ARM Attacks Intel's Netbook Stranglehold 521
Barence writes "British chip designer ARM is launching an outright attack on Intel with the launch of a 2GHz processor aimed at everything from netbooks to servers. ARM claims the 40nm Cortex A9 MPCore processor represents a shift in strategy for the company, which has until now concentrated on low-power processors for mobile devices. In the consumer market, ARM is pitching the Cortex A9 directly against Intel's Atom, claiming the processor offers five times the power while drawing comparable amounts of energy. 'It's head and shoulders above anything Intel can deliver today,' ARM VP of marketing Eric Schom claims. However, it has one major hurdle to overcome: it doesn't support Windows. 'We've had conversations with Microsoft and you can imagine what they entail,' says Schom."
Porting code to a new architecture (Score:5, Interesting)
Will ARM compete? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But, does it run DOS? (Score:5, Interesting)
A call to ARMs! (Score:4, Interesting)
A Microsoft refusal to support a really cool netbook technology would be a good opening for Linux.
Re:Goody (Score:3, Interesting)
Great! You go ahead and be an early adopter, suffer through first gen/beta headaches, buggy drivers, random system crashes. Call me and let me know when it's stable enough for "mom". I don't know about you, but I've grown used to stable hardware, and I'm not about to go back to pre-XP SP1 crashyness for an extra hour of battery life, maybe even two. 5 hrs is plenty enough for me.
Re:No windows support? (Score:3, Interesting)
real solution (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of barriers to Windows adoption on the ARM processor that go beyond MS not really wanting it. If they really want to gain market share above and beyond cell phones and PDA's, ARM needs a strong partner to create a real, integrated, polished solution. And by solution I don't mean a device. They need to do something akin to the iPhone, in creating a nice device or set of devices with a consistent polished operating system and with an integrated ecosystem of solutions. The project is large in scope and they need a partner that preferably has an existing position to leverage, experience, money, and which is not beholden to Microsoft. A cell phone service company might be a viable partner or Canonical and someone, or RIM or Google or an appliance maker that has not entered the netbook market yet.
If they really want to sell netbooks with ARM processors in them they have to think big. They need to better than hope MS is scared. They need to commit to building a system that bypasses MS's core monopolies through vertical integration. This is no small task. They need the hardware, which has to be cheap and hit a sweet spot. They need an OS and applications. They need dev tools for applications and services. They need Web and network services integrated with the device. More than all those pieces which are out there, they need someone to put it all together in a nice package and usability test the whole user experience from buying to opening the box right up through using it for all the common tasks: Web surfing, E-mail, chat, word processing, potentially phone calls and videophone, playing games, playing music and video, and adding new applications. The problem with a lot attempts at this sort of thing is the assumption that someone else will take care of parts or that blaming someone else somehow makes a failure better.
Re:But, does it run DOS? (Score:2, Interesting)
ARM is not x86, I know that. The issue here is more about the emulation. Nothing says ARM can't be emulated on X86, except microsoft currently. Save the ad hominem.
Re:Goody (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What does it support? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Porting code to a new architecture (Score:4, Interesting)
Another ARM gotcha is that "char" is "unsigned" unless you specifically make it "signed", because "unsigned char" can be manipulated more efficiently by the instruction set. This is not what C programmers usually expect, although it is permitted by ANSI C. It can cause some interesting bugs.
Re:No windows support? (Score:2, Interesting)
ARM Holdings is a closed company (Score:1, Interesting)
the arm architecture is own by them and they have a history of using patent threats and strategic headhunting to kill competition are related open source projects.
Go for Linux and let Microsoft+Intel rot. (Score:2, Interesting)
The only way the ARM manufacturers stand any chance is to either go for a completely new OS or jump onto the Linux bandwagon. Microsoft wont endanger their cooperation with Intel and AMD until ARM has secured a sufficient enough marketshare. This makes ARM and Microsoft a catch 22 happening. Any support will be superficial with lots and lots of fot dragging.
On the other hand Asus has shown just how successfull cheap small devices can be with Linux on them. If the ARM companies goes ahead full steam pushing devices with Linux Microsoft will be forced to jump aboard no matter what they really want to do. By then Microsoft wont be calling the shots and ARM will have a much better bargaining position.
I also think the ARM manufacturers should take a long hard look at the Wintel OEMs and think about their situation. Do they really want ot find themselves in a position where all their revenue is taken by a third party like Microsoft who doesnt contribute anything at all to the platform? Are they comfortable to be totally in the hands of a company that cant manage to turn out a new version of their OS in almost ten years?
Re:real solution: Google (Score:2, Interesting)
TFA mentions that Google Chrome OS should support ARM, so since we already see Google Phones with Android and Google Apps, I don't think it's overly optimistic to hope to see a "GoogleBook" or Google Tablet.
Re:No windows support? (Score:3, Interesting)
The apps issue was only secondary. When NT 3.1 first came out, boatloads of apps were ported to MIPS/Alpha as well as Intel. BOATLOADS. I supported a network with all three (four, we had some pre-release IBM PowerPC's in 1997). But that cost differential is what killed any chance for a multi-platform windows.
This is a different case. A9 can be as cost efficient as Atom.
Re:Goody (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't fall into that trap. The future of that driver is very much an unknown [happyassassin.net] at this point in time. It is unclear if Intel intends to support it [livejournal.com], and "clusterfuck" is the word xorg developers have used to describe the project handling so far...
Summary: Do not buy Z series before a proper driver appears, unless you're happy running a specific version of Ubuntu forever, or vesa is good enough for you.
Re:What does it support? (Score:3, Interesting)
MPlayer already takes advantaje of several different processors characteristics, requiring a simple recopile. If it doesn't aready, it doesn't take a lot to take full advantaje of this chip.
Also, flash does run on ARM, but I guess it doesn't optimize for each processor. If we are luck, that will make Google start streaming Youtube videos on a way that uses mplayer. They can even keep the flv format.