17 ms·

How Intel Missed the iPhone: The XScale Era

134 points by chmaynard 2y ago

causi 2y ago
The mid to late xscale era got very weird. Between the 90s and early 2000s handheld processors were growing in leaps and bounds. At the height in 2004 devices like the Dell x50v were shipping with 624mhz xscale chips with a dedicated GPU with 16MB of VRAM. Then they just stumbled. Later devices dropped the maximum clock speed, dropped the dGPU, even dropped the screen resolution from 640x480 to 320x240.
- yial 2y ago
  I had a dell x50v. It was truly pretty impressive. I remember running psx games on it, with only some issues during cut scenes. But the ability to mostly browse the web on it was amazing. Also, if I remember correctly, you could adjust the clock speed to trade off battery life / performance.
  - freitzkriesler2 2y ago
    I had an x50v but you really wanted the x51v. Windows mobile 5 really needed the improved NVRAM or otherwise it ran very poorly. Great devices overall. I've been tempted to pick one of these up for nostalgia purposes. Truly peak PDAs.
    - yial 2y ago
      Wait! I had the x51v! That’s probably why I loved it so much. With the two batteries and stand to charge them both. (Or was it three?) I can understand the desire to get one for nostalgia. For some reason my strongest memory is using it in the dentists office. My previous device had been a Sony Clie peg-tg50/u (which in some ways was great, but lacking built in WiFi… however I used to save web pages on my laptop and put them on it to read later). But that once fell out of my pocket on a lawn tractor, went through the blades, came out with some nicks but was otherwise fine. I have fond memories of worms and an rts on that. (The stylus was both great and horrible for that ). In memory what really was just amazing to me at the time: great fast mp3 player(better on the Sony) The ability to play videos. On the dell, the web browser probably wasn’t great, but in my memory I still remembering thinking it was the bees knees. My laptop at the time was a Toshiba Satellite with a pentium 4, 512mbs of ram, and a 16mb GeForce card. Which to me, was pretty darn amazing. (Except for its tendency to every 6-8 months become unable to boot suddenly, needing windows to be reinstalled from Toshibas 4(?) re install discs on an increasingly broken disc drive. This of course was partially more frustrating due to my limited computer skills at that time… which were more comfortable overclocking AMD K6-2s with jumper settings)
    - causi 2y ago
      WM5 was a pile of garbage compared to WM 2003. "Let's sacrifice a massive chunk of the screen for two useless yet omnipresent shortcut buttons."
      - freitzkriesler2 2y ago
        Yeah those NAV buttons drove me nuts. Such a wart on an otherwise great upgrade. Wm5 had one handed navigation and you didn't have to worry about a dead battery wiping your applications.
  - bluedino 2y ago
    I had a Dell Axim (not sure of the spec), I'm pretty sure Dell gave it away for buying a couple Dell branded printers or something like that. I also had an HP iPaq which was pretty similar (I also think I got Linux running on that one somehow). It could do a few fairly impressive things, like running emulators as you mentioned. But I think the problem with those was Windows Mobile or Windows CE or whatever they called it at the time. The touchscreens stunk as well. It was just a crappy scaled-down version of Windows. It was missing the ability to run actual Windows software. It had a browser and a serviceable camera (it helped fulfill my eBay addiction at the time), but it wasn't the same as browsing on a PC. It probably still wouldn't have been ideal, but within another 2-3 generations it would have been improved/faster and then 'good enough', just like the early iPhones.
    - hylaride 2y ago
      I also had an ipaq ~2003. It didn't have enough storage to be a reasonable music or movie player for commutes and (mine anyways) only had wifi via a honking PCMCIA adapter that drained the battery in no time, so I otherwise browsed the web with a laptop. No websites were anywhere near designed for small screens in those days, either. You're right that the OS was garbage, further limiting the already limited hardware. I think I also got linux or BSD running and messed around with some WEP cracking in my neighbourhood for a bit, but then it otherwise sat in a drawer. I was still in school and it was a stupid and expensive purchase, but it did teach me to only get new tech if it was actually useful and otherwise wait, which as served me well since, including the iphone (which the first one was barely adequate for what it promised).
      - causi 2y ago
        You didn't just get a storage card? Between an SD card and a CF microdrive I kept a ton of media on my pocket PC. Most of the ones that came out in 2003 and onwards had bluetooth and wifi built in.
        hylaride 2y ago
        Mine definitely did not have integrated wifi. Whatever model I had only supported CF, IIRC. Thinking about it, it may have been 2001-2002 I had it.
rickdeckard 2y ago
> Thirdly, the success of an Apple phone would not have been hard to predict. In 2006 Apple sold nearly 40 million iPods. I don't like how this whole article is framed as how obvious it was that Intel made a huge mistake. Hindsight is 20/20, there was no such data available. It was not predictable that the iPhone would be a success, especially not to a degree of Intel sacrificing every profit calculation in mere "hope" of huge volume later. The numbers were there for the iPod. Intel could have just pitched to become the SoC-supplier for the iPod and didn't do it. They surely crunched the numbers several times and it didn't work out. The first iPhone was then built on the iPod platform with an Infineon modem, so the better question to ask is probably: Why wasn't Intel interested to supply the CPU for the iPod?
