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> This leaves Intel with one path: if you can’t beat them, join them. Intel will re-take an ARM license (it sold its ARM-based XScale business to Marvell in 200

> This leaves Intel with one path: if you can’t beat them, join them. Intel will re-take an ARM license (it sold its ARM-based XScale business to Marvell in 2006) and come up with a competitive ARM SoC offering for PC OEMs. I find this path unlikely and it depends on Intel's foundries not falling further behind TSMC. The most likely path is to compete on price-per-peformance (i.e. slash prices and internal costs) rather than performance-per-watt.

baybal2 6y ago
What this discussion lacks is the acknowledgement of just how titanic Intel is. It is pretty much the biggest semiconductor company out there, focusing solely on 3-4 main product lines. The most surprising is them under-performing so much while them having resources comparable to the next few competitors combined. It is not only their fabs that got an arrow to the knee with 10nm. Their newest microarchitectures deliver tiny IPC gains in comparison to AMDs products even on comparable nodes, while having significantly more transistors per core. Tiger Lake throws 40-45% more transistors, and only gets 10% IPC gain at max, and the rest of performance gains come from better thermals.
- starfallg 6y ago
  I think you have some salient points there. A few years down the line, Intel will look back and thank AMD for their decision to spin off GF and go with TSMC with Zen 2. EYPC and Ryzen are keeping the x86 arch relevant until Intel is able to catch up on their next-gen process nodes. AMD may be eating Intel's market share for lunch in a few markets, but in the long term keep ARM far enough away for it to be a niche player, both in the server space and the laptop space.
- scarface74 6y ago
  There were a grand total of 250 Million PC sold last year and that includes around 20 million Macs. That also includes PCs with AMD processors. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-01-13-gartner-says-worldwide-pc-shipments-grew-2-point-3-percent-in-4q19-and-point-6-percent-for-the-year https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-01-1... Apple alone sold more ARM based iPhones and iPads than that last year at higher profit margins. Not to mention all of the ARM based chips used for the Watch, Airpods, Apple TV’s, and HomePods.

baybal2 6y ago

What this discussion lacks is the acknowledgement of just how titanic Intel is. It is pretty much the biggest semiconductor company out there, focusing solely on 3-4 main product lines. The most surprising is them under-performing so much while them having resources comparable to the next few competitors combined. It is not only their fabs that got an arrow to the knee with 10nm. Their newest microarchitectures deliver tiny IPC gains in comparison to AMDs products even on comparable nodes, while having significantly more transistors per core. Tiger Lake throws 40-45% more transistors, and only gets 10% IPC gain at max, and the rest of performance gains come from better thermals.

starfallg 6y ago
I think you have some salient points there. A few years down the line, Intel will look back and thank AMD for their decision to spin off GF and go with TSMC with Zen 2. EYPC and Ryzen are keeping the x86 arch relevant until Intel is able to catch up on their next-gen process nodes. AMD may be eating Intel's market share for lunch in a few markets, but in the long term keep ARM far enough away for it to be a niche player, both in the server space and the laptop space.
scarface74 6y ago
There were a grand total of 250 Million PC sold last year and that includes around 20 million Macs. That also includes PCs with AMD processors. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-01-13-gartner-says-worldwide-pc-shipments-grew-2-point-3-percent-in-4q19-and-point-6-percent-for-the-year https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-01-1... Apple alone sold more ARM based iPhones and iPads than that last year at higher profit margins. Not to mention all of the ARM based chips used for the Watch, Airpods, Apple TV’s, and HomePods.