Intel Claims Chip Suppliers Will Flock To Its Mobile Tech 91
MojoKid writes It has been over six years since Intel first unveiled its Atom CPUs and detailed its plans for new, ultra-mobile devices. The company's efforts to break into smartphone and tablet sales, while turning a profit, have largely come to naught. Nonetheless, company CEO Brian Krzanich remains optimistic. Speaking to reporters recently, Krzanich opined that the company's new manufacturing partners like Rockchip and Spreadtrum would convert entirely to Intel architectures within the next few years. Krzanich has argued that with Qualcomm and MediaTek dominating the market, it's going to be tougher and tougher for little guys like Rockchip and Spreadtrum to compete in the same spaces. There's truth to that argument, to be sure, but Intel's ability to offer a competitive alternative is unproven. According to a report from JP Morgan, Intel's cost-per-wafer is currently estimated as equivalent to TSMC's average selling price per wafer — meaning TSMC is making money well below Intel's break-even. Today, Intel is unquestionably capable of building tablet processors that offer a good overall experience but the question of what defines a "good" experience is measured in its similarity to ARM. It's hard to imagine that Intel wants to build market share as an invisible partner, but in order to fundamentally change the way people think about Intel hardware in tablets and smartphones, it needs to go beyond simply being "as good" and break into territory that leaves people asking: "Is the ARM core just as good as the Intel chip?"
Cost per wafer? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not really clear how much the cost per wafer matters.
Intel are a process node ahead of the competition so presumably they can fit more transistors on a given wafer, so the worth of a wafer is higher. Also if that's a best-to-best comparison rather than equivalent-node-to-equivalent node then it's not a direct comparison.
I'd assume intel's yields and costs on old but not retired processes are resprctively higher and lower than on the top end node
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The legacy compatibility can be handled by running a VM. There's not need to support it in hardware at all, but you're right that it takes only a tiny bit of die space. A '386 had fewer than 300k transistors. A P5 had 3 million. An Atom has 47 million. That's skipping some architecture steps in between, but you can see the direction. Each can have a complete implementation of the previous architecture and it's still only a few percent of the processor complexity.
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The legacy compatibility can be handled by running a VM. There's not need to support it in hardware at all
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
There speaks someone who's never written a PC emulator. Intel already tried it with the Itanium, which is one reason that chip was a disaster.
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Apple changed processor architectures entirely twice.
Just because it's been done poorly doesn't mean it can't be done well.
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The first Itaniums had x86 compat in hardware and were, I believe, disappointingly slow at executing x86 code. Obviously that's something that Intel could have improved if they applied themselves to the problem (and maybe they'd have made it faster if they hadn't been expecting / hoping / planning to replace x86 anyhow).
But given the different philosophies of the architectures, I think it's somewhat plausible that doing an x86 -> Itanium conversion in hardware is just a bit awkward and that software mig
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1) Full 64bit may work on linux and BSDs, but on Windows you need 32bit at least for backward compatibility (or even compatibilty with current 32bit software). Hybrid 32/64bit mode (called x32, with 32bit pointers) could also find use on mobile platform where the cheap offering only have 512MB or 1GB ram (but you lose good ASLR)
3)4) things are working somewhat this way already (chip with 2 cores and GT3 graphics, etc.) with GPU power and features and reliability increasing with each gen. But sometimes we do
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Ah yes.. once you enter 64bit mode, 16bit mode and 16bit virtual machine (VM86) are unavailable. So after booting your 64bit OS it's as if the chip is 32/64bit only, like most 64bit CPU are I believe (e.g. Sparc, MIPS, PPC..)
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1) Cut all the legacy crap. Forget emulating x86-32b/x86-16b, just build a straight 64-bit chip
Most of that is microcoded. There's no benefit in removing most of the 32-bit stuff, because it's exactly the same in 64-bit mode. Things like segments are microcoded and if you have a non-zero base you hit a really slow microcoded path on Intel's low-power CPUs.
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Isn't x86/x64 notorious for wasting a crap ton of silicon for stupid functionality no one wants or needs?
Indeed, the cost of backward x86 compatibility is huge, and it is not easy to say what it can be used for on a tablet or smart phone.
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Indeed, the cost of backward x86 compatibility is huge, and it is not easy to say what it can be used for on a tablet or smart phone.
Hint: it's called... Windows.
