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mark.lapedus
I met an analyst who says Intel lost the MPU battle to ARM. Intel is a mere ...
Don Scansen
Fundamentally, Intel is a company that understands the need to re-invest for the ...
Analyst: Intel missed mobile boat
Mark Lapedus
1/12/2011 5:04 PM EST
SAN JOSE, Calif. - ARM Holdings plc and Intel Corp. are on a collision course in the systems space.
The winner? Intel, according to one analyst. Another analyst disagreed.
''So far, Intel is missing the wave in the ultramobile market and is not likely to gain traction in 2011,'' said Auguste Gus Richard, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, in a recent report. ''The issue for Intel is that software developers are increasingly focusing on ARM platforms. As this momentum grows and the number of applications grows it makes it more difficult for Intel to turn the market in its direction.''
There are other issues. ''We do not expect Intel's 32-nm Medfield platform for smartphones, expected in 1H:11, to gain significant share in 2011 and perhaps 2012. We understand Intel is dropping legacy x86 features in order to lower power consumption in future products, but it is not clear if this is Medfield or the next generation,'' he said. ''We think Intel may have to abandon its legacy x86 architecture or significantly improve its SoC design capability to be competitive. We think the train is leaving the station in the ultramobile era and so far Intel is not on board.''
Intel, however, is leading in some respects. ''We expect that the lead customers for ARM's new A15 core to tape-out around the end of Q1:11. We expect the ARM camp to be in production at 32-nm in 2012 as Intel is moving to 22-nm. Intel leads in manufacturing and ARM leads in mobile architecture,'' he said.
''While we believe over time Intel's process advantage could drive a performance advantage, we do not think this is likely to occur in 2011. Moorestown is facing tough market acceptance due to high power consumption. Moorestown is a two chip solution with the Atom processor (45-nm) on one chip and the I/O (65-nm) on the other,'' he said.
''We understand that the I/O consumes a lot of power and the combination is not likely to be successful in the mobile phone market. The Medfield mobile processor will integrate the I/O with the processor and will be implemented in 32-nm. This will likely significantly improve power consumption and performance. Medfield is
not expected until mid-2011, and we would not expect Medfield based products to enter the market until 2012,'' he said.
The other problem for Intel? The PC market is slowing. ''We expect PC unit growth to decline from 12 percent to 5 percent over the next several years as tablets gain momentum. However, we also expect PC prices to stabilize after 20 years of an 8 percent annual decline. The net is we expect PC and Intel's revenue to grow mid single digits unless the company can move beyond the PC market,'' he said.
The winner? Intel, according to one analyst. Another analyst disagreed.
''So far, Intel is missing the wave in the ultramobile market and is not likely to gain traction in 2011,'' said Auguste Gus Richard, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, in a recent report. ''The issue for Intel is that software developers are increasingly focusing on ARM platforms. As this momentum grows and the number of applications grows it makes it more difficult for Intel to turn the market in its direction.''
There are other issues. ''We do not expect Intel's 32-nm Medfield platform for smartphones, expected in 1H:11, to gain significant share in 2011 and perhaps 2012. We understand Intel is dropping legacy x86 features in order to lower power consumption in future products, but it is not clear if this is Medfield or the next generation,'' he said. ''We think Intel may have to abandon its legacy x86 architecture or significantly improve its SoC design capability to be competitive. We think the train is leaving the station in the ultramobile era and so far Intel is not on board.''
Intel, however, is leading in some respects. ''We expect that the lead customers for ARM's new A15 core to tape-out around the end of Q1:11. We expect the ARM camp to be in production at 32-nm in 2012 as Intel is moving to 22-nm. Intel leads in manufacturing and ARM leads in mobile architecture,'' he said.
''While we believe over time Intel's process advantage could drive a performance advantage, we do not think this is likely to occur in 2011. Moorestown is facing tough market acceptance due to high power consumption. Moorestown is a two chip solution with the Atom processor (45-nm) on one chip and the I/O (65-nm) on the other,'' he said.
''We understand that the I/O consumes a lot of power and the combination is not likely to be successful in the mobile phone market. The Medfield mobile processor will integrate the I/O with the processor and will be implemented in 32-nm. This will likely significantly improve power consumption and performance. Medfield is
not expected until mid-2011, and we would not expect Medfield based products to enter the market until 2012,'' he said.
