RF & Microwave Designline Blog
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Hughston
However, deep pockets allow you to buy a company that can compete. I think Intel ...
Hughston
Intel did have the PXA series of processors which were ARM based but their die ...
Intel outside
Doug Grant
3/24/2012 9:50 AM EDT
Why can’t the world’s biggest IC company get any market share in the cellular space? I’ve asked myself that question a bunch of times over the years, and find myself asking it again in light of a few recent announcements from the company (another from ISSCC and another from EETimes).
When the cellular market started to take off, Intel was a strong flash memory supplier. They decided to get into the GSM baseband processor business and their approach was to integrate the baseband processor with the flash. Intel had a competitive ARM-based microcontroller core, and acquired a DSP core through a joint development. The resulting chip, code-named Manitoba, was a flop. Why did Manitoba fail? In my view, the flash integration was a bad idea. There was too much on the chip for low-end applications, not enough for high-end applications, and the more-complex flash process made the baseband too expensive.
A few years later, Intel spent $1.6B to acquire Israel-based DSPC, which at the time was the only open-market vendor of CDMA chips aside from Qualcomm. However, as things progressed, DSPC’s only significant customer exited the handset business. There were a few more developments by that group, but none gained any market traction. Eventually the Intel wireless group was sold off (for much less than $1.6B), and that was the end of Intel in cellular. Or was it?
A couple of years ago, Intel bought Infineon’s wireless business for another $1.4B. Infineon was the supplier of RF and baseband chips to Apple for the first couple of iPhone models. In addition, Infineon had just replaced TI as Nokia’s GSM chip supplier on the strength of a fully-integrated RF-plus-baseband chip as TI struggled to get their “LoCosto” single-chip solution using “Digital RF Processing” to production. Thus it looked like Intel had made the acquisition that would put it in highly-visible, leading wireless handset customers.
Then Apple switched to Qualcomm baseband chips. I’m not sure if the single-chip solution is still being used at Nokia. There are lots of alternatives now, and handset manufacturers are more likely to switch suppliers now than in the past.
Intel’s engineers gave several interesting wireless-related papers at this year’s ISSCC. The first, sort of hidden in a processor session, described the integration of an 802.11 transceiver on the same chip as a dual-core Atom processor. They did some smart things to prevent the noise from the processor from trashing the radio. But the die photo shows that the RF transceiver takes more real estate that the two Atom cores.
An Intel executive, commenting on these developments, noted that “Commercial versions of (the Atom+Wi-Fi) chips could emerge by mid-decade” and “We can now build a Wi-Fi radio and hopefully in the not too distant future a cellular radio to make digital RF practical for SoCs.”
The first statement shows that Intel doesn’t yet understand that the mobile market moves too fast to allow research chips to develop into commercial chips over a 3-year time frame. And he needs to look back at TI’s attempt to evolve their DRP technology from Bluetooth to cellular. Part 15 systems like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are very forgiving of poor sensitivity and transmitter defects. Cellular radios are much much harder to integrate.
Intel has now announced their first design wins in handsets using the Atom-based baseband chip…all with second-tier handset manufacturers. And the multi-year deal announced in January between Intel and Motorola (or perhaps I should say Google) seems to only relate to Atom-based apps processors to run Android, not the “real wireless” stuff. The block diagram for the platform shows Intel (actually Infineon technology) cellular communications, but TI for Wi-Fi/BT.
When the cellular market started to take off, Intel was a strong flash memory supplier. They decided to get into the GSM baseband processor business and their approach was to integrate the baseband processor with the flash. Intel had a competitive ARM-based microcontroller core, and acquired a DSP core through a joint development. The resulting chip, code-named Manitoba, was a flop. Why did Manitoba fail? In my view, the flash integration was a bad idea. There was too much on the chip for low-end applications, not enough for high-end applications, and the more-complex flash process made the baseband too expensive.
A few years later, Intel spent $1.6B to acquire Israel-based DSPC, which at the time was the only open-market vendor of CDMA chips aside from Qualcomm. However, as things progressed, DSPC’s only significant customer exited the handset business. There were a few more developments by that group, but none gained any market traction. Eventually the Intel wireless group was sold off (for much less than $1.6B), and that was the end of Intel in cellular. Or was it?