People will only buy a Windows tablet if it can run Windows apps, and most of those are 32-bit or worse. Intel aren't likely to release an x86 CPU that can't run Windows any time soon.
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It's not even just windows... there's a lot of code that with compatibility can be retooled to any new x86 platform... and there's a lot of such code that wasn't written with portability in mind.
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Isn't x86/x64 notorious for wasting a crap ton of silicon for stupid functionality no one wants or needs?
Indeed, the cost of backward x86 compatibility is huge, and it is not easy to say what it can be used for on a tablet or smart phone.
You just pulled that from your ass. You don't have a clue what the cost of x86 compatibility is. You don't design x86 chips. If you did, you would know. It isn't huge. It's a little bit.
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Yes, cost per transistor is what matters, but still it's not clear that Intel's cost per transistor isn't more expensive than other foundries, as they make high margin CPUs and can easily absorb larger costs. Also, the fact that Intel has to heavily subsidise their Bay Trail chips to compete with ARM SoC's is a possible indication of higher manufacture costs.
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You are partly right. The correct question is to ask *when* cost per wafer matters. You rightly state that Intel's cost per wafer is higher because it is running leading edge processes. To make money doing that, you have to deliver value to your customer in the form of a chip that can only be manufactured on a leading edge process. If your costomer can derive the same value from a chip made on a cheaper process, the ultimate end-game is that your office cube walls end up at an auction house.
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http://www.target.com/p/acer-i... [target.com]
Almost bought one at Target yesterday.
Looking into what can be done and other options for similar price. I want a Linux tablet (wish I could waste enough to get a surface pro 3)
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Intel are a process node ahead of the competition
This needs to be qualified. It is true for the high-performance chips, but for mobile and tablets we're talking about SoCs. As far as I know Intel is still not shipping any SoC chip in 14nm and such things are quite a way out in 2015. Intel mobile chips are still in 22nm today, whereas TSMC is in volume with 20nm (Apple latest APs, QCOM latest LTE modems). Intel may leapfrog TSMC in 2015, but the gap for low-cost mobile SoC is not as big as people often think. Intel is the king of high performance, for low-
Multi-core? (Score:1)
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The problems you describe have _absolutely_nothing_ to do with the underlying chip instruction set architecture.
Then what is it? Android OS problem?
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The problems you describe have _absolutely_nothing_ to do with the underlying chip instruction set architecture.
Then what is it? Android OS problem?
YES it is an Android problem. barring a manufacturing defect the chip does what it is told, their is nothing you can really do at the hardware level to counteract an OS that gets its knickers in a knot.
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The problems you describe have _absolutely_nothing_ to do with the underlying chip instruction set architecture.
Then what is it? Android OS problem?
Yes, it's a fundamental problem with trying to run the whole device under a series of "Java" (Dalvik) Virtual Machines. The move to ARTS may help that; we'll see; but as long as the JVM-derived stuff is in the picture it will probably continue to be an issue, even with ARTS (it's just that ARTS has a magnitude better performance over Dalvik).
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Maybe you're running out of RAM and it's crapping out, or some stupid app is hammering the low quality flash with writes, plus garbage collection pauses..
More multi-core won't help you. Better OS (Android 5 or even Windows?), more memory, better flash (such as stacked flash that works like a single chip SSD?) or post flash memory (MRAM or other) will help. Sometimes a 15 year old PC has it better.. Its hard drive may fare much better at writes sometimes (!) and it allows swap space.
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Yes, as far as I know, Android devices never have virtual memory turned on (you don't want to wear out the flash memory on-board, because when it's worn out the device is bricked).
So when you're low on memory, Android starts killing processes pretty much at random.
On SOME Android devices you can turn on swapping if you root, but on others it's disabled in the kernel.
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There's a difference between using virtual memory and using a swap file. Android devices ALL use virtual memory and a MMU. However, they usually don't have a swap file.
Linux doesn't normally use a swap file. Rather it normally uses a swap partition which provides a lot better performance than a swap file since the OS can directly manage the layout itself instead of having to necessarily traverse the file-system.
Yes, you can use an actual swap file with Linux instead; it's just no where near the norm (1%) and highly discouraged.
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Maybe in the future we can get an SD card made of MRAM, then you can use it as swap on an older device. And get virtually free writes for applications and data, if there's no big barrier to applications installed on it.
You have similar examples of exponentially better storage upgrade for old gear, like using Compact Flash cards in an Amiga, or a cheap 2.5" IDE to mSATA adapter for laptops.
