4 ms·

> x86 didn't dominate in low power because Intel had the resources to care but never did Remember Atom tablets (and how they sucked)?

YetAnotherNick 1y ago
> how they sucked Care to elaborate. I had the 9" mini laptop kind of device based on Atom and don't remember Atom to be the issue.
- mananaysiempre 1y ago
  I had a Atom-based netbook (in the early days when they were 32-bit-only and couldn’t run up-to-date Windows). It didn’t suck, as such, but it was definitely resource-starved. However, what I meant is Atom-based Android tablets. At about the same time as the netbook craze (late 2000s to early 2010s) there was a non-negligible number of Android tablets, and a noticeable fraction of them was not ARM- but Atom-based. (The x86 target in the Android SDK wasn’t only there to support emulators, originally.) Yet that stopped pretty quickly, and my impression is that that happened because, while Intel would certainly have liked to hitch itself to the Android train, they just couldn’t get Atoms fast enough at equivalent power levels (either at all or quickly enough). Could have been something else, e.g. perhaps they didn’t have the expertise to build SoCs with radios? Either way, it’s not that Intel didn’t want to get into consumer mobile devices, it’s that they tried and did not succeed.
  - toast0 1y ago
    Android x86 devices suffer when developers include binary libraries and don't add x86. At the time of Intel's x86 for Android push, Google didn't have good apk thinning options, so app developers had to decide if they wanted to add x86 libraries for everyone so that a handful of tablets/phones would work properly... for the most part, many developers said no; even though many/most apps are tested on the android emulator that runs on x86 and probably have binary libraries available to work in that case. IMHO, If Intel had done another year or two of trying, it probably would have worked, but they gave up. They also canceled x86 for phone like the day before the Windows Mobile Continuum demo, which would have been a potentially much more compelling product with x86, especially if Microsoft allowed running win32 apps (which they probably wouldn't, but the potential would be interesting)
- cptskippy 1y ago
  Atom used an in-order execution model so it's performance was always going to be lacking. Because it was in-order it had a much simpler decoder and much smaller die size, which meant you could crap the chipset and CPU on a single die. Atom wasn't about power efficiency or performance, it was about cost optimization.
- Synaesthesia 1y ago
  It got a lot better. First few generations were dog-slow, although they did work.
Findecanor 1y ago
You mean Atom tablets running Android ? I have a ten-year old Lenovo Yoga Tab 2 8" Windows tablet, which I still use at least once every week. It is still useful. Who can say that they are still using a ten-year old Android tablet?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- masfuerte 1y ago
  I still use my 2015 Kindle Fire (which runs Android) for ebooks and light web browsing.
- peterfirefly 1y ago
  My iPad Mini 4 turns 10 in a month.
  - vt240 1y ago
    Yeah, I got to say in our sound company inventory I still use a dozen 6-10 year old iPads with all the mixers. They run the apps at 30fps and still hold a charge all day.
criticalfault 1y ago
Were they running windows or android?
wmf 1y ago
That's the point. Early Atom wasn't designed with care but the newer E-cores are quite efficient because they put more effort in.
- Voultapher 1y ago
  The PMICs were also bad, plus the whole Windows software stack - to this day - is nowhere nearly as well optimized for low background and sleep power usage as MacOS and iOS are.
saltcured 1y ago
I had an Atom-based Android phone (Razr-i) and it was fine.
kccqzy 1y ago
They sucked because Intel didn't care.
mmis1000 1y ago
I have tried one before. And surprisingly, It did not suck as most people claimed to be. I can even do light gaming (warframe) on it with reasonable frame rate. (It's about 2015 ~ 2020 era). So it probably depends on manufacturer (or use case though) (Also probably due to it is a tablet, so it have a reasonable fast storage instead of hdds like notebooks in that era)
jojobas 1y ago
Eeepc was was a hit. Its successors still make excellent cheap long-life laptops, if not as performant as Apple.
josefx 1y ago
What year? I remember Linux gaining some traction in the low end mobile device market early on because Micrsoft just released Vista and that wouldn't even run well on most Vista Ready desktop systems.
jonbiggums22 1y ago
IIRC Intel hobbled early Atom with an ancient process node for the chipsets which actually made up most of the idle power usage. It was pretty clear that both Microsoft and Intel wanted this product category to go away or at least be totally relegated to bottom tier lest it cannibalize their higher margin businesses. And then of course Apple and Android came along and did just that anyway.

