

Why Intel Should Be Scared of the Future - dlevine
http://blog.thirdyearmba.com/why-intel-should-be-scared-of-the-future

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valarauca1
The problem is scaling.

Intel is scaling down its chips, while Qualcomm/ARM is scaling up.

If tomorrow Qualcomm (or somebody) decided to roll out a 200w TDP 4.0GHz chip.
Likely the best they could do is throw _a lot_ of cores at the problem (enter
Oracle's T-5 SPARC). Which failed, the market wants parallelism, but they
still demand a certain threshold of single threaded processing speed.

Qualcomm/ARM has to fight dragons like branch prediction, caching, multi-issue
out of order pipe-lining, etc. if they want to compete against Intel. And
these are Intel's crown jewels, they aren't going to give them away without a
fight.

While when Intel wants to compete with Qualcomm/ARM they just shoot their
processor power budget in the knee caps and start ripping components out
(figuratively, not literally).

~~~
dlevine
Qualcomm doesn't need to scale up. Qualcomm is slowly scaling up by releasing
ever more powerful Snapdragons. Eventually, Qualcomm's chips will be fast
enough to do everything we could reasonably want (or at least most things that
most people could reasonably want). It could almost be argued that the
majority of people (minus tech nerds and a few other people with special use
cases) can get by just fine with a smartphone plus a tablet.

~~~
valarauca1
>Qualcomm doesn't need to scale up.

>Qualcomm is [...] scaling up.

So what? They don't need to do what they are doing? Then why are they doing
that?

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lazylizard
doesn't make any sense to me. mobile devices are like the new PC industry all
over again..they become more and more powerful with each generation. only now
there's a power budget handicap unlike on PCs. in time to come, they will
probably enter intel territory in terms of power budget and compute. the
problem then will be, has the world switched to ARM software, or are we still
using x86-64? its a cop out, but i imagine the world is not likely going to
replace essentially all its software anytime soon.. i mean, there could be
ports, but as long as i have a x86-64 machine and the software works, why
would i switch? unless the ARM port is much better? i fail to see how its
going to happen.. all in all, intel just has to wait for mobile devices to
catch up with existing PCs..if i were them i'd fund all sorts of battery tech
to help mobile computing on its way...

separately, i thought intel always was ARM capable only they made hardly any
ARM chips(i think they sold strongARM a long time ago)..and also a big
difference between the ARM ecosystem and Intel is Intel is a fab as well..and
a darn good one.

the only thing(ok this can't really be true) Intel doesn't seem to be able to
do is make a good graphics processor..

------
walterbell
> _It’s actually only a matter of time before Apple releases a laptop based on
> their A-series of processors (possibly as soon as next year, but definitely
> by 2017), and from that point, the rest of of the PC market will slowly
> follow. In the end, Intel will eventually be driven out of the consumer
> market_

Is this assuming that all Windows software will be replaced by OS X, or that
all Windows apps will be ported to ARM?

~~~
dlevine
Windows apps will be ported to ARM. Microsoft already supports an ARM version
of Windows, so this doesn't seem so far-fetched. Also, it is possible to build
universal binaries supporting two architectures (Apple did this during the
PPC-Intel transition).

~~~
walterbell
How are sales of Windows on ARM? Win RT tablets didn't do well and Chromebooks
are now available as x86.

~~~
dlevine
Windows RT tablets didn't do well because they were too slow and too
expensive. They were basically pitched as full computers, but the chips were
too slow for that. The Surface Pro was only a bit more expensive, and offered
much better performance. But performance of ARM is rapidly improving, to the
point where it will soon be sufficient.

And Chromebooks have always been available in x86. It's easier for notebook
manufacturers to convert low-end windows notebooks to Chrome OS than to design
ARM-based systems from the ground up. From what I understand, ARM Chromebooks
have sold pretty well.

