6 ms·

Can ARM Kill Intel?

48 points by ssp 16y ago

Nelson69 16y ago
I don't see how intel is even a target. PowerPC owns gaming. There are still tons of MIPS chips in networking applications as well as some other verticals. ARM owns phones, largely because every phone has a custom chip in it. It's not clear if it will grow beyond that. Why not suggest ARM will defeat PowerPC or MIPS? That sort of seems plausible, Intel is so insanely good at what they do and they backed out of ARM a few years ago. I can't imagine they did that without understanding how they'd compete.
- epynonymous 16y ago
  i think you're talking about console gaming perhaps, xbox and wii use powerpc variants, but ps3 uses the cell processor and nds uses an arm processor. in terms of mobile gaming, powerpc is nowhere to be found, this is owned by arm. in terms of pc gaming, intel and their we're-not-totally-a-monopoly division, amd, own that realm. though arm is starting to make inroads into low powered servers so it'd be interesting to see where this goes in the long run.
  - krakensden 16y ago
    Cell is a PowerPC variant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)
lovamova 16y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple will make Mac OS 11 run on ARM only.
- roc 16y ago
  I would -- that would be a terrible idea. "Merging" the desktop and mobile-touch universes is a fool's errand. They shouldn't be unified for the very same, very good reasons that the iPhone was served by a fork in the first place. Frankly: you're looking for a fundamentally different experience at the desk top than you are on a mobile. And ARM is a bad choice for the types of tasks that people are still buying traditional PCs and Macs to do.
  - runjake 16y ago
    It may be a fool's errand but that's the way Apple is going. And I do not see them having any lack of market success with their approach. I don't think it's really a matter of desktops becoming like mobile devices. I think it's "desktops as we know them will be going away (except in specific use cases)". My wife's Macbook has seen better days. When it finally dies, we're going to replace it with an iPad, a bluetooth or docked keyboard and a camera connection kit. It does everything she needs. I imagine this will be the same when my kids get old enough. And why is ARM a bad choice? Have you heard about performance complaints from iPad users? Have you seen Rage HD on iOS yet?
    - roc 16y ago
      > "I think it's "desktops as we know them will be going away (except in specific use cases)"." I tend to agree with that. But that's a wholly-different argument than suggesting Apple would make their desktop OS ARM-only. OS X is Apple's solution for those use cases where desktops do and will persist for the next decade, at least. As such, making it ARM-only would require the use of currently-inferior chips, chipsets and tools. It would murder Apple's steadily-growing share of the very market OS X exists to serve. iOS is already serving their mobile devices, and doing it very well. It stands to gain very little from a hypothetical OS-merge and stands to lose quite a lot by becoming more PC-like. (simplicity, stability, performance, etc)
      - runjake 16y ago
        "Mac OS 11" (sic) is a marketing term. It doesn't necessarily have to imply anything relating to the existing product. I'm not trying to be pedantic, just trying to illustrate that I see Apple going strongly towards the iOS route as their main computing platform and I think the facts illustrate the genesis of that. It may be true that the current ARM offerings are inferior in terms of benchmarks, but as far as general computing use they're probably overpowered. I don't really need an i7, a Core 2 Duo is fine. Nearly everything seems generally overpowered these days.
      - te_chris 16y ago
- lyime 16y ago
  Try running Photoshop CS5, Starcraft 2, AutoCad on ARM. I am not saying it's not going to happen. ARM is focusing on the embedded market. They are not going to be able to compete with the likes of a Quad Core Nehalem or Sandy Bridge.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    ARM processors have, so far, been targeted to mobile, low-power applications for a very long time. When it was launched, powering a desktop computer (the Acorn Archimedes), its speed was comparable to then current 386s with FPUs. There is nothing that prevents building an ARM processor that performs as well as a current x86. In fact, due to its simpler implementation logic, an ARM implemented with the same technology as a x86 would probably run faster or leave more silicon for caches, inter-core communication, more cores and specialized logic.
- mooism2 16y ago
  Not while anyone wants to run Windows in a VM, they won't.
  - jawee 16y ago
    If that were the sole issue, I can't imagine getting a hardware virtualization solution like QEMU up to par would require too much work.
  - nextparadigms 16y ago
