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Any Intel employees in the crowd? What's the level of worry surrounding ARM these days? Given Intel's high levels of competitive paranoia, news like this must

Any Intel employees in the crowd? What's the level of worry surrounding ARM these days? Given Intel's high levels of competitive paranoia, news like this must have people fairly worried. Not to mention the explosive growth in adoption of the ISA over the past few years.

czhiddy 14y ago
I spoke to my friend @ Intel a while back, and he said that the company viewed Samsung as their main rival (not AMD, not ARM). His argument was that Intel's main competitive advantage (and where the majority of spending/R&D happens) was their fabs, and Samsung was the only other company that could come close to competing on that front.
EwanToo 14y ago
I think Intel's major worry with ARM is that simply speaking, ARM don't need their licencees to be particularly profitable at making chips for them to carry on designing chips, they just need them to buy new licences. For Intel, having a competitor designing CPUs who can't be undercut directly is a real issue - Intel are not going to be letting Samsung produce Xeon chips under licence in the next 5 years, though I do wonder about Atom ones..
fieldforceapp 14y ago
Well, INTC could adopt the same IP-based business model as ARM and then give up 98% of it's revenue: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+of+intel+vs+arm http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+of+intel+vs+arm So the folks at INTC are doing what you'd expect, competing on discrete components and application-tuned architectures. A key example of that is the recent Merrifield-based chipset for smartphones which is obviously a key initiative: http://www.intomobile.com/2012/05/14/intel-merrifield-system-chip-may-end-up-2013-superphones/ http://www.intomobile.com/2012/05/14/intel-merrifield-system...
theatrus2 14y ago
Intel is first and foremost a fab company - they're ahead of pretty much everyone in semiconductor processes by at least one generation. If Intel needed to create an ARM-ISA compatible CPU tomorrow, they probably could, and it would be top notch (though maybe not at a margin Intel wants to play at). The biggest threats come from companies which have shown that they're willing to pour the big bucks into R&D and new fab construction (Samsung).

czhiddy 14y ago

I spoke to my friend @ Intel a while back, and he said that the company viewed Samsung as their main rival (not AMD, not ARM). His argument was that Intel's main competitive advantage (and where the majority of spending/R&D happens) was their fabs, and Samsung was the only other company that could come close to competing on that front.

EwanToo 14y ago

I think Intel's major worry with ARM is that simply speaking, ARM don't need their licencees to be particularly profitable at making chips for them to carry on designing chips, they just need them to buy new licences. For Intel, having a competitor designing CPUs who can't be undercut directly is a real issue - Intel are not going to be letting Samsung produce Xeon chips under licence in the next 5 years, though I do wonder about Atom ones..

fieldforceapp 14y ago

Well, INTC could adopt the same IP-based business model as ARM and then give up 98% of it's revenue: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+of+intel+vs+arm http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+of+intel+vs+arm So the folks at INTC are doing what you'd expect, competing on discrete components and application-tuned architectures. A key example of that is the recent Merrifield-based chipset for smartphones which is obviously a key initiative: http://www.intomobile.com/2012/05/14/intel-merrifield-system-chip-may-end-up-2013-superphones/ http://www.intomobile.com/2012/05/14/intel-merrifield-system...

theatrus2 14y ago

Intel is first and foremost a fab company - they're ahead of pretty much everyone in semiconductor processes by at least one generation. If Intel needed to create an ARM-ISA compatible CPU tomorrow, they probably could, and it would be top notch (though maybe not at a margin Intel wants to play at). The biggest threats come from companies which have shown that they're willing to pour the big bucks into R&D and new fab construction (Samsung).