One door closes and another door closes
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ARM gets ready to enter Intel's domain
BRITISH CHIP DESIGN OUTFIT ARM is not flustered by Intel's recent acquisitions and has been planning its assault on the laptop market for some time.
That's the message coming from the UK firm, hot on the heels of Chinese chip outfit Nufront demonstrating its dual core 2GHz system-on-chip (SoC) based on ARM's Cortex A9 architecture. Speculation has been rife that Intel's round of big money acquisitions means that Chipzilla is gunning for the plucky British company in the mobile space, but Nufront's announcement has repositioned ARM as being on the offensive.
ARM's marketing director Ian Drew, fresh off a flight from China, told The INQUIRER that Nufront's announcement had nothing to do with Intel's own spending spree. Drew alluded to the fact that ARM has been planning to enter the tablet and "clamshell" [laptop] market for three years now, saying that Nufront's announcement was merely a "continuation" of its development cycle with competitor moves having nothing to do with the timing of the announcement.
Drew also highlighted the gaining popularity of Linux, which has been able to run on ARM's architecture for years. He mentioned the fact that not having native Windows support for laptops might have hampered adoption in the past, saying that users expect familiarity in user interfaces when it comes to laptops.
ARM has been working with Canonical, the firm behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution for years now in order to get the user interface right. As Google's Linux based Android operating system continues to gain popularity, it has, according to Drew, sped up the viability of the ARM architecture in laptops.
Interestingly, Drew said that ARM doesn't compete with Intel, rather that is something for its customers. "The fight is between Intel and Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Nvidia and the rest of our customers," said Drew.
The firm's low power architecture has led it to become the darling of the embedded chip industry as it licenses out various designs to over 200 companies. As mobile devices become more reliant on efficient processors that provide a balance between outright speed and power, ARM's design has become a viable alternative in a growing number of applications.
Nufront's announcement is likely to be just the first in a long line. The Chinese firm is set to demonstrate more products based on ARM's SoC architecture at next year's Consumer Electronics Show, with other chipmakers likely to join in the fun. µ
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Intel and Microsoft are about to stumble and fall. Just as all the other giants have before. Companies who dominate any market are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Users, Joe Public, niether know nor care about "standards". Google, Android, Mobile, Cloud, Arm etc are the future. Windows, x86 are the past.
If it ain't APPLE or x86 then it won't sell. Oh yeah I forgot Apple is x86. As far as Intel giving them an x86 license?
hmm...NOT
oh yeah they can run emulation, slowwwwww. But why? Just get the "real thing". And now they are a few years behind the curve without on die graphics. Oh yeah ARM doesn't design graphics. Maybe ARM should buy Nvidia.
Wasn't it Digital Equipment Corporation who last tried to build a better mouse trap? Everybody said Alpha was better but nobody bought it. And VIA? They had licnses for both ARM and x86, but maybe they had no vision.
Sometimes building it is not enough...
Intel started just this way. In a world where Big Iron (tm) companies made multichip processors, Intel came along with a pathetic 4-bit single chip unit.
By building continously on small past successes, Intel took the world away from every "established" company.
The ARM partners are hungry for success, and are building on little successes. If they maintain their hunger, they will take the world away.
In constrast is pathetic AMD.
trying to find a use for all the CPU horsepower of a modern chip. Atom CPUs are quick enough for a lot of users (even in moderate gaming if backed by a decent GPU), and the Core A9 matches or exceeds the performance of the Atom. Intel may have an advantage in the Windows code base, but for computing appliances (which are becoming more and more common) the low power and price of the ARM CPUs as a strong argument to beat.
Er, there's no *technical* reason why all UI can't duplicate the *bad* standards of Windows, including most programs (probably just a subset, as M$ always has tons of commands that no one ever uses). I've assumed remnants of the "look and feel" lawsuit risk, plus general distaste for anything M$ among Linux types prevents it. But there are certainly Linux distros that are less jarring to move to than among Windows versions.
Tablets and laptops are two different creatures; if you want to break into notebooks, you need a platform and OS that does more or less everything that Windows can do, including gaming. Tablets are still looking for their boundaries.
Android can be put on a tablet, and on a phone with keyboard and trackball, so why not a notebook? The Android popularity would make it a hit. I'm just saying...
Actually there was a pc market at one time. It had risc os, but it is no longer available. While they were more expensive than x86 at the time, it was more than likely due to the fact it never caught on. So production was always low. But now it is starting to re-emerge with some companies planning to release machines what can be considered monsters in the risc world. Now when you compare x86 to arm one thing becomes very apparent, Power usage on arm can be in the 2watt range. also since Risc os is rom based , I have read that it just works fast no matter what. http://www.advantage6.com/products/A9home.html
They need a fully capable OS *and* software and that runs on ARM. A hacked together Linux distro will not suffice for a broad market. If ARM is serious about this they will have to throw lots of money at development for Linux and hope it works.
...would do nicely, thanks.
What I'd love is some ATX (or ITX) motherboard based on these chips, by the sound of things they'd make nice media PCs and what not. If they could bung one of these on a motherboard for about £30 to £40 I'd snap one up (okay, maybe I'm expecting a little too much at the moment).
ARM consortium want to enter into notebook market since many years without success 'cause of pathetic & anemic CPU architecture compare to x86 & PPC. Not tomorrow it will succeed :D
Do you believe it ? No ? Not me anyway.