New Analysis Casts Doubt On Intel's Smartphone Performance vs. ARM Devices 94
MojoKid writes "A few weeks ago, the analyst company ABI Research published a report claiming that Intel's new CloverTrail+ platform (dual-core Medfield) for smartphones was significantly faster and more power efficient than anything ARM's various partners were shipping. If you follow the smartphone market, that was a very surprising claim. Medfield was a decent midrange platform when it launched in 2012, but Intel made it clear that its goal for Medfield was to compete with other platforms in its division — not seize the performance crown outright. Further investigation by other analysts has blown serious holes in the ABI Research report. Not only does it focus on a single, highly questionable benchmark (AnTuTu), the x86 version of that benchmark is running different code than the ARM flavors. Furthermore, the recently released Version 3.3 of the test is much faster on Intel hardware than on any of the other platforms. But even with those caveats in place, the ABI Research report is bad science. Single-source performance comparisons almost inevitably are."
Which they do not do (Score:5, Informative)
App stores make this less of an issue. If Apple wants to switch the iDevices to x86, they'll tell developers that they must have an x86 build posted by such-and-such date.
Apple DOES NOT do that for older apps. It will often place restrictions on app updates or new app submissions (like must include iPhone5 screen shots) but they don't ever force older apps to do any kind of update - nor should they.
AnTuTu assembly code analysed (Score:5, Informative)
Some guy on the Anandtech forums analysed the AnTuTu code and found that it indeed had been tweeked to favor x86 processors:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2330027 [anandtech.com]