The other problem for Intel? The PC market is slowing. ''We expect PC unit growth to decline from 12 percent to 5 percent over the next several years as tablets gain momentum. However, we also expect PC prices to stabilize after 20 years of an 8 percent annual decline. The net is we expect PC and Intel's revenue to grow mid single digits unless the company can move beyond the PC market,'' he said.
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rick.merritt
1/12/2011 7:27 PM EST
ARM may be in Chrome netbooks and notebooks at about the same time and with the same small volumes Intel is likely to debut Atom in smartphones, IMHO
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cdhmanning
1/12/2011 7:55 PM EST
Not surprising that the market is slowing. Its a combination of recessionary forces with reduced marginal value.
Unless you're an extreme gamer etc, there is little advantage in getting faster and faster processors. If you're browsing the web or doing email etc then a 4GHz quad core is not appreciably faster than a 2GHz dual core. There is no longer an incentive to upgrade for performance reasons.
What might get people to buy new kit is either a change of form factor (tablets) or convenience (longer battery life, instant on, size, weight...).
Winning or losing in tablet land has very little to do with chipsets. It is mostly to do with how the tablet software works. Windows has had at least three cracks at tablets - all failing.
Relying in process advantages is not enough. Process advances raise all ships. Again it is a path that has ever reducing payback with ever increasing costs.
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pjduncan
1/13/2011 6:29 PM EST
You have little faith in the ability of programmers at the likes of Microsoft and Adobe to continue to consume more CPU cycles for the same functionality. For instance, Word on my current machine is every bit as sluggish as the word processor on the very first Mac with greater than 2 order of magnitude difference in processor speed. Never discount Moore's corollary of software bloat.
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yalanand
1/12/2011 11:37 PM EST
I am kind of confused with this inference which says "Intel, however, is leading in some respects".
First paragraph says Intel is moving to 22-nm but the immediate paragraph says Medfield mobile processor will integrate the I/O with the processor and will be implemented in 32-nm
What process advantage we are talking about ?
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p_g
1/18/2011 7:11 PM EST
22nm is yet not very leakage power efficient. Intel gears their process towards performance. So for ultra low power chips it doesn't make sense to move to 22nm for Intel as first product.
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iniewski
1/13/2011 1:31 PM EST
to @yalanand: I don't think better process (22nm vs 32nm) is an issue here, yes,they are some gains in economy but the larger issue is that ARM's design is simply more power efficient than Intel's...Kris
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dirk.bruere
1/13/2011 2:20 PM EST
WinTel complacency - and it looks like the two biggest players in s/w and h/w are going to pay dearly.
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KB3001
1/20/2011 6:54 AM EST
I think so too. Everything comes to an end and Wintel dominance will come to an end soon in my opinion.
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goafrit
1/14/2011 1:05 AM EST
I seem to think that no one has chance with Intel. It is so good on their marketing. People focus on technology without knowing that Intel wins on marketing.
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iniewski
1/14/2011 11:00 AM EST
Despite not so many positive comments about Intel (including some of my own) it is still the company to fear. Billions of dollars in revenue, still #1 (Samsung might catch up), very impressive in manufacturing and marketing. Just beat profit expectation in last earnings release. But every empire eventually falls, the questions is when and why. Might not be in our lifetime though ;-)...Kris
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MilanC
1/14/2011 11:59 AM EST
The analysts fail to mention that Intel recently bought a company that has a reasonable share of ARM based mobile platforms supplying all major players.
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Frank Eory
1/14/2011 3:19 PM EST
Sometime in the last year or so, I recall a quote from a senior exec at ARM, who acknowleged that eventually Intel will catch up to ARM on low power performance.
Some might wonder, when that day arrives, what incentive a handset or tablet maker would have to use Intel instead of well-entrenched ARM? If you look at Intel's recent acquisitions and their focus on SoC's, combined with their CMOS process leadership, it looks like Intel is assembling all the pieces necessary to be the price & performance leader in mobile...not today, but someday in the not-too-distant future.
Don't write off mighty Intel in the mobile market just yet!
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KB3001
1/20/2011 6:52 AM EST
They would have to ditch their x86 architecture for that, which would take out one of their most appealing value propositions: backward compatibility. Intel would then have to go through a learning and adjustment process to be an ARM-like. This would take large amounts of money and resources with no guarantee of success in the end. I am not too optimistic about Intel's prospects. I think they have started to move a wee bit too late.