    You can bet Microsoft will make Windows 8 ARM compatible. They don't want to lose the tablet market and since Intel is having such a hard time getting into that market, they can't simply rely on them. And if you're going to suggest WP7 for tablets, don't. Microsoft will only do that in worst case scenario if Windows 8 will prove to not be good enough for tablets. They don't want to get $10 per license when they could get $50, and that's especially true if touch/mobile computing will replace desktop computing.
    - wtallis 16y ago
      The way Microsoft has handled the mobile market for the past 15 years, it seems likely that they'll go through at least two or three more mobile operating systems before the market can decide whether x86 belongs in handheld devices.
- cosmicray 16y ago
  When you talk about Apple, and you talk about ARM, remember that Apple bought two companies: PA Semi and Intrinsity (to get chip design talent). The PA Semi acquisition came with IP for a POWER chip, the PA6T. Thus far Apple has announced nothing using that chip (and possibly never will). Apple certainly has the ability to make OS X run on POWER, but doing that might people fall over from dizziness.
  - gonzo 16y ago
    Daniel W. Dobberpuhl (the founder of PA Semi) was also the architect for StrongARM (when he was at Digital). Intel only got involved because DEC sued Intel for patent infringement (over the Pentium processor), and lost. Intel grabbed a lot of DEC's technology in the settlement, including StrongARM (which became XScale).
vimes656 16y ago
In the last 2 years we have seen many ARM netbooks prototypes showing better battery performance and cheaper price than Intel netbooks. But I still can't buy an ARM netbook. Where are they? What is holding them back?
- msbarnett 16y ago
  Lack of an operating system with mass-market appeal in the netbook space, as far as I can tell.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    I assume the Windows OEM prices have been tuned so that it's more expensive to develop and manufacture ARM-based netbooks that run Linux than it is to stick with x86 for the current generation. Also, the processor is not responsible for a huge part of the power consumed on a netbook. Disk, screen and memory seem to be a big part. If you make a netbook that can run Gnome and Firefox decently, it will have a hard-drive (or SSD) and a couple gigabytes of memory. The LCD is the same.
    - morgo 16y ago
      I think it is very workload dependent how big of a power consumer the hard-drive is. When I only do word processing or browsing simple web pages, I never have to read data (everything is cached). Laptop-mode also delays writing data back.
    - dfghjkhgbfd 16y ago
      If you sell an ARM powered netbook that means no windows. So you can wave goodbye to being able to use OEM copies of windows on any other products that you make. So anyone like Asus or Acer that have a PC business and launch a non-windows netbook soon learn the error of their ways.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        They can sell one line of Windows-proof highly capable, futuristic computers while keeping and developing their legacy-ish, kludgy, virus-infested, Windows-bundled, 8080-descendant-based inefficient lines. Of course, Microsoft will probably find a way to increase their OEM pricing, specially if the Windows-proof line ends up making a dent on the Windows-bundled lines. And they don't even need to increase, say, Asus's licensing prices. All they have to do is to lower Acer's.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics. Intel has so much FAB capacity that they can't easily be killed even by superior competing products.
- grogers 16y ago
  They also usually have the smallest process technology of the time. If necessary, Intel could fab ARM chips and dominate the ARM market from the inside.
  - mjschultz 16y ago
    Precisely what I was thinking. Does anyone know if there is a reason Intel hasn't just acquired ARM? I assume Intel believes that they might still be able to compete and win in the market, but that seems to be less true every day. (I assume the answer is that it would raise a bunch of anti-trust flags everywhere, but I'm not positive about that.)
    - anamax 16y ago
      > Does anyone know if there is a reason Intel hasn't just acquired ARM? Intel had an ARM license and got rid of it, which suggests that Intel doesn't think that ARM is worth the trouble.
      - andrewcooke 16y ago
        Or didn't want conflict of interest / intellectual property issues when developing Atom?
      - gonzo 16y ago
        If Intel got rid of its ARM license, how do they build all these? http://www.intel.com/design/iio/index.htm?iid=ipp_embed+proc_io http://www.intel.com/design/iio/index.htm?iid=ipp_embed+proc... Intel makes several 'families' of ARM (Xscale) based parts: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE. Intel sold the PXA family to Marvell Technology Group in June 2006. The simple fact is that Intel still holds an ARM license even after the sale of the PXA family to Marvell.
crander 16y ago
I prefer to think of this in a Christiansen disruptive technology context. Technologies grow upmarket beyond the needs of its user base and create a disruptive opportunity for downmarket technologies. I recently made a comment about this on an Intel blog article (SC10: Jeff’s Notebook - Innovation and Disruption: How a Successful Company can be gone in 10 Years): http://intel.ly/dZAxKk http://intel.ly/dZAxKk
