
Who killed the Intel microprocessor? - strandev
http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/10/who-killed-the-intel-microprocessor/
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DanBlake
The only real advantages ARM has over x86 currently is:

a: licensing cost / production cost

b: Power consumption

If you think that intel wont have both of those factors down to ARM levels
shortly, you dont know intel very well. They are very competitive and dont
like to get beat.

~~~
ztan
I disagree. Reason: I think the problem with Intel is that they are more of a
manufacturing company than design company. What I hear from insiders (anyone
at Intel care to validate/correct?) is that the company's culture as a whole
value their design arm much less than their manufacturing. Their main
advantage (also strategy) has always been that they can out manufacture their
competition. (ie faster shrink, better yields) Intel does not have a good
track record for processor design outside of the x86 CPU space. (and even in
that space the P4 is pretty much a failure in terms of design) Looking at
their repeated failed attempts at being significant in the graphics space. And
then there is Xscale. They had a lot of potential with the StrongARM group
when they acquired them from DEC, but they just ended up selling them to
Marvell (who is now doing amazing stuff with them). Also how they are now
capitalizing on their superior manufacturing capabilities by venturing into
producing lower tech products like SSDs. Combine all of that with the notion
that the x86 architecture simply does not offer any value on a mobile CPU,
(another debate, but one I strongly believe) I really don't think Intel will
have anything competitive against ARM "shortly". (Xscale was sold in 2006...)

~~~
kbob
I have no inside knowledge of Intel. But I've always thought it interesting
that they use "tick" for their process upgrades and "tock" for new
architectures. That appears to corroborate your point, that processes are
perceived as more important.

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jrockway
There are really two markets for processors: consumer electronics, and real
computing. ARM may be the best processor (whatever that means, as it's a
design you license, not a piece of hardware) for looking at ads on a 3"
display, but I think Intel is still going to be relevant in the server market
for a while. Think about some of Intel's key assets like being really fast and
having a C++ compiler that makes C++ even faster. This is important because
programmers write horrendous code that needs hardware assistance to produce
answers in a reasonable amount of time. (There are also problems to solve that
require a lot of CPU power, like protein folding and finding the next Mersenne
prime. ARM processors are not used for this.)

Now, if you're saying, "yeah, but not for desktops", I can agree with you.
Desktops are going to become less and less powerful as the average computer
user becomes more and more computer illiterate ("the Facebook dumb terminal",
I'll call it), and ARM may help keep the cost down. But I'm probably not going
to be running Emacs on an ARM box anytime soon. (Hell, I even use x86 for my
_router_.)

~~~
gnufs
Actually, a typical browser session tends to be more resource-hungry (in both
memory and processor) than a typical Emacs session these days.

~~~
jrockway
Hah! Clearly you do not use cperl-mode.

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PostOnce
Speculation, by the numbers:

AMD P/E: 5.46

Intel P/E: 11.12

ARM P/E: 86.94

~~~
BvS
These are number for 2009. For 2010 ARM P/E should be "only" around 50, for
2011 it might fall below 30. Still expensive but not as extreme.

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dexen
I take issue with the notion of Intel's model being obsolete in the mobile
world. Quite the opposite; Intel's business model of treating CPUs as
commodity is for market of mature technology, while current mobile model of
heavily (and costly) customizing SoCs is one for technology being still
insufficient for achieving market goals.

If anything, it's the current mobile model that will go obsolete at some point
-- simply because it's costly, both in terms of customizing SoCs, taping out
small batches of silicon and customizing software for it. Mobile will shift to
commodity components at some point.

~~~
simonh
>Mobile will shift to commodity components at some point.

Selling tens of millions of a single hardware model doesn't count as
commodity?

Even discounting that, ARM's business model doesn't preclude the emergence of
'commodity' ARM processors. Maybe such a shift might play to Intel's
strengths, but then ARM has total domination of the mobile CPU market in their
favour.

I have no idea where this market will go in say 10 year's time, but right
here, right now ARM have a lot going for them and there are no short or medium
term reasons to suspect that's likely to change.

