

AMD Could Add ARM Faster Than Intel - Osiris
http://blogs.forbes.com/rogerkay/2011/04/04/amd-could-add-arm-faster-than-intel/

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swong
A classic case of Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton M. Christensen) where ARM's low
power chips are slowly attacking x86 from below. Intel/AMD tried to move
upstream (Itanium) but found there were less customers who were looking for
high power silicon, instead the rest of the industry is pivoting towards power
per watt. Huge disruptions for the incumbents.

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EwanToo
I'm not really sure the premise of the article, that Intel and AMD would
actually want to add an ARM side to their business, is actually that true.

ARM chips have to be sold at very low cost - no one pays a premium for a
particular brand ARM chip, but because of the recent market changes the R&D
costs of ARM have gone through the roof and people like Apple and Nvidia are
spending a small fortune in pushing the technology forward.

I think both Intel and AMD will be waiting for the market to develop further,
then they can choose to enter the market if they need to.

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JonnieCache
_> I'm not really sure the premise of the article, that Intel and AMD would
actually want to add an ARM side to their business, is actually that true._

To me the article was saying that although there may be pressure to develop
ARM chips, they _don't_ want to:

 _"It’s not that Intel can’t switch to ARM; it’s that it most likely won’t."_

 _"Intel has ... a philosophical predisposition not to back an alternative."_

I thought it was a pretty good analysis.

~~~
pmjordan
Intel actually got _out_ of the ARM business in 2006, pretty much exactly 1
year before release of the first iPhone:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale#Sale_of_PXA_processor_li...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale#Sale_of_PXA_processor_line)

They apparently still hold an ARM license, but that may well just be so they
can keep an eye on the competition.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that Intel and AMD _could_
probably produce an x86 chip that's comparable in efficiency to the ARM
offerings by taking out some of the legacy cruft and substantially reducing
clock speeds. After all, the Atom (and Llano) only consume around 10 watts and
are still a few times faster than the current tablet CPUs. They may well enter
the market at some point, but right now it's probably more profitable to carry
on with their existing business.