- klelatti 2y ago
  > I don't like how this whole article is framed as how obvious it was that Intel made a huge mistake. Hindsight is 20/20, there was no such data available. Possibly because Otellini framed it as such? The latter part of the article answers your other points.
  - rickdeckard 2y ago
    In 2006, Intel supplied their XScale design to Palm for the Treo 700, to Blackberry for the Pearl and Curve AND to HTC for use in the XDA/MDA Windows Mobile line, in 2006 arguably the much bigger wins as all those were established constantly-growing product-lines already on sale globally. Apple demanding a (probably much) lower price-point to have the SoC applied in a mysterious unknown project without a volume-commitment could as well have destroyed the business and profit-margin for the entire Xscale business for Intel and its other customers...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - klelatti 2y ago
      > Apple demanding a (probably much) lower price-point to have the SoC applied in a mysterious unknown project without a volume-commitment could as well have destroyed the business and profit-margin for the entire Xscale business for Intel and its other customers... One of the key premises of the article is that Apple likely didn't know it was bidding for the iPhone and the decision was taken on that basis. Why is why saying 'Intel turned down the iPhone' is problematic.
freitzkriesler2 2y ago
[dead]
luxuryballs 2y ago
it’s always interesting finding out about a myth for the first time from the content that debunks it
bgribble 2y ago
I worked for an Intel spinoff whose CEO was a former high-level Intel exec from the 1990-2010 era. Internal goss attributed much of Intel's decision to stay out of the iPhone to him... there was a supposed quote that went something like "we make chips for computers, not g*d** telephones!" As the tale went, he was sent out to this doomed-from-birth spinoff as a "sunset cruise" to basically force him into retirement (for this bad decision) without the bad publicity of a public head-chopping.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  I still don’t understand why people make such a big deal out of „missing the iPhone“. There was no money in mobile SoCs, and there still isn’t. Apple makes their own chips anyway! Intel was right to focus on the x86.
  - PopePompus 2y ago
    Well volume is an issue. Even a low margin part which has very high volume sales can help you afford to build leading edge Fabs, and keep process technology leadership.
  - m_mueller 2y ago
    I think TSMC, ASML and ARM are making quite good money on the iPhone. And so did Samsung for a while before the Apple A4 came out.
  - klelatti 2y ago
    Apple doesn't make their own chips TSMC does and TSMC generated net income of US$26 billion in 2023.
    - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
      That is actually a good point - the fab process would turn out to become another weak point (besides the missing moat of ARM) of Intel. There is no way Apple would watch TSMCs leadership year after year and still stick with Intel fabs.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mannyv 2y ago
My neighbor used to be in procurement at Intel. He said that the chip guys told him that TSMC's prices were impossible. Just one more data point.
- rasz 2y ago
  Intel was used to $100-1000 per Chip back then.
ndesaulniers 2y ago
IIRC, the iwmmxt instructions used similar encodings to some of arms vfp extensions, threatening to bifurcate the arm ecosystem (this is alluded to in the article).
iforgotpassword 2y ago
> Apple had to create a 32-bit version of the OSX operating system for Intel’s x86 architecture before quickly phasing it out because Intel was late releasing its 64-bit Core 2 architecture designs. I've read before that internally, OSX always had a working x86 port, to ensure the OS is actually portable should the need for a switch arise. Like it did in the past with older macos versions. So in that case they even got lucky because it was the very architecture they switched to.
- Kwpolska 2y ago
  Also, they didn't have a lot of 64-bit stuff in PowerPC land during the transition, software- and hardware-wise.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
Apples original iPhones were MVP. The real juice is when they bought that company and designed a 64bit ARM chip out of nowhere and found themselves 5 years ahead of the competition Why isnt anyone talking about that?
lvl155 2y ago
Intel hired too many MBAs. When will companies realize hiring people with nothing but MBAs (because they have no hard skills) is a recipe for long-term failure?
jl2718 2y ago
Andy Grove flew in Clayton Christensen to let him talk for about 15 seconds before deciding that Intel would disrupt themselves by taking huge losses on Celeron. But Celeron did not save Intel; ASCII Red and multicore saved Intel. If he had actually read Clayton’s book, he would have understood that. Otellini got the disruption theory correct, and stayed out of mobile. But was that right? Maybe not in the current monetary environment where investment flows dwarf operating flows. A big mobile market could attract more investment than the losses it would generate. So disruption theory now works in reverse, and I’m not sure how far that implication goes.
anthonyamanda 2y ago
[dead]
even_639765 2y ago
Another perspective of the same event. Had to read 1/2 through OP article to get at their argument - Otelli was innovative, but the deal made no sense for Intel. I found this article broader and more thought provoking. https://www.palladiummag.com/2024/08/30/when-the-mismanagerial-class-destroys-great-companies/ https://www.palladiummag.com/2024/08/30/when-the-mismanageri...
Jani43e 2y ago
[dead]