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InclinedPlane
Here's a prediction, Intel will still be a dominant player in CPUs 10 years
from now. ARM is making progress, great, good luck competing with Intel in FAB
capacity and engineering capability. The world isn't going to suddenly switch
to 100% mobile CPUs, desktops and severs are still not just a big business but
the biggest part of the business.

~~~
DenisM
FAB capacity?

Most ARM CPUs are manufactured not by ARM itself but by Samsung, Qualcom,
Texas Instruments and the like. These guys certainly do have all the requisite
capacity as they provide the silicon for all of the world's mobile phones.

Granted, the Big Gorilla is faster to shrink the processes, because they have
no problem dropping a few billions on a brand-new fab, but what good did that
do? On both supposed benefits of the smaller process (cost and power drain /
performance) ARM CPUs are _still_ winning.

This whole situation is a replay of the Pentium 4 Megahurtz madness. Back then
Intel was pushing raw performance disregarding power consumption, then they
hit the heat dissipation wall, AMD snuck in from behind and punished them in a
major way with Athlon-64. Intel regrouped with Core* series, won back the
market share, pushed AMD back into oblivion, and relaxed about the whole
thing. Now they are doing the same thing - prioritizing performance at the
cost of power drain, and this time it will be ARM who will punish them. It's
not clear how long it will take Intel to change their ways this time. The last
time they still had Pentium 3 / Pentium M group of engineers to lean on, and
that they did rather well. This time they are not so lucky - they have
actually sold off their embedded CPU division a few years back, and now I
doubt whether there is anyone left inside Intel to insist on a much needed
pivot.

[EDITED for typos]

~~~
pjscott
> Most ARM CPUs are manufactured not by ARM itself but by Samsung, Qualcom,
> Texas Instruments and the like.

Not quite. With the exception of Samsung, those companies design ARM-based
systems-on-a-chip, but do not manufacture them. They take an ARM core, perhaps
modify it, add on a bunch of other stuff like graphics accelerators, memory
controllers, ethernet MACs, and so on. Then once the design checks out, they
send it to another company, like TSMC, UMC, or GlobalFoundries, that actually
does the manufacturing.

The capital costs of building each new generation of chip fabs have grown
tremendously, which led to this centralization and commoditization of chip
manufacturing. Intel is one of the few holdouts, and they're usually a bit
ahead of everybody else, which is one of their big competitive advantages.

~~~
DenisM
Eh... I'm pretty sure TI has their own fabs. Do they not manufacture their own
OMAPs over there and use someone else's fabs instead?

~~~
pjscott
They specialize in analog devices. The OMAPs are sent out to other companies.
(I think it was TSMC, and maybe UMC, for the OMAPs.)

~~~
DenisM
Good to know. I used to follow these things closely a few years ago, when I
was trading semiconductor stocks in my personal "savings" stock portfolio. At
some point I have realized the folly of my ways and decided to instead spend
my time on a subject I actually have a chance of knowing well - writing mobile
apps. :)

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thebootstrapper
Make sense. Although given that Honeycomb (next version of Android for Tablet)
mandates dual core processor how this applies?

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alexandros
I wonder if AMD could become the ARM of x86. They've already spun out their
foundries anyway.

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ergo98
Another terrible asymco entrant. Interesting how the author pushes one
philosophy for processors (the inevitable superiority of a licensed model) but
if you've read their many pro-Apple screeds, exactly the opposite conclusion
is pursued relative to Android.

Quite humorous really.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's worse than that. Asymco has this "modular"/"integrated" split, which they
refer to in this post as well, though reversed from their usual position as
you note, but they happily admit that Nokia and RIM are "integrated" but in
trouble while downplaying HTC and Samsung's success (and Motorola's miraculous
reversal) on the "modular" side. They leave these inconsistencies dangling as
long as they can massage the data enough to conclude that Apple is great and
so are the people who buy Apple products. It's blatantly pandering sophistry
masquerading as overwrought analysis.

