Intel's Plans For X86 Android, Smartphones, and Tablets 151
MrSeb writes "'Last week, Intel announced that it had added x86 optimizations to Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, but the text of the announcement and included quotes were vague and a bit contradictory given the open nature of Android development. After discussing the topic with Intel we've compiled a laundry list of the company's work in Gingerbread and ICS thus far, and offered a few of our own thoughts on what to expect in 2012 as far as x86-powered smartphones and tablets are concerned.' The main points: Intel isn't just a chip maker (it has oodles of software experience); Android's Native Development Kit now includes support for x86 and MMX/SSE instruction sets and can be used to compile dual x86/ARM, 'fat' binaries; and development tools like Vtune and Intel Graphics Performance Analyzer are on their way to Android."
x86 (Score:5, Insightful)
Since most of x86 architecture and related hardware is getting smaller and most smartphone are getting bigger, they are bound to meet somewhere.
hmm, I guess it will be called a tablet or an i(ntel)Pad. ehm ehm
Re:power consumption (Score:5, Insightful)
It is. The difference between an x86 and ARM core is around an order of magnitude at the moment for the same performance. But the difference between an x86 core and the display is another order of magnitude, so for devices that you mainly use with the screen on there isn't much difference between x86 and ARM in terms of overall power consumption. The difference in battery life between an ARM core at 200mW and an Intel core at 2W is very small when the display is using 10-20W. There are a few display technologies that are supposed to be hitting the market Real Soon Now that ought to make the difference between x86 and ARM a lot more apparent.
Re:Intel Softcores (Score:5, Insightful)
x86 is CISC when we know RISC is better. Intel/AMD do some tricks to make the core more RISC, but why not just cut out the middle man? Why bother with converting it at all?
Pull up a pillow and have a seat around ol' Grandpa Short Circuit. This may come as a shock to you.
Some programs still being sold and run on desktop computers today were compiled over ten years ago. Some programs still sold and run in x86 embedded environments were compiled twenty to thirty years ago. That's why x86 is still around.
x86 is still around for the same reason Windows is still around. It still runs binaries that are really, really old. In some cases (many, I expect), the source code for these binaries no longer exists, or the toolchain for building it is bitrotted. That's why x86 is still around.
Imagine some sci-fi horror film where everyone's forgotten how to maintain the vast infrastructure of their civilization, they just don't poke it because they don't want it to break. That's why x86 is still around.
Meanwhile, every year there are more long-lived applications built for the existing platform, with very little hope for being updated for newer platforms and processors; their binaries are likely to be running for another five or ten years.
Amusingly, open-source software has a clear advantage over closed source software in this arena. Several distributions are actively keeping software packages portable across CPU archs, and even portable across OS kernels. (Debian and Gentoo both support BSD foundations as well as Linux)