meastham 16y ago
Has ARM's design licensing model ever been demonstrated in the high end (server/workstation) CPU market? It seems to me that the amount of engineering expertise required to push that sort of high performance, fully custom design through to fabrication would make it difficult.
- andrewcooke 16y ago
  Isn't that how SPARC worked? Of course, you can argue it failed after a while... https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SPARC https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SPARC
adulau 16y ago
ARM is not really friendly with competitors especially those not paying the high license fee. Do you remember the nnARM project at OpenCores? this has been removed on request by ARM limited. If ARM wants to "own the market", they should allow in some ways competitors to build compatible CPUs.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > they should allow in some ways competitors to build compatible CPUs. They allow you, or anyone, to build compatible CPUs. You just have to pay for the privilege.
lyime 16y ago
"People in the mobile phone architecture do not buy microprocessors," says Hauser, "so, if you sell microprocessors you have the wrong model. They license them." Someone is building them. In iPhone's case its Samsung. The phone's Apple-designed A4 processor, which was built by Samsung, costs $10.75 each. Most of that is going to Samsung, part of that goes to ARM. The ASP of ARM 10-20x lower than that of Intel.
- gonzo 16y ago
  Someone seems to have forgotten that ARM means "Advanced RISC Machines, Ltd" and that Acorn, Apple and VLSI were partners in A(dvanced) R(isc) M(achines). Of the three (Acorn, Apple and VLSI), only Apple is really still around. Apple must already have significant equity position in ARM being a founder. VLSI was bought by Philips Semi, which was later spun out as NXT. NXT is a user/licensee of the ARM architecture but not even the biggest one by a long shot. Intel's revenue from ARM (and yes, they still make some Xscale parts) is probably bigger than all of NXT's revenue. Acorn went belly-up as a going concern in 2000 with the remains bought by Morgan Stanley. The ARM "JV" IPOed (as ARM Holdings). In any case, I doubt that Apple pays much, if anything for its ARM license. And I doubt we really know what Apple pays for A4 parts.
davidj 16y ago
Intel builds ARM processors. This article sucks.
- eru 16y ago
  Sources?
  - a-priori 16y ago
    More accurately, they did build ARM chips -- the XScale line. But they sold that division to Marvell in 2006, although they still retain an ARM license. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale
    - gonzo 16y ago
      Even more accurately, they still DO build ARM chips. They only sold the PXA processors to Marvell. Could you maybe read the Wikipedia article next time?
      - a-priori 16y ago
        I appreciate the correction... but there's no need to be nasty.
  - repiret 16y ago
    http://www.intel.com/design/iio/index.htm http://www.intel.com/design/iio/index.htm Although I doubt they'll make them for much longer.
hackermom 16y ago
ARM could probably kill x86 given some time, if that was what the writer implied - and let's just wait a few years and see how things currently brewing will develop before we start shooting off our downvotes, shall we? I am willing to bet that an often-blamed-for-being-fruity computer manufacturer will shortly migrate from x86 to ARM. Just wait. Killing Intel themselves, though, just won't happen. If anyone can dominate the CPU market wielding ARM in their hand (haha!), it's Intel. The rest of the world has a good few years to go before catching up to their level in terms of manufacturing.
epynonymous 16y ago
from the article, "stifled innovation", "monopoly", i wonder how true that is, where would we be if any of this was true, would we have a more awesome chip in our laptops today? i'm pretty excited about gpu's, but they're only good for parallel instruction processing, some tasks still require the usage of a highly spec'd cpu. whatever happened to transmeta?
jaen 16y ago
In the server markets, you look at performance per watt and performance per rack unit and ease of setup - for general purpose computation, Intel still dominates those metrics. (with some exceptions [1]). Being ahead in fab technology, it can take the performance hits due to the legacy x86 architecture. You can replace 1 beefy server with 8 small nodes, but you can not replace the convenience of administering that one server. Also, retargeting performance-sensitive JITs/compilers/maths libraries such as GCC, LLVM, Java, V8, *BLAS is no small feat either - x86 gets support first, because it is the market leader, and also gets tuned the most, since it's the oldest backend. A feedback loop that's hard to break, so don't expect Intel to go out of business any time soon. [1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fawnproj/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fawnproj/