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I'm not an Apple fanboy, I own both Android devices and Apple devices. Why don't you buy an Apple phone the problem you describe which I have seen on many Android devices does not happen on Apple devices, they rarely crash.
Single source issues (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, and it's not the first time Intel face this control rejection. Back about 15 years ago Intel wanted to push the Xscale into the embedded market, especially in the router market. There have spend a big amount of money to artificially build a complete ecosystem with SDK suppliers, and fake early customers. Intel take a very aggressive team of vendors trying to sell the Xscale chips the anyone making routers. There pretended that the system is open, but in fact there wanted that the companies use a "routi
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-jcdr
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Sorry, why ?
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Fairness (Score:1)
Of couse, Intel will always play fair and not use its money to sell components below cost, give money to OEMs putting 'Intel Inside' stickers as "advertisement", leverage the CPUs it sells for laptops and desktops to the OEMs which also produce tablets and/or phones.
They would not dare to!
They can also expect Microsoft's help them for that, after the amazing success that was Windows RT for ARMs.
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Unfortunately that is not what it seems like.
When you have a socket you have all sorts of complexity related to the socket that disappears without it. But this causes certain problems with certain market segments that you just can't do it.
The socket is disappearing for most low-end devices, and some high-end laptops, because the cost/cooling benefit of losing the socket wins out. In high end desktops, you will stop seeing ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, etc making market differentiation if they now have to sell the
News Flash! Company makes bold inflated claim! (Score:4, Insightful)
If Intel's product is actually better, they wouldn't have to make such bold predictions because people will want it.
This is just more marketing bullshit.
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If Intel's product is actually better, they wouldn't have to make such bold predictions because people will want it.
Not true. Intel's problem is not that they have inferior product, it's that customers don't want fast more than they want cheap.
Intel can't afford to be the big winner if they're only going to make a few bucks profit on each chip. Take a look at Intel's profits compared to TSMC. They don't just need customers to use Intel's chips, they need those customers to pay 2 or 3 times as much as the
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Not true. Intel's problem is not that they have inferior product, it's that customers don't want fast more than they want cheap.
price is a property of a product. your chip can have the best tech specs but if it's overpriced then it's a poor product.
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Please mod parent up.
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price is a property of a product.
I don't agree. I've seen non-computer related products that were built to last. They lasted 5 times longer then their competitors, but cost twice as much.
In the end, they weren't commercially successful because cheap beat everything else in this market segment. However, I still wouldn't call them poor products. It's simply that people either didn't value or couldn't evaluate the product.
The customer determination of overpricing is often dependent on marketing budgets. I
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price is a property of a product.
I don't agree. I've seen non-computer related products that were built to last. They lasted 5 times longer then their competitors, but cost twice as much.
In the end, they weren't commercially successful because cheap beat everything else in this market segment. However, I still wouldn't call them poor products. It's simply that people either didn't value or couldn't evaluate the product.
you seem to have a complete lack of understanding of the difference between an item and a product.
good day.
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> you seem to have a complete lack of understanding of the difference between an item and a product.
Well, using standard vernacular, the terms item and product aren't exactly unambiguous. Pretending otherwise is... um.. an "interesting" defense :-).
I'm also pretty certain most people would disagree with the idea "a product can become good solely as a result of an increased marketing budget", but would agree with the idea "a product may seem better priced as a result of an increased marketing budget".
Of
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Don't forget that Intel is also marketing to its business customers, partners, suppliers and vendors what value Intel has to them today and in the future. They have a bit longer perspective than "Should I buy an iPad/Android/Windows tablet today?" they want to hear why they should invest in creating products and services based on Intel technology. Normal end users don't care about the nerd pr0n they want features and prices but for investments that's like driving using the rear view mirror. For example I be
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Intel is not infallible:
See Xscale fiasco.
See ia64 fiasco.
As for Nokia, I doubt that existed any partner not aware of the burning platform memo after all the press about it. And the vast majority of the 'nerd pr0n' (as you like to write) have proved to be right about the predictable consequence of this memo.
What is this bullshit? (Score:2)
Windows 8 tablets run Intel processors, so they're not "trying" to break into the tablet market, they HAVE broken into it. The smartphone market, not so much.
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Windows 8 tablets are expensive laptop-replacement machines. The cheap-as-shit media-consuming toy device market is still owned 100% by ARM. These two markets are not even close to the same thing.