134 points by chmaynard 2y ago

The mid to late xscale era got very weird. Between the 90s and early 2000s handheld processors were growing in leaps and bounds. At the height in 2004 devices like the Dell x50v were shipping with 624mhz xscale chips with a dedicated GPU with 16MB of VRAM. Then they just stumbled. Later devices dropped the maximum clock speed, dropped the dGPU, even dropped the screen resolution from 640x480 to 320x240.

yial 2y ago
I had a dell x50v. It was truly pretty impressive. I remember running psx games on it, with only some issues during cut scenes. But the ability to mostly browse the web on it was amazing. Also, if I remember correctly, you could adjust the clock speed to trade off battery life / performance.
- freitzkriesler2 2y ago
  I had an x50v but you really wanted the x51v. Windows mobile 5 really needed the improved NVRAM or otherwise it ran very poorly. Great devices overall. I've been tempted to pick one of these up for nostalgia purposes. Truly peak PDAs.
  - yial 2y ago
    Wait! I had the x51v! That’s probably why I loved it so much. With the two batteries and stand to charge them both. (Or was it three?) I can understand the desire to get one for nostalgia. For some reason my strongest memory is using it in the dentists office. My previous device had been a Sony Clie peg-tg50/u (which in some ways was great, but lacking built in WiFi… however I used to save web pages on my laptop and put them on it to read later). But that once fell out of my pocket on a lawn tractor, went through the blades, came out with some nicks but was otherwise fine. I have fond memories of worms and an rts on that. (The stylus was both great and horrible for that ). In memory what really was just amazing to me at the time: great fast mp3 player(better on the Sony) The ability to play videos. On the dell, the web browser probably wasn’t great, but in my memory I still remembering thinking it was the bees knees. My laptop at the time was a Toshiba Satellite with a pentium 4, 512mbs of ram, and a 16mb GeForce card. Which to me, was pretty darn amazing. (Except for its tendency to every 6-8 months become unable to boot suddenly, needing windows to be reinstalled from Toshibas 4(?) re install discs on an increasingly broken disc drive. This of course was partially more frustrating due to my limited computer skills at that time… which were more comfortable overclocking AMD K6-2s with jumper settings)
  - causi 2y ago
    WM5 was a pile of garbage compared to WM 2003. "Let's sacrifice a massive chunk of the screen for two useless yet omnipresent shortcut buttons."
    - freitzkriesler2 2y ago
      Yeah those NAV buttons drove me nuts. Such a wart on an otherwise great upgrade. Wm5 had one handed navigation and you didn't have to worry about a dead battery wiping your applications.
- bluedino 2y ago
  I had a Dell Axim (not sure of the spec), I'm pretty sure Dell gave it away for buying a couple Dell branded printers or something like that. I also had an HP iPaq which was pretty similar (I also think I got Linux running on that one somehow). It could do a few fairly impressive things, like running emulators as you mentioned. But I think the problem with those was Windows Mobile or Windows CE or whatever they called it at the time. The touchscreens stunk as well. It was just a crappy scaled-down version of Windows. It was missing the ability to run actual Windows software. It had a browser and a serviceable camera (it helped fulfill my eBay addiction at the time), but it wasn't the same as browsing on a PC. It probably still wouldn't have been ideal, but within another 2-3 generations it would have been improved/faster and then 'good enough', just like the early iPhones.
