4 ms·

Wow. That falls directly to NVIDIA and Qualcomm and... are there any other major players anymore, actually?

by yason 14y ago

brigade 14y ago
Samsung. Exynos 5 is powering the Chromebook and Nexus 10 after all. Allwinner is popular among the low end Chinese stuff, so there's always the chance that they'll expand into higher end SoCs. AFAIK Freescale is taking the same path as TI, canceling i.MX7 and exiting application SoCs. ST-Ericsson has a nice A15/Rogue SoC in development, but it remains to be seen if it'll be popular among smartphones/tablets.
- yason 14y ago
  Samsung, yes. Thanks for reminding me. (Then, of course, there are dozens of others but those are so small players that it doesn't matter much.)
- joezydeco 14y ago
  Do you have any hard news links discussing Freescale's roadmap? I'm about to commit a design to i.MX6 and if that's the end of the road, that's useful news.
mtgx 14y ago
I believe there are over a dozen ARM chip makers out there. TI seems to be out of the mobile market. I hear Freescale will be soon out, too. It probably won't be long until ST-Ericsson is out as well. So out of the popular ones we're left with Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia, Broadcom, Mediatek, and maybe a few others that don't operate in western markets much. But it's quite normal for this to happen. It happens in all mature industries. Only a few big players remain, that have out-competed everyone else out of the market. The ARM environment will still remain much more competitive than the x86 one ever was. There's also Apple which now makes its own chips, and while it doesn't sell them to others, it's still a competitor. As competitors to the ARM chip makers we might even consider the indirect ones (other architectures) like Imagination's MIPS processors (in the future), and Intel's mobile processors (also in the future, as I don't consider them very competitive right now). Other ARM chip makers that don't compete in the mobile market include Marvell (servers and smart TV's), Calxeda (servers) and Applied Micro (servers). The ARM market will be alive and kicking for a very long time.
ansible 14y ago
Intel's been working on mobile processors for phones. They've had a few design wins for their single-core 2GHz Atom. No phones you can buy in the USA though. Reviews for released phones like the Motorola Mobility RAZRi are decent, but didn't seem to knock anyone's socks off. If they develop good LTE integration (they bought part of Infineon a few years ago) and if their management stays committed to this, they may have a chance. Intel was previously a big backer of WiMAX. Marvell, who bought the PXA line from Intel doesn't have chips competitive with the current generation from TI, Freescale, etc. I don't think Broadcom has anything competitive either, but they don't have much publicly available information. You've also got Freescale. I don't know if their latest generation (the i.MX6 series) is currently shipping, or how good the OS support is. I haven't heard of any major design wins for them recently, if anyone knows, please post it. If you are focused on the automotive market, this might be a good choice because they typically have CAN bus support. Then you've got Samsung of course, though you'll be competing against their own products. Apple doesn't sell their chips. That's about it for the majors. You've got other mid-range chips from low-cost vendors like Allwinner, but I haven't heard of anything from those guys which will allow you to make a leading-edge phone or tablet. Late addition: According to their website, MediaTek also has a mobile app processor, but it is ARM11 based.
- ippisl 14y ago
  mediatek has a 1-ghz dual core cortex-a9 , quite cheaply[1]. [1]http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4376108/MediaTek-to-bring-premier-smartphone-features-to--150----200-handsets http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4376108/MediaTek-to-...
  - ansible 14y ago
    Cool, I hadn't heard about that one. That's good news.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  I'm prototyping on an i.MX6 Quad dev board from Boundary. It's nice, I'd call the chip an incremental step from the i.MX53. Trying to benchmark it against a Marvell Armada 610 and it's no contest. Allwinner is a comparable ARM core, but I wouldn't design it into anything I'm building for more than six months at a time. It's like all of the other noname chinese cores (Ingenic is the other one that comes to mind, but they're all MIPS). They just come and go with no warning.

