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As you say, it's quite possible. Some competitive studies that a professional acquaintance of mine did indicated that if the ARM Cortex A15 meets it's performa

As you say, it's quite possible. Some competitive studies that a professional acquaintance of mine did indicated that if the ARM Cortex A15 meets it's performance goals, it would roughly have IPC [1] parity with AMD's Bobcat. Bobcat is now at 1.6 GHz and the Cortex A15 is being designed for 2.5 GHz. This means that the A15 might be up to 10-20% faster than Bobcat. Now, Bobcat is at approximately about 50-60% performance of a high-end notebook today, which leaves the A15 looking very decent performance wise. I think the real threat to the Cortex comes from the 22nm Atom. If the 30% power savings due to the FinFETs are true [2], taking into account the fact that the current-generation Atoms are still on 45nm, it's conceivable that Atom power consumption might reduce by something like 70%. Also note that the A15 will still be on either 28nm or 32nm, so due to Intel's manufacturing muscle means the Atom part will be very competitive. Things are beginning to get interesting in the microprocessor industry. :-) [1] IPC: Instructions per clock cycle. [2] I'm not a circuits guy but my semi-informed guess is that the numbers are not far from reality.

nextparadigms 15y ago
It will take a while for Intel to move Atom to 22nm. They are just moving it to 32nm next year. Normally, that means they would switch to 22nm in 2014, but if they are in a real hurry they'll do it in 2013. But I'm not seeing them doing it any faster than that. Two years is quite a lot of time in the mobile industry. It might be way too late for Intel, then. Plus, they'll only be able to get close with something like a single core Atom, like they are trying this year. We'll have quad core Cortex A15 chips by then, which means even if Atom catches up in energy efficiency, the ARM chips will be significantly more powerful by then - all at the same price or cheaper than Intel's Atom. So I don't see much incentive for manufacturers to use it.
- microarchitect 15y ago
  Don't forget the A15 is also at least a year away. I'm not sure what you mean by this: "Plus, they'll only be able to get close with something like a single core Atom, like they are trying this year." > We'll have quad core Cortex A15 chips by then. I don't think this is a big deal. Intel already have dual-core Atoms which actually have 4 threads, which are going to be quite competitive out of the box with a quad core ARM chip. > all at the same price or cheaper than Intel's Atom. I don't buy this. Intel's fabs can blow the pants off everyone else in terms of yield and cost. The big pile of cash they're sitting will also help. > Two years is quite a lot of time in the mobile industry This might be true, but my points were specifically made for laptops and not mobile phone chips.
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    Intel's dual core chips have a 10W power draw. If they moved it today to the 22nm Ivy Bridge. it would still use like 5W. My point was that while ARM only has to double in performance every year and keep the same level of energy efficiency (which seems every ARM chip maker can do), Intel will have to double the performance of Atom every year, while also making the power draw of the chip much smaller than the previous generation. So Intel has to do twice as much in the same time as ARM chip makers.

nextparadigms 15y ago

It will take a while for Intel to move Atom to 22nm. They are just moving it to 32nm next year. Normally, that means they would switch to 22nm in 2014, but if they are in a real hurry they'll do it in 2013. But I'm not seeing them doing it any faster than that. Two years is quite a lot of time in the mobile industry. It might be way too late for Intel, then. Plus, they'll only be able to get close with something like a single core Atom, like they are trying this year. We'll have quad core Cortex A15 chips by then, which means even if Atom catches up in energy efficiency, the ARM chips will be significantly more powerful by then - all at the same price or cheaper than Intel's Atom. So I don't see much incentive for manufacturers to use it.

microarchitect 15y ago
Don't forget the A15 is also at least a year away. I'm not sure what you mean by this: "Plus, they'll only be able to get close with something like a single core Atom, like they are trying this year." > We'll have quad core Cortex A15 chips by then. I don't think this is a big deal. Intel already have dual-core Atoms which actually have 4 threads, which are going to be quite competitive out of the box with a quad core ARM chip. > all at the same price or cheaper than Intel's Atom. I don't buy this. Intel's fabs can blow the pants off everyone else in terms of yield and cost. The big pile of cash they're sitting will also help. > Two years is quite a lot of time in the mobile industry This might be true, but my points were specifically made for laptops and not mobile phone chips.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Intel's dual core chips have a 10W power draw. If they moved it today to the 22nm Ivy Bridge. it would still use like 5W. My point was that while ARM only has to double in performance every year and keep the same level of energy efficiency (which seems every ARM chip maker can do), Intel will have to double the performance of Atom every year, while also making the power draw of the chip much smaller than the previous generation. So Intel has to do twice as much in the same time as ARM chip makers.