YetAnotherNick 1y ago

> how they sucked Care to elaborate. I had the 9" mini laptop kind of device based on Atom and don't remember Atom to be the issue.

mananaysiempre 1y ago
I had a Atom-based netbook (in the early days when they were 32-bit-only and couldn’t run up-to-date Windows). It didn’t suck, as such, but it was definitely resource-starved. However, what I meant is Atom-based Android tablets. At about the same time as the netbook craze (late 2000s to early 2010s) there was a non-negligible number of Android tablets, and a noticeable fraction of them was not ARM- but Atom-based. (The x86 target in the Android SDK wasn’t only there to support emulators, originally.) Yet that stopped pretty quickly, and my impression is that that happened because, while Intel would certainly have liked to hitch itself to the Android train, they just couldn’t get Atoms fast enough at equivalent power levels (either at all or quickly enough). Could have been something else, e.g. perhaps they didn’t have the expertise to build SoCs with radios? Either way, it’s not that Intel didn’t want to get into consumer mobile devices, it’s that they tried and did not succeed.
- toast0 1y ago
  Android x86 devices suffer when developers include binary libraries and don't add x86. At the time of Intel's x86 for Android push, Google didn't have good apk thinning options, so app developers had to decide if they wanted to add x86 libraries for everyone so that a handful of tablets/phones would work properly... for the most part, many developers said no; even though many/most apps are tested on the android emulator that runs on x86 and probably have binary libraries available to work in that case. IMHO, If Intel had done another year or two of trying, it probably would have worked, but they gave up. They also canceled x86 for phone like the day before the Windows Mobile Continuum demo, which would have been a potentially much more compelling product with x86, especially if Microsoft allowed running win32 apps (which they probably wouldn't, but the potential would be interesting)
cptskippy 1y ago
Atom used an in-order execution model so it's performance was always going to be lacking. Because it was in-order it had a much simpler decoder and much smaller die size, which meant you could crap the chipset and CPU on a single die. Atom wasn't about power efficiency or performance, it was about cost optimization.
Synaesthesia 1y ago
It got a lot better. First few generations were dog-slow, although they did work.

Findecanor 1y ago

You mean Atom tablets running Android ? I have a ten-year old Lenovo Yoga Tab 2 8" Windows tablet, which I still use at least once every week. It is still useful. Who can say that they are still using a ten-year old Android tablet?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
masfuerte 1y ago
I still use my 2015 Kindle Fire (which runs Android) for ebooks and light web browsing.
peterfirefly 1y ago
My iPad Mini 4 turns 10 in a month.
- vt240 1y ago
  Yeah, I got to say in our sound company inventory I still use a dozen 6-10 year old iPads with all the mixers. They run the apps at 30fps and still hold a charge all day.

criticalfault 1y ago

Were they running windows or android?

wmf 1y ago

That's the point. Early Atom wasn't designed with care but the newer E-cores are quite efficient because they put more effort in.

Voultapher 1y ago
The PMICs were also bad, plus the whole Windows software stack - to this day - is nowhere nearly as well optimized for low background and sleep power usage as MacOS and iOS are.

saltcured 1y ago

I had an Atom-based Android phone (Razr-i) and it was fine.

kccqzy 1y ago

They sucked because Intel didn't care.

mmis1000 1y ago

I have tried one before. And surprisingly, It did not suck as most people claimed to be. I can even do light gaming (warframe) on it with reasonable frame rate. (It's about 2015 ~ 2020 era). So it probably depends on manufacturer (or use case though) (Also probably due to it is a tablet, so it have a reasonable fast storage instead of hdds like notebooks in that era)

jojobas 1y ago

Eeepc was was a hit. Its successors still make excellent cheap long-life laptops, if not as performant as Apple.

josefx 1y ago

What year? I remember Linux gaining some traction in the low end mobile device market early on because Micrsoft just released Vista and that wouldn't even run well on most Vista Ready desktop systems.

jonbiggums22 1y ago

IIRC Intel hobbled early Atom with an ancient process node for the chipsets which actually made up most of the idle power usage. It was pretty clear that both Microsoft and Intel wanted this product category to go away or at least be totally relegated to bottom tier lest it cannibalize their higher margin businesses. And then of course Apple and Android came along and did just that anyway.