developing it's own SOC: "LG Unveils GW990 Smartphone with Intel's Moorestown Platform " jan2010. so intel has one design win for it's platform. Also they have moorsetown-w which supports windows.i wonder what would a windows capable phone would look like.

by ippisl 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago

It takes a lot of balls to put a low-margin product to compete with your cash cows. I doubt many Intel execs are willing to sacrifice their short-term bonuses for the survival of the company after they left or retired.

ippisl 16y ago
Clayton christensen, in his book , recommended to assign disruptive innovation projects, to seperate business units.I remember that the celeron development was one of the highest achievement of the israel intel branch. so maybe they implmented christensen's advice.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  IIRC, it was the Pentium M that came from the Israel branch. The first Celerons (again, IIRC) were common Pentium IIs without cache in the processor cartridge.
  - ippisl 16y ago
    "What Intel did was set up a separate business unit in Israel down at the low end. They have a product called the Celeron chip which is much cheaper and came in at the low end of the market. " http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~cs671/interview.doc http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~cs671/interview.doc

hga 16y ago

Kudos for the theme of your analysis, but is Intel really serious enough about the Atom? I haven't looked in quite a while, but when I did one of the big problems was that the chipsets they provided were not optimized for low power and consumed more than the processor itself. Have they corrected this, especially for the mobile market? Then there's the question I have WRT to it being a horse race; as I understand it: The Atom is in-order superscalar, 64 bit (all recent versions), faster than anything from ARM and consumes more power. The Cortex A9 is out-of-order, 32 bit, slower than the Atom (don't know how that might play out with ARM 2-4 cores) and of course consumes less power. On a speed/power basis, ARM still wins.

ippisl 16y ago
I don't know about the chipset issue, and yes this is an important point. But the biggest move that points to the seriousness of their approach , is moving to selling ATOM cores at TSMC. selling cores is a low margin business, but it makes sense to enable fast time to market , and high integration, which are important for consumer products. That of course that doesn't mean that intel would win, but i think they seriously try.
- hga 16y ago
  WHOA! OK, absolutely yes, Intel is deadly serious about this market given that they did that. On the other hand it looks like they've got a customer demand problem with this attempt: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/a-tie-up-between-intel-and-tsmc-fizzles/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/a-tie-up-between-in...; the partnership is on "hiatus" as of the end of February but Intel hasn't given up. And on the third hand, much of the commentary I found on the net suggests that Intel has a disruptive technology problem here. Until they have a few notable successes that may be the way to bet, however hard they are trying.
  - ippisl 16y ago
    except for tsmc , intel also works hard on developing it's own SOC: "LG Unveils GW990 Smartphone with Intel's Moorestown Platform " jan2010. so intel has one design win for it's platform. Also they have moorsetown-w which supports windows.i wonder what would a windows capable phone would look like.