A couple of years ago, Intel bought Infineon’s wireless business for another $1.4B. Infineon was the supplier of RF and baseband chips to Apple for the first couple of iPhone models. In addition, Infineon had just replaced TI as Nokia’s GSM chip supplier on the strength of a fully-integrated RF-plus-baseband chip as TI struggled to get their “LoCosto” single-chip solution using “Digital RF Processing” to production. Thus it looked like Intel had made the acquisition that would put it in highly-visible, leading wireless handset customers.
Then Apple switched to Qualcomm baseband chips. I’m not sure if the single-chip solution is still being used at Nokia. There are lots of alternatives now, and handset manufacturers are more likely to switch suppliers now than in the past.
Intel’s engineers gave several interesting wireless-related papers at this year’s ISSCC. The first, sort of hidden in a processor session, described the integration of an 802.11 transceiver on the same chip as a dual-core Atom processor. They did some smart things to prevent the noise from the processor from trashing the radio. But the die photo shows that the RF transceiver takes more real estate that the two Atom cores.
An Intel executive, commenting on these developments, noted that “Commercial versions of (the Atom+Wi-Fi) chips could emerge by mid-decade” and “We can now build a Wi-Fi radio and hopefully in the not too distant future a cellular radio to make digital RF practical for SoCs.”
The first statement shows that Intel doesn’t yet understand that the mobile market moves too fast to allow research chips to develop into commercial chips over a 3-year time frame. And he needs to look back at TI’s attempt to evolve their DRP technology from Bluetooth to cellular. Part 15 systems like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are very forgiving of poor sensitivity and transmitter defects. Cellular radios are much much harder to integrate.
Intel has now announced their first design wins in handsets using the Atom-based baseband chip…all with second-tier handset manufacturers. And the multi-year deal announced in January between Intel and Motorola (or perhaps I should say Google) seems to only relate to Atom-based apps processors to run Android, not the “real wireless” stuff. The block diagram for the platform shows Intel (actually Infineon technology) cellular communications, but TI for Wi-Fi/BT.
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t.alex
3/24/2012 8:08 PM EDT
A struggling giant.
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vdara
3/26/2012 5:09 PM EDT
It is really hard to call it a struggling giant, based on http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4369843/Chip-rankings--Intel-had-highest-share-in-over-10-years.
I guess ARM threat is a bit exaggerated.
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MikeSmith2011
3/27/2012 12:35 PM EDT
Their current revenue is due to their core Server/Desktop/Notebook processors, nothing from the wireless segment. The ARM threat will not show on their bottom line till the middle of the decade.
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agk
3/26/2012 6:21 AM EDT
To succeed, Intel's chip needs to be smaller with more features,low power and lowest price. R&D senior person personally need to have the experience and qualification to monitor and guide the team in the right path.
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Toth147
3/26/2012 7:54 AM EDT
I agree. The chips need to have all the features required by its users and that too it should be compatible enough. The developers of the chip should have the deep knowledge as to what their customers want. And i am sure they might be working hard for it.
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t.alex
3/26/2012 9:43 AM EDT
The ARM ecosystem is so prevalent. It is not easy to kickstart some development with Intel platform.
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Frank Eory
3/26/2012 1:12 PM EDT
One could summarize it by saying "a series of missteps", or perhaps more accurately, "a series of poor integration decisions."
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Bert22306
3/26/2012 8:20 PM EDT
Yes, but the question is, what is the right decision?
I thought it was interesting to see that what would normally make sense, i.e. integrating the CPU and RF parts into a single chip, for handheld devices, is not necessarily your friend. This is too volatile (fickle) a market. Things change too fast. And the handset/tablet vendors apparently don't like to be tied to one chip vendor only.
Seems a little like the manufacturing problem. Apple chooses to stay in China why? Because they can provide a more manual manufacturing process, which is faster to restructure, for the same cost as highly automated plants in the US. Or maybe even less. And being able to change the manufacturing process is essential to keep up with the fast-changing products.
So, counterintuitively, best not to obsess too much about integration to the nth degree? Allow your solutions to work more flexibly, with other chips? Give the vendor an easier time of creating upscale and cheaper products, mixing and matching components as needed?
Almost seems like Intel would be better off creating a whole launder list of more single-purpose building blocks.
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kdboyce
3/27/2012 5:33 PM EDT
Bert22306 makes a good point. All-in-one integration seems like a good thing to do, but clearly does not allow for rapid changes in feature sets for cell phone differentiation and tiered platform strategies. Furthermore, such complicated chips take longer to design, debug, and validate in an actual phone design. If you miss a key timeline in the customers plans, an alternative solution can get in even if it is not optimized to the nth degree. Best to remain flexible.
