Intel Demos Phone and Tablet In New Mobile Chip Push 99
holy_calamity writes "Intel is making another assault on the mobile processor market, showing off a prototype phone and a tablet using its newest mobile processor Medfield. The company claims that products based on the chips will appear in the first half of next year. There's reason to believe that Intel might get somewhere this time. Its chipsets traditionally comprise three separate chips, a design that guzzles power. Medfield introduces an all-in-one chip, mirroring the power efficient design of the ARM-based chips that run smart phones and tablets in the market today."
"mirroring the power efficient design of the ARM" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"mirroring the power efficient design of the AR (Score:2, Interesting)
That's a bit of a cheap shot. Increased component integration has been a driving force for longer than Intel has been a company, and Intel has been as much of a driving force as anybody else. In fact Intel should excel at system-on-a-chip, since it's all about getting lots of transistors on a small piece of silicon, something they happen to be pretty good at.
Except that full system-on-a-chip designs, including X86 versions courtesy of AMD's Geode, have been around quite a while, but Intel has seemed hesitant to actually do it.
Though I will point out that it's cyclical... at some point, people will start saying "Hey, why don't we make that bit there modular, so we can upgrade is separately without having to redesign the rest of the chip?".
Re:Why we might possibly care (Score:4, Interesting)
ARM level performance and power consumption with X86 compatibility would open up a whole new world for netbook-type devices. Think 48 hour battery life with your average 50Wh laptop 6-cell...