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I'd argue that the Atom core itself could compete - it hit pretty much the same perf/watt targets as it's performance-competitive ARM equivalents. But having w
by kimixa 2y ago
I'd argue that the Atom core itself could compete - it hit pretty much the same perf/watt targets as it's performance-competitive ARM equivalents.
But having worked with Intel on some of those SoCs, it's everything else that fell down. They were late, they were the "disfavored" teams by execs, they were the engineer's last priority, they had stupid hw bugs they refused to fix and respin, they were everything you could do to set up a project to fail.
- RussianCow 2y ago> They were late This was the main thing, as by that point, all native code was being compiled to Arm and not x86. Using x86 meant that some apps, libraries, etc just didn't work.
- mkl 2y agoIntel and Google developed libhoudini to do binary translation of the native code to solve that problem. https://github.com/SGNight/Arm-NativeBridge https://github.com/SGNight/Arm-NativeBridge, https://www.anandtech.com/show/5770/lava-xolo-x900-review-the-first-intel-medfield-phone/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/5770/lava-xolo-x900-review-th..., http://blog.apedroid.com/2013/05/binary-translation-vs-native-x86-code.html?m=1 http://blog.apedroid.com/2013/05/binary-translation-vs-nativ...
- hajile 2y agoMedfield was faster than A9 and Qualcomm Krait in performance, but not so much in power (see Motorola Razr i vs M where the dual-core ARM version got basically the same battery life as the single-core x86 version). Shortly after though, ARM launched A15 and the game was over. A15 was faster per clock while using less power too. Intel's future Atom generations never even came close after that.
- raverbashing 2y agoMaybe the Atom core itself was performant, but I doubt they could take all the x86 crap around it to make it slim enough for a phone
- kimixa 2y agoThey were SoCs, fundamentally the same as any ARM-based phone SoC - some atom SoCs even had integrated modems. The BoM was pretty identical to other devices.
- ksec 2y agoExactly. Most people still dont get it. What killed Atom on Phone wasn't x86. It was partly software and mostly hardware and cost. It simply wasn't cost competitive, especially when Intel were used to high margin business.