48 points by ssp 16y ago

I don't see how intel is even a target. PowerPC owns gaming. There are still tons of MIPS chips in networking applications as well as some other verticals. ARM owns phones, largely because every phone has a custom chip in it. It's not clear if it will grow beyond that. Why not suggest ARM will defeat PowerPC or MIPS? That sort of seems plausible, Intel is so insanely good at what they do and they backed out of ARM a few years ago. I can't imagine they did that without understanding how they'd compete.

epynonymous 16y ago
i think you're talking about console gaming perhaps, xbox and wii use powerpc variants, but ps3 uses the cell processor and nds uses an arm processor. in terms of mobile gaming, powerpc is nowhere to be found, this is owned by arm. in terms of pc gaming, intel and their we're-not-totally-a-monopoly division, amd, own that realm. though arm is starting to make inroads into low powered servers so it'd be interesting to see where this goes in the long run.
- krakensden 16y ago
  Cell is a PowerPC variant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)

lovamova 16y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple will make Mac OS 11 run on ARM only.

roc 16y ago
I would -- that would be a terrible idea. "Merging" the desktop and mobile-touch universes is a fool's errand. They shouldn't be unified for the very same, very good reasons that the iPhone was served by a fork in the first place. Frankly: you're looking for a fundamentally different experience at the desk top than you are on a mobile. And ARM is a bad choice for the types of tasks that people are still buying traditional PCs and Macs to do.
- runjake 16y ago
  It may be a fool's errand but that's the way Apple is going. And I do not see them having any lack of market success with their approach. I don't think it's really a matter of desktops becoming like mobile devices. I think it's "desktops as we know them will be going away (except in specific use cases)". My wife's Macbook has seen better days. When it finally dies, we're going to replace it with an iPad, a bluetooth or docked keyboard and a camera connection kit. It does everything she needs. I imagine this will be the same when my kids get old enough. And why is ARM a bad choice? Have you heard about performance complaints from iPad users? Have you seen Rage HD on iOS yet?
  - roc 16y ago
    > "I think it's "desktops as we know them will be going away (except in specific use cases)"." I tend to agree with that. But that's a wholly-different argument than suggesting Apple would make their desktop OS ARM-only. OS X is Apple's solution for those use cases where desktops do and will persist for the next decade, at least. As such, making it ARM-only would require the use of currently-inferior chips, chipsets and tools. It would murder Apple's steadily-growing share of the very market OS X exists to serve. iOS is already serving their mobile devices, and doing it very well. It stands to gain very little from a hypothetical OS-merge and stands to lose quite a lot by becoming more PC-like. (simplicity, stability, performance, etc)
    - runjake 16y ago
      "Mac OS 11" (sic) is a marketing term. It doesn't necessarily have to imply anything relating to the existing product. I'm not trying to be pedantic, just trying to illustrate that I see Apple going strongly towards the iOS route as their main computing platform and I think the facts illustrate the genesis of that. It may be true that the current ARM offerings are inferior in terms of benchmarks, but as far as general computing use they're probably overpowered. I don't really need an i7, a Core 2 Duo is fine. Nearly everything seems generally overpowered these days.
    - te_chris 16y ago
lyime 16y ago
Try running Photoshop CS5, Starcraft 2, AutoCad on ARM. I am not saying it's not going to happen. ARM is focusing on the embedded market. They are not going to be able to compete with the likes of a Quad Core Nehalem or Sandy Bridge.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  ARM processors have, so far, been targeted to mobile, low-power applications for a very long time. When it was launched, powering a desktop computer (the Acorn Archimedes), its speed was comparable to then current 386s with FPUs. There is nothing that prevents building an ARM processor that performs as well as a current x86. In fact, due to its simpler implementation logic, an ARM implemented with the same technology as a x86 would probably run faster or leave more silicon for caches, inter-core communication, more cores and specialized logic.
mooism2 16y ago
Not while anyone wants to run Windows in a VM, they won't.
- jawee 16y ago
  If that were the sole issue, I can't imagine getting a hardware virtualization solution like QEMU up to par would require too much work.
- nextparadigms 16y ago
  You can bet Microsoft will make Windows 8 ARM compatible. They don't want to lose the tablet market and since Intel is having such a hard time getting into that market, they can't simply rely on them. And if you're going to suggest WP7 for tablets, don't. Microsoft will only do that in worst case scenario if Windows 8 will prove to not be good enough for tablets. They don't want to get $10 per license when they could get $50, and that's especially true if touch/mobile computing will replace desktop computing.
  - wtallis 16y ago
    The way Microsoft has handled the mobile market for the past 15 years, it seems likely that they'll go through at least two or three more mobile operating systems before the market can decide whether x86 belongs in handheld devices.
cosmicray 16y ago
When you talk about Apple, and you talk about ARM, remember that Apple bought two companies: PA Semi and Intrinsity (to get chip design talent). The PA Semi acquisition came with IP for a POWER chip, the PA6T. Thus far Apple has announced nothing using that chip (and possibly never will). Apple certainly has the ability to make OS X run on POWER, but doing that might people fall over from dizziness.
- gonzo 16y ago
  Daniel W. Dobberpuhl (the founder of PA Semi) was also the architect for StrongARM (when he was at Digital). Intel only got involved because DEC sued Intel for patent infringement (over the Pentium processor), and lost. Intel grabbed a lot of DEC's technology in the settlement, including StrongARM (which became XScale).