  - hylaride 2y ago
    I also had an ipaq ~2003. It didn't have enough storage to be a reasonable music or movie player for commutes and (mine anyways) only had wifi via a honking PCMCIA adapter that drained the battery in no time, so I otherwise browsed the web with a laptop. No websites were anywhere near designed for small screens in those days, either. You're right that the OS was garbage, further limiting the already limited hardware. I think I also got linux or BSD running and messed around with some WEP cracking in my neighbourhood for a bit, but then it otherwise sat in a drawer. I was still in school and it was a stupid and expensive purchase, but it did teach me to only get new tech if it was actually useful and otherwise wait, which as served me well since, including the iphone (which the first one was barely adequate for what it promised).
    - causi 2y ago
      You didn't just get a storage card? Between an SD card and a CF microdrive I kept a ton of media on my pocket PC. Most of the ones that came out in 2003 and onwards had bluetooth and wifi built in.
      - hylaride 2y ago
        Mine definitely did not have integrated wifi. Whatever model I had only supported CF, IIRC. Thinking about it, it may have been 2001-2002 I had it.

rickdeckard 2y ago

> Thirdly, the success of an Apple phone would not have been hard to predict. In 2006 Apple sold nearly 40 million iPods. I don't like how this whole article is framed as how obvious it was that Intel made a huge mistake. Hindsight is 20/20, there was no such data available. It was not predictable that the iPhone would be a success, especially not to a degree of Intel sacrificing every profit calculation in mere "hope" of huge volume later. The numbers were there for the iPod. Intel could have just pitched to become the SoC-supplier for the iPod and didn't do it. They surely crunched the numbers several times and it didn't work out. The first iPhone was then built on the iPod platform with an Infineon modem, so the better question to ask is probably: Why wasn't Intel interested to supply the CPU for the iPod?

klelatti 2y ago
> I don't like how this whole article is framed as how obvious it was that Intel made a huge mistake. Hindsight is 20/20, there was no such data available. Possibly because Otellini framed it as such? The latter part of the article answers your other points.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  In 2006, Intel supplied their XScale design to Palm for the Treo 700, to Blackberry for the Pearl and Curve AND to HTC for use in the XDA/MDA Windows Mobile line, in 2006 arguably the much bigger wins as all those were established constantly-growing product-lines already on sale globally. Apple demanding a (probably much) lower price-point to have the SoC applied in a mysterious unknown project without a volume-commitment could as well have destroyed the business and profit-margin for the entire Xscale business for Intel and its other customers...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - klelatti 2y ago
    > Apple demanding a (probably much) lower price-point to have the SoC applied in a mysterious unknown project without a volume-commitment could as well have destroyed the business and profit-margin for the entire Xscale business for Intel and its other customers... One of the key premises of the article is that Apple likely didn't know it was bidding for the iPhone and the decision was taken on that basis. Why is why saying 'Intel turned down the iPhone' is problematic.

