Intel versus ARM for the mobile computer

CNET ^ | September 19, 2007 5:00 PM PDT | Tom Krazit

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The ongoing tussle between Intel and AMD has dominated the news in recent weeks, but there's another potential battleground shaping up for Intel that could have a huge impact on personal computing.

A major topic I want to cover over the next several months is the looming showdown as the smart phone industry tries to develop more powerful computers, and the PC industry tries to build smaller and smaller computers. This week has provided a decent glimpse of Intel's vision of where it thinks the industry needs to go with its Silverthorne processor, designed for a new concept of computer called the Mobile Internet Device.

This is a concept Mobile Internet Device that Intel thinks people will be able to build with its Moorestown technology. It folds in the middle, like a book.(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)

We're looking at a major architectural battle over the next three years or so: the ARM instruction set, which dominates mobile phones, versus the x86 instruction set (Intel, please stop calling it Our Architecture). ARM isn't widely known outside the industry, but it designs processor cores for chips that power more than 90 percent of the mobile phones on the planet. Intel, you've probably heard of at one time or another.

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Implications here..... I think!

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From :

Intel's Otellini has company focused on low power

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The more interesting news was Otellini's goals for Intel over the rest of the decade. The company plans to ship a generation of processors on its 45-nanometer manufacturing technology by 2009 that come with graphics integrated right onto the processor, similar to what rival Advanced Micro Devices has planned for its Fusion chips. Intel will be investing in a joint venture with KDDI, a Japanese telecom company, with plans to build a WiMax network in Japan. And as expected, Intel talked up its low-power chips for MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices), with plans to reduce the power consumption of its handheld computer chips by a factor of 10 compared with the Silverthorne processor, expected next year.

This is all part of Intel's search for growth, which has meandered a bit this decade. Still, you've got to have a strategy for the future, especially as the PC market matures over the next five to 10 years. That appears to have three legs: first of all, don't squander the base market of PC and server processors.

To accomplish that, Otellini has implemented a more gradual series of manufacturing transitions that makes sure the company doesn't try to introduce a new architecture with a new manufacturing technology, and that it doesn't go too long in between revisions to its chips. The hope is that this prevents AMD from catching it napping and losing significant chunks of market share, which is probably the best description of the years from 2002 to 2006.