vimes656 16y ago

In the last 2 years we have seen many ARM netbooks prototypes showing better battery performance and cheaper price than Intel netbooks. But I still can't buy an ARM netbook. Where are they? What is holding them back?

msbarnett 16y ago
Lack of an operating system with mass-market appeal in the netbook space, as far as I can tell.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  I assume the Windows OEM prices have been tuned so that it's more expensive to develop and manufacture ARM-based netbooks that run Linux than it is to stick with x86 for the current generation. Also, the processor is not responsible for a huge part of the power consumed on a netbook. Disk, screen and memory seem to be a big part. If you make a netbook that can run Gnome and Firefox decently, it will have a hard-drive (or SSD) and a couple gigabytes of memory. The LCD is the same.
  - morgo 16y ago
    I think it is very workload dependent how big of a power consumer the hard-drive is. When I only do word processing or browsing simple web pages, I never have to read data (everything is cached). Laptop-mode also delays writing data back.
  - dfghjkhgbfd 16y ago
    If you sell an ARM powered netbook that means no windows. So you can wave goodbye to being able to use OEM copies of windows on any other products that you make. So anyone like Asus or Acer that have a PC business and launch a non-windows netbook soon learn the error of their ways.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      They can sell one line of Windows-proof highly capable, futuristic computers while keeping and developing their legacy-ish, kludgy, virus-infested, Windows-bundled, 8080-descendant-based inefficient lines. Of course, Microsoft will probably find a way to increase their OEM pricing, specially if the Windows-proof line ends up making a dent on the Windows-bundled lines. And they don't even need to increase, say, Asus's licensing prices. All they have to do is to lower Acer's.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics. Intel has so much FAB capacity that they can't easily be killed even by superior competing products.

grogers 16y ago
They also usually have the smallest process technology of the time. If necessary, Intel could fab ARM chips and dominate the ARM market from the inside.
- mjschultz 16y ago
  Precisely what I was thinking. Does anyone know if there is a reason Intel hasn't just acquired ARM? I assume Intel believes that they might still be able to compete and win in the market, but that seems to be less true every day. (I assume the answer is that it would raise a bunch of anti-trust flags everywhere, but I'm not positive about that.)
  - anamax 16y ago
    > Does anyone know if there is a reason Intel hasn't just acquired ARM? Intel had an ARM license and got rid of it, which suggests that Intel doesn't think that ARM is worth the trouble.
    - andrewcooke 16y ago
      Or didn't want conflict of interest / intellectual property issues when developing Atom?
    - gonzo 16y ago
      If Intel got rid of its ARM license, how do they build all these? http://www.intel.com/design/iio/index.htm?iid=ipp_embed+proc_io http://www.intel.com/design/iio/index.htm?iid=ipp_embed+proc... Intel makes several 'families' of ARM (Xscale) based parts: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE. Intel sold the PXA family to Marvell Technology Group in June 2006. The simple fact is that Intel still holds an ARM license even after the sale of the PXA family to Marvell.