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atul_iisc
3/28/2012 12:35 AM EDT
Looks to be quite dumb as to why Intel engineers were attempting such mammoth Integration tasks. Looks to be much enormous R&D dollars wasted.
TI went in the other direction and adopted PoP technology, wherein their baseband chips have pads on top. DRAM chips can be mounted on these pads right on top of the baseband. This gives flexibilty to the handset manufacturer to delay its memory size decision right upto the last assembly stage. In some cases a manual rework step on finished boards. Much like the Apple in China example from Bert above.
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ibm221
3/26/2012 9:26 PM EDT
my feeling is intel has reaped 2 much from cpu monopoly.
glad to see it's feeding some junk talent with it's extra $$s. this is a way they feed back the society as well. ie. those folks don't need to get government aid, intel ll pay them.
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prabhakar_deosthali
3/27/2012 4:07 AM EDT
It might be Intel's complacency which made them think they the way ruled the PC world they could reign the mobile world too. The other players have moved much faster and offered better solutions that the mobile world has almost forgotten Intel. Similar fate has been meted out to Windows. So in the mobile world WINTEL has lost the race.
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Helicopter
3/27/2012 8:18 AM EDT
I'm sorry, intel has just started the onslaught
Am sure they are going to ship a few million in 2012 and 300million chips by 2015
This is sufficient to keep arm at bay
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elih66
3/27/2012 5:08 AM EDT
Success in the PC market made Intel so arrogant that they ignore customer real needs and market trends. Intel is far from reaching ARM processors feature especially in power consumption.
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Hughston
4/11/2012 10:58 AM EDT
Intel did have the PXA series of processors which were ARM based but their die sizes were too large and uncompetitive. The parts were sold off to Marvelle and now Intel is trying to get back into the mobile market. The mobile market is seeing roughly 15% growth while the traditional PC market is growing something like less than 5%. If you are going into the mobile market everybody wants ARM.
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MikeSmith2011
3/27/2012 12:41 PM EDT
Intel has failed in most of the markets other than their core CPU business. Examples: Remember the ethernet switch project - capilano which was a huge disaster. Their GPUs are way inferior to nVidia/AMD, they haven't made any headway in the ultra-mobile space.
Goes to prove that having deep pockets is not the sufficient condition to entering a market and being succesful in it.
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Hughston
4/11/2012 11:01 AM EDT
However, deep pockets allow you to buy a company that can compete. I think Intel will do that within the next few years. I am sure they have the inside track to some companies that will get them in the wireless space.
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DadOf3TeenieBoppers
3/29/2012 9:17 AM EDT
Intel is good a one thing. Very, very good in fact. They need to stick to that. Expertise in one area does not make someone an expert in other areas.
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Jay_Sankaran
3/29/2012 12:25 PM EDT
Diagrammatic representation of the Intel vs. ARM war at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/117014041543577604604/IntelVsARM#5725128377329412914
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johndavis
3/29/2012 4:58 PM EDT
For the last 25 years, Intel has never shown it has better IC designs except in process technologies. Remember Intel's 80286 and 386 were not competitive when others offer the same thing? And through out its history, there is no customer service from Intel.
The PC companies benefited from WinTel monopoly in the 80s and first half of 90's, then they realized they were held hostage by WinTel, but it was too late. So, every company with their right mind understood they should avoid using Intel products whenever possible. Therefore, outside its monopolized PC segment (which should include tablet but Intel is insignificant), Intel has not played any role at all. I don't see this is going to change any time soon.
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sudo
4/2/2012 4:26 AM EDT
Assuming that you have a solid plan and sufficiently deep pockets (like Intel!), success favours those who keep at it. If you keep jumping in and out, expecting overnight success in a very conservative market, you are unlikely to succeed in anything other than spending your hard earned. This is something that keeps the wind in Intel's sail on the desktop and in the server space, so they should know better. Perhaps they shouldn't have dumped XScale at the first sign of hardship!
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vapats
4/4/2012 9:40 AM EDT
Dinosaurs don't die easily.
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Hughston
4/11/2012 10:47 AM EDT
Maybe the problem is that Intel always likes to use cutting edge technology like with the PC market but with cell phones you need cheaper processes to lower cost.
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