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rm88888
1/14/2011 7:00 PM EST
It's not just Intel vs Arm, it's also Microsoft vs. Linux. Intel/ARM and Microsoft/Linux are nearly identical competitions. ARM/Linux had their genesis and legacy on smaller systems, compact and efficient solutions, and providing more modular and configurable architectures. They are compact/efficient/nimble and easily adaptable to a variety of system scales and architectures. The current state of technology could be viewed as portable/mobile platforms having grown into ARM/Linux systems - mobile platforms and ARM/Linux have arrived at a synergistic convergence in the compute power available/needed and features sets supported in mobile applications.
On the other hand we have Intel/MS. Here we have massive platform solutions that have been grown/cultivated to fulfill desktop, server, and ultra high-end multimedia/gaming platforms. Do to the (relatively) narrow focus of development of these systems (all out massively powerful and capable systems) Intel/MS platforms are massively complex, highly integrated, inflexible, and unscaleable. Now they are trying to scale down these massively complex systems into a platform suitable to mobile computing platforms. Intel/MS must excise massive portions of their platforms that were never intended to be absent, and do so without bringing down to whole thing like a house of cards. It's like trying to take the biggest, baddest, most feature laden luxury car ever built and trying to pare it down to an efficient and effective compact car. Most people would simply opt for a car that already works well as an efficient compact car. And that's where ARM/Linux is already positioned. That's not to say Intel/MS can't get there but one has to ask at what cost and will the end product really be any good or even any better than what is already available from the ARM/Linux platform? Or will it just be more of a Frankenstein monster? But then an 800 pound gorilla behind a clunky product can sometimes trump even the most elegant of designs.
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Bay_DSP
1/15/2011 12:33 AM EST
You seem to forget that Linux was originally developed on Intel's x86, and still runs well on that architecture.
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hm
1/14/2011 11:00 PM EST
Yes, Intel is looking for solution. How can we help for providing ideas to Intel to compete with ARM? Can Intel take over MIPS to get entry into mobile market? Can they start with new design concept and bit ARM? In recent time, Intel bought FPGA vendor, will this help to them?
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iniewski
1/14/2011 11:23 PM EST
To @hm, I think Intel will do what they decide to do regardless of what we say here. They have pretty big marketing and biz dev organization ;-)...Kris
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Bay_DSP
1/15/2011 1:09 AM EST
I think it's still too early to write Intel off the embedded/mobile world. Intel has enough resources to defeat ARM in that field.
IMHO, Intel needs to do the following to succeed:
1. Be more aggressive on power efficiency with their embedded processors, even if that means completely dropping the legacy code support. Most x86 legacy code was built for Windows anyway. The lack of legacy support won't affect much for embedded systems.
2. If 1 is not enough, adopt a new, RISC architecture to design their next generation embedded processors. The Atom architecture is still CISC, so it can't compete with ARM's RISC in power efficiency. A new, RISC architecture, helped by Intel's advanced process technology, would surpass ARM-based processors in power efficiency.
3. Intel could then port Linux, Android, and other embedded operating systems to its new embedded processor. Intel has enough expertise and resources to create a new software development ecosystem around its new embedded processor.
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resistion
1/15/2011 8:18 AM EST
Though Intel is a key player, I think Apple is more of the industry and market mover than Intel.
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p_g
1/18/2011 7:35 PM EST
Agreed, in tablet PC and cell phone they are the leaders, but not in low power.
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Don Scansen
1/20/2011 9:46 AM EST
Fundamentally, Intel is a company that understands the need to re-invest for the future. If the leadership recognizes the need to change their product mix, I think they will manage to pull it off. Their management is not hamstrung by the accountants as so many other large mature companies are.
Also, in response to the observation that "Intel gears their process towards performance," that is more a function of what we predominantly see from their major product lines. It is useful to look at some of the papers Intel has published. With the control and long range planning of their semiconductor process development, Intel has been putting a lot of emphasis into expanding each technology platform for use in low power and RF applications. The product people at Intel have control over all the process knobs they want, thanks to in-house manufacturing. When they see the right market opportunity, they will be able to deliver the technology to support the product designs.
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mark.lapedus
1/20/2011 10:35 PM EST
I met an analyst who says Intel lost the MPU battle to ARM. Intel is a mere server play now. Is the party over for Intel?
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