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ARM claims many design wins in battle with Intel
ARM IS LOOKING to tap into a new stream of revenue from netbooks, fending off Intel's invasion into the mobile space by pushing further and further into the PC space according to Bob Morris.
Whereas many among the unwashed masses have heard the term "Intel Inside" when referring to their computers, fewer are aware of what nestles deep within their mobile phones, but Morris hopes ARM will soon change that.
“Everyone wants to go mobile. People are expecting they’re always going to be connected,” said Morris, adding that with multi-core capabilities coming soon to both ARM and Qualcomm, an 'always on', 'full-day use' model of mobile computing would deliver more than enough compute capability for the businessperson on the go.
Morris told the INQ that ARM has a large number of netbook design wins underway from major OEMs in Taiwan, some of which may be announced as early as July. Most will be unveiled around August and September, just in time for the back-to-school crowd and, after that, the Christmas shopping frenzy. There will also purportedly be “a bunch after that” too, according to Morris.
ARM, Morris said, would be looking to exploit the plethora of new operating systems and User Interfaces (UI) cropping up for little laptops of late, including Google's Android and Xandros Linux. Of course Intel hasn't exactly been laying back on its laurels either, with the firm chipping away at its own Open Source Moblin Linux project for MIDs and mobile devices.
Intel, however, has the disadvantage of having to scale its chips and power down, while, for fabless ARM, the only way is up, and that includes prices and all important margins. Morris noted, however, that the spiralling of netbook prices was forcing OEMs to take a different look at how to make good profits from netbooks, to make the little lappies worth their while. This, said Morris, would likely be achieved via the "Printer/Ink" model.
Printers, explained Morris, were an "amazing piece of technology," sold for a pittance because firms make all their money on selling the ink to go with them. That is where the punter gets well and truly fleeced. Morris told the INQ OEMS were now eyeing up the same strategy for netbooks, aiming for a more “storefront typeview” aimed at securing customer "allegiance".
What about hybrid ARM/Intel machines? we asked Morris. After all, Dell recently launched just such a device, dubbed "On Tech", for a couple of its Latitude machines – targeted specifically at business userswho need near constant access to their emails and online calendars. Morris agreed that there did seem to be "a number of companies doing that design,” but added the devices ARM had in the pipeline worked just fine on just its own chips. µ
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pimpin, you make a lot of claims about power consumption. However, you don't include any numbers.
Is that because you don't know what the numbers are, and are just guessing? Or is it because you do know the numbers, and left them out because they would make your argument look bad?
What percent of the total power consumed on a netbook is CPU+chipset related? Much less than 1/2. If these components consumed ZERO WATTS, you still would not have all day on! Yet ARM would not like you to hear that dirty little truth.
Let's look at your qualifications...
1) 'put aside the power hogging display' Why? Do you not need a display on the ARM netbooks? Or does ARM have some technology which allows them to use 'special' displays that x86 CPU's can't? Of course not!
2) "after display vast majority is cpu/chipset AND bluetooth/wifi/etc" (I'm paraphrasing). Why lump bluetooth/WiFi/3G in here? Once again does an ARM solution not need wireless connectivity? This is another area where a lot of power is consumed that is needed on EITHER technology.
What you and the article lacks is perspective - if I only compare atom+an old chipset that will be obsolete to an ARM CPU/chipset solution that may look impressive, but how does that affect the overall picture of platform consumption? Is this what really enables 'all day on'? (of course not - even you implicitly acknowledge that). You need to look at what % of the total system power consumption is the discrepancy in cpu+chipsets between ARM and x86. You will not see that actually mentioned and that # would not look so impressive.
And it's good to see that an ARM netbook MAY have an efficient HD video playback, as with the resolutions on netbooks, it is important to be able to playback videos that have higher resolution then the display is capable of showing... what again does this have to do with all day power consumption?
It sounds like you are simply interested in pimpin' ARM too... my issue is with the 'all day on' claims and the complete lack of context used when comparing ONLY CPU/chipset power (is that 1%, 10%, 50%, 100% of the total netbook power?)
Can Arm make a car based device with SatNav, web browser, and synch-to-mobile-pbone/laptop/home/office/music/movies/sky-tv?
Volvo want £900 for a replacement DVD disc, just the disc, for the rather lame satnav. Some thief stole it, not surprising if Volvo are making it cost that much, of course it will tempt thieves.
Arm, can you make a cheap but good car device for satnav, and not charge £900 for a replacement dvd disc? Thanks in advance.
"'All day on' has very little to do with the CPu power consumption these days and a lot to do with the screen, memory, hard drive, graphics, etc... The advancements required in these areas are portable to ANY design and are (generally) not CPU dependent."
Actually that is not really correct. Once you put aside the power-hogging display, the vast majority of the output power being consumed in a small laptop is going to the CPU, chipset, and WiFI/bluetooth/3G radios.
Current x86 platform netbooks consume a lot of power. The current 45nm Atom running at 1.4-1.66Ghz uses upwards of 2.5W. The original i945G chipset still used on many netbooks uses *22* Watts alone.
Even the newer, more netbook friendly 945GSE express chipset uses about just under 10W, and and combined with the Atom you end up at 11.8W. That's almost 12W without adding in the display or harddrive/ssd.
Let's compare that with a modern ARM platform/
The Qualcomm Snapdragon is a system-on-a-chip the size of a quarter that includes a 1.5Ghz ARM Cortex based CPU core, a 600Mhz DSP, a graphics accelerator, 1080P video encoding/decoding logic, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and 3G broadband. And the entire chip uses less than a 1W.
The ARM Cortex-based CPU isn't quite as fast as the Atom, but the builtin video encoder/decoder makes it far more efficient at playing back HD video (or recording from a built-in webcam). Also, the next generation chip from ARM is right around the corner too The new SoCs from Qualcomm and T.I. will have a high frequnecy dual-core ARM Cortex-A9.
Even when Intel gets to 32nm and integrates the Atom platform into a system-on-a-chip, I don't think they'll be competitive with ARM on low-power/long-battery life devices, although I think as the market matures they'll have most of the higher-end "premium netbook" market.
What's with all this talking up ARM? Where's the 'insightful' analysis?
'All day on' has very little to do with the CPu power consumption these days and a lot to do with the screen, memory, hard drive, graphics, etc... The advancements required in these areas are portable to ANY design and are (generally) not CPU dependent.
AMD claimed over a 100 notebook design wins... how exactly is there mobile share doing? Sto pquoting design wins and pimping companies with PR releases that you are too lazy to fact check or objectively analyze.
The only time this is done is when you have an article about Apple or Nvidia and that is only because you have authors who have personal vendettas writing those stories.
ARM punches Intel's arse!