crander 16y ago

I prefer to think of this in a Christiansen disruptive technology context. Technologies grow upmarket beyond the needs of its user base and create a disruptive opportunity for downmarket technologies. I recently made a comment about this on an Intel blog article (SC10: Jeff’s Notebook - Innovation and Disruption: How a Successful Company can be gone in 10 Years): http://intel.ly/dZAxKk http://intel.ly/dZAxKk

meastham 16y ago

Has ARM's design licensing model ever been demonstrated in the high end (server/workstation) CPU market? It seems to me that the amount of engineering expertise required to push that sort of high performance, fully custom design through to fabrication would make it difficult.

andrewcooke 16y ago
Isn't that how SPARC worked? Of course, you can argue it failed after a while... https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SPARC https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SPARC

adulau 16y ago

ARM is not really friendly with competitors especially those not paying the high license fee. Do you remember the nnARM project at OpenCores? this has been removed on request by ARM limited. If ARM wants to "own the market", they should allow in some ways competitors to build compatible CPUs.

rbanffy 16y ago
> they should allow in some ways competitors to build compatible CPUs. They allow you, or anyone, to build compatible CPUs. You just have to pay for the privilege.

lyime 16y ago

"People in the mobile phone architecture do not buy microprocessors," says Hauser, "so, if you sell microprocessors you have the wrong model. They license them." Someone is building them. In iPhone's case its Samsung. The phone's Apple-designed A4 processor, which was built by Samsung, costs $10.75 each. Most of that is going to Samsung, part of that goes to ARM. The ASP of ARM 10-20x lower than that of Intel.

gonzo 16y ago
Someone seems to have forgotten that ARM means "Advanced RISC Machines, Ltd" and that Acorn, Apple and VLSI were partners in A(dvanced) R(isc) M(achines). Of the three (Acorn, Apple and VLSI), only Apple is really still around. Apple must already have significant equity position in ARM being a founder. VLSI was bought by Philips Semi, which was later spun out as NXT. NXT is a user/licensee of the ARM architecture but not even the biggest one by a long shot. Intel's revenue from ARM (and yes, they still make some Xscale parts) is probably bigger than all of NXT's revenue. Acorn went belly-up as a going concern in 2000 with the remains bought by Morgan Stanley. The ARM "JV" IPOed (as ARM Holdings). In any case, I doubt that Apple pays much, if anything for its ARM license. And I doubt we really know what Apple pays for A4 parts.

davidj 16y ago

Intel builds ARM processors. This article sucks.

eru 16y ago
Sources?
- a-priori 16y ago
  More accurately, they did build ARM chips -- the XScale line. But they sold that division to Marvell in 2006, although they still retain an ARM license. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale
  - gonzo 16y ago
    Even more accurately, they still DO build ARM chips. They only sold the PXA processors to Marvell. Could you maybe read the Wikipedia article next time?
    - a-priori 16y ago
      I appreciate the correction... but there's no need to be nasty.
- repiret 16y ago
  http://www.intel.com/design/iio/index.htm http://www.intel.com/design/iio/index.htm Although I doubt they'll make them for much longer.

hackermom 16y ago

ARM could probably kill x86 given some time, if that was what the writer implied - and let's just wait a few years and see how things currently brewing will develop before we start shooting off our downvotes, shall we? I am willing to bet that an often-blamed-for-being-fruity computer manufacturer will shortly migrate from x86 to ARM. Just wait. Killing Intel themselves, though, just won't happen. If anyone can dominate the CPU market wielding ARM in their hand (haha!), it's Intel. The rest of the world has a good few years to go before catching up to their level in terms of manufacturing.

epynonymous 16y ago

from the article, "stifled innovation", "monopoly", i wonder how true that is, where would we be if any of this was true, would we have a more awesome chip in our laptops today? i'm pretty excited about gpu's, but they're only good for parallel instruction processing, some tasks still require the usage of a highly spec'd cpu. whatever happened to transmeta?

jaen 16y ago

In the server markets, you look at performance per watt and performance per rack unit and ease of setup - for general purpose computation, Intel still dominates those metrics. (with some exceptions [1]). Being ahead in fab technology, it can take the performance hits due to the legacy x86 architecture. You can replace 1 beefy server with 8 small nodes, but you can not replace the convenience of administering that one server. Also, retargeting performance-sensitive JITs/compilers/maths libraries such as GCC, LLVM, Java, V8, *BLAS is no small feat either - x86 gets support first, because it is the market leader, and also gets tuned the most, since it's the oldest backend. A feedback loop that's hard to break, so don't expect Intel to go out of business any time soon. [1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fawnproj/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fawnproj/