Wow. That falls directly to NVIDIA and Qualcomm and... are there any other major players anymore, actually?

by yason 14y ago

Wow. That falls directly to NVIDIA and Qualcomm and... are there any other major players anymore, actually?

Samsung. Exynos 5 is powering the Chromebook and Nexus 10 after all. Allwinner is popular among the low end Chinese stuff, so there's always the chance that they'll expand into higher end SoCs. AFAIK Freescale is taking the same path as TI, canceling i.MX7 and exiting application SoCs. ST-Ericsson has a nice A15/Rogue SoC in development, but it remains to be seen if it'll be popular among smartphones/tablets.

yason 14y ago
Samsung, yes. Thanks for reminding me. (Then, of course, there are dozens of others but those are so small players that it doesn't matter much.)
joezydeco 14y ago
Do you have any hard news links discussing Freescale's roadmap? I'm about to commit a design to i.MX6 and if that's the end of the road, that's useful news.

mtgx 14y ago

I believe there are over a dozen ARM chip makers out there. TI seems to be out of the mobile market. I hear Freescale will be soon out, too. It probably won't be long until ST-Ericsson is out as well. So out of the popular ones we're left with Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia, Broadcom, Mediatek, and maybe a few others that don't operate in western markets much. But it's quite normal for this to happen. It happens in all mature industries. Only a few big players remain, that have out-competed everyone else out of the market. The ARM environment will still remain much more competitive than the x86 one ever was. There's also Apple which now makes its own chips, and while it doesn't sell them to others, it's still a competitor. As competitors to the ARM chip makers we might even consider the indirect ones (other architectures) like Imagination's MIPS processors (in the future), and Intel's mobile processors (also in the future, as I don't consider them very competitive right now). Other ARM chip makers that don't compete in the mobile market include Marvell (servers and smart TV's), Calxeda (servers) and Applied Micro (servers). The ARM market will be alive and kicking for a very long time.

ansible 14y ago

Intel's been working on mobile processors for phones. They've had a few design wins for their single-core 2GHz Atom. No phones you can buy in the USA though. Reviews for released phones like the Motorola Mobility RAZRi are decent, but didn't seem to knock anyone's socks off. If they develop good LTE integration (they bought part of Infineon a few years ago) and if their management stays committed to this, they may have a chance. Intel was previously a big backer of WiMAX. Marvell, who bought the PXA line from Intel doesn't have chips competitive with the current generation from TI, Freescale, etc. I don't think Broadcom has anything competitive either, but they don't have much publicly available information. You've also got Freescale. I don't know if their latest generation (the i.MX6 series) is currently shipping, or how good the OS support is. I haven't heard of any major design wins for them recently, if anyone knows, please post it. If you are focused on the automotive market, this might be a good choice because they typically have CAN bus support. Then you've got Samsung of course, though you'll be competing against their own products. Apple doesn't sell their chips. That's about it for the majors. You've got other mid-range chips from low-cost vendors like Allwinner, but I haven't heard of anything from those guys which will allow you to make a leading-edge phone or tablet. Late addition: According to their website, MediaTek also has a mobile app processor, but it is ARM11 based.

ippisl 14y ago
mediatek has a 1-ghz dual core cortex-a9 , quite cheaply[1]. [1]http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4376108/MediaTek-to-bring-premier-smartphone-features-to--150----200-handsets http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4376108/MediaTek-to-...
- ansible 14y ago
  Cool, I hadn't heard about that one. That's good news.
joezydeco 14y ago
I'm prototyping on an i.MX6 Quad dev board from Boundary. It's nice, I'd call the chip an incremental step from the i.MX53. Trying to benchmark it against a Marvell Armada 610 and it's no contest. Allwinner is a comparable ARM core, but I wouldn't design it into anything I'm building for more than six months at a time. It's like all of the other noname chinese cores (Ingenic is the other one that comes to mind, but they're all MIPS). They just come and go with no warning.