freitzkriesler2 2y ago

[dead]

luxuryballs 2y ago

it’s always interesting finding out about a myth for the first time from the content that debunks it

bgribble 2y ago

I worked for an Intel spinoff whose CEO was a former high-level Intel exec from the 1990-2010 era. Internal goss attributed much of Intel's decision to stay out of the iPhone to him... there was a supposed quote that went something like "we make chips for computers, not g*d** telephones!" As the tale went, he was sent out to this doomed-from-birth spinoff as a "sunset cruise" to basically force him into retirement (for this bad decision) without the bad publicity of a public head-chopping.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
I still don’t understand why people make such a big deal out of „missing the iPhone“. There was no money in mobile SoCs, and there still isn’t. Apple makes their own chips anyway! Intel was right to focus on the x86.
- PopePompus 2y ago
  Well volume is an issue. Even a low margin part which has very high volume sales can help you afford to build leading edge Fabs, and keep process technology leadership.
- m_mueller 2y ago
  I think TSMC, ASML and ARM are making quite good money on the iPhone. And so did Samsung for a while before the Apple A4 came out.
- klelatti 2y ago
  Apple doesn't make their own chips TSMC does and TSMC generated net income of US$26 billion in 2023.
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    That is actually a good point - the fab process would turn out to become another weak point (besides the missing moat of ARM) of Intel. There is no way Apple would watch TSMCs leadership year after year and still stick with Intel fabs.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mannyv 2y ago

My neighbor used to be in procurement at Intel. He said that the chip guys told him that TSMC's prices were impossible. Just one more data point.

rasz 2y ago
Intel was used to $100-1000 per Chip back then.

ndesaulniers 2y ago

IIRC, the iwmmxt instructions used similar encodings to some of arms vfp extensions, threatening to bifurcate the arm ecosystem (this is alluded to in the article).

iforgotpassword 2y ago

> Apple had to create a 32-bit version of the OSX operating system for Intel’s x86 architecture before quickly phasing it out because Intel was late releasing its 64-bit Core 2 architecture designs. I've read before that internally, OSX always had a working x86 port, to ensure the OS is actually portable should the need for a switch arise. Like it did in the past with older macos versions. So in that case they even got lucky because it was the very architecture they switched to.

Kwpolska 2y ago
Also, they didn't have a lot of 64-bit stuff in PowerPC land during the transition, software- and hardware-wise.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

Apples original iPhones were MVP. The real juice is when they bought that company and designed a 64bit ARM chip out of nowhere and found themselves 5 years ahead of the competition Why isnt anyone talking about that?

lvl155 2y ago

Intel hired too many MBAs. When will companies realize hiring people with nothing but MBAs (because they have no hard skills) is a recipe for long-term failure?

jl2718 2y ago

Andy Grove flew in Clayton Christensen to let him talk for about 15 seconds before deciding that Intel would disrupt themselves by taking huge losses on Celeron. But Celeron did not save Intel; ASCII Red and multicore saved Intel. If he had actually read Clayton’s book, he would have understood that. Otellini got the disruption theory correct, and stayed out of mobile. But was that right? Maybe not in the current monetary environment where investment flows dwarf operating flows. A big mobile market could attract more investment than the losses it would generate. So disruption theory now works in reverse, and I’m not sure how far that implication goes.

anthonyamanda 2y ago

[dead]

even_639765 2y ago

Another perspective of the same event. Had to read 1/2 through OP article to get at their argument - Otelli was innovative, but the deal made no sense for Intel. I found this article broader and more thought provoking. https://www.palladiummag.com/2024/08/30/when-the-mismanagerial-class-destroys-great-companies/ https://www.palladiummag.com/2024/08/30/when-the-mismanageri...

Jani43e 2y ago

[dead]