Lenovo Yoga 2 sells for $299.... The oldest model iPad mini sells for $249. The new model iPad Air sells for $499 and up.
You're just wrong.
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What part of cheap as shit media consuming device do you think describes the iPad?
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http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/t... [lenovo.com]
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MS Surface (and clones) are not tablets. They are merely laptops with bad screen hinges.
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"Merely" laptops as in more capable than what you think of as a tablet?
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Intel isn't going to win this one (Score:5, Insightful)
I've said it before: companies that are perfectly happy with ARM chips now are not going to be in a hurry to lock themselves in to sole-source chips.
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3202785&cid=41735071 [slashdot.org]
Intel would have to be better than ARM, and not just a little bit better... they would have to be dramatically better, such that the risk of being locked in to a sole source vendor would be worth accepting. It hasn't happened yet and I don't expect it to happen.
It will be difficult for any company, even AMD, to really challenge Intel in the high-end CPU market. But it would take a miracle for Intel to lock down the mobile CPUs market.
Intel's plan:
0) Get everyone locked in to needing to buy chips from Intel.
1) Charge stiff margins for those chips.
2) Profit!
Intel does have some chips in some Android devices, but they aren't charging the stiff margins they would like to charge. I don't think they will ever manage to do it.
Second best would be to not charge stiff margins but at least get a large chunk of the available profits from the mobile space. But I don't think they will be able to push out ARM and gain majority share of the market; they will continue to be a niche player.
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They might win if they can dominate the high end mobile chip space. Then they can sell at a premium to manufacturers of high end mobiles.
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I think that's their only hope. Unfortunately for Intel, I don't see a lot of customers willing to pay a substantial premium for more powerful chips, especially when power draw is such as issue.
If Intel is going to maintain the revenue that it has delivered for the last several decades (and pay for its substantial research budget), it can't afford to enter low margin markets. Spending a billion dollars to develop the world's best mobile chip makes no sense if your customers aren't willing to pay high enou
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I'm looking forward to trying out one of these real soon: http://www.asus.com/Tablets_Mo... [asus.com] (intel cpu phone docking tablet)
As far as cost is concerned, it's available for $200 with no contract (carrier-locked to AT&T). Once a procedure is known for unlocking, rooting and using with Tmobile, I'll be their next customer.
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Unlike in the desktop world, the mobile device operating systems rely on common middleware to allow different processor architectures to function.
Anyone that moves to Intel would first have to show that Intel can be as effective or more so that ARM based architectures at executing the SAME bytecode. Therefore there is no lock-in as you could at any time switch to another processor and not lose any compatibility with existing software.
In short, the same thing that lets Intel enter the existing mobile space i
Arm is a moving target (Score:3)
Arm v8 is coming out, and it has a much more sophisticated memory model than any previous chip (it is basically the first chip to clone the c++11 memory model exactly). I expect that means that arm will go from making cooperation between cores less efficient than intel to more efficient than intel.
Intel subsides engineering costs for mobile (Score:1)
One not so commonly known fact is that many - probably the majority of the tablet 'wins' Intel is touting - come from subsidised engineering.
What does that mean ?
Basically it means - that Intel pays a good chunk of the engineering costs to Samsung or HP to use an Intel processor in a Tablet or Chromebook.
This problem will only be magnified the further down the profit margin stack Intel tries to play.
Problem is this is a company that is used to making a 60% margin on each processor it sells, it's culture can
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I have an Intel tablet (Score:2)
I personally have owned several ARM based Android tablets and recently bought an Intel Atom based 7" ASUS Android tablet for my kid on sale for about $100. For that kind of money, I was not expecting much, but have been pleasantly surprised at how fast it is. It is as fast, if not faster than most modern Android tablets. And it lasts just as long as my Nexus 7. I was not expecting Intel to have achieve parity at this time. But they have. If they are able to offer a solution that is a little more perfo
Depends On The Wintel Monopoly (Score:2)
Microsoft is the dark horse in this race. Intel's trump card is that their products run on x86. Computing power is getting to the point where mobile devices are able to run Windows 8 quite well. I have a Dell Venue Pro 8 from last year that can run full-on Windows 8.1, and it's based on the old Atom. While the device has flaws, it is still goddamned amazing (and very useful!) to have Windows instead of Android in terms of application compatibility.
The new Intel Broadwell processors promise even better perfo