Summary:
-Intel and AMD are now the only chip companies making x86 chips, in a mature slow growth or declining market
-ARM, in contrast, has 249 Cortex-A licensees, in a maturing but still growing market
-AMD has started making ARM-based chips, Opteron A1100 series, with 8xA57 cores @ 1.7-2.0 GHZ depending on model
-AMD's ARM product is not competitive; software required for the 64bit ARM arch (APCI and PCIe) was not available until this year whereas x86 solutions are mature
-Evidence that Intel can only support one architecture (Core) mounted when Intel discontinued Atom
-Intel can share the Core architecture among servers, PCs, tablets, and maybe eventually smartphones, meaning at least internally to Intel, Core has legs
-Intel's costs are inflated because they solely develop and support Core
-Whereas in the foundry world, ARM is a shared, co-developed technology which permits ARM, foundries, Apple and others to share the costs
-To match the foundry world cost structure, Intel would have to cut all Core development costs, and start contributing to/sharing costs with ARM ecosystem; this is probably impossible in Intel's business culture
Why does Intel refuse ARM technology? ARM would make them more cost-competitive, right?
First of all, no. The cost of legacy Core would have to be eliminated before ARM-ecosystem low costs would be operative. Doing both ARM and Core would layer costs, making the problem worse.
Intel would rather invest in Core than ARM, because of the money to be made by Core in servers. The Atom architecture played second fiddle, wasn't developed sufficiently, and ultimately was trashed. The same would likely happen if ARM was substituted for Atom.
It might be too late for Intel to join the ARM party anyway. AMD has not hit with great success in their evolution into ARM products either.
Hopefully Intel will continue to evolve Core so that it can scale from smartphones (2.5 W) to servers (100+W) and compete with ARM at every thermal design level. Core is at 4.5 W since the 14nm node (Core m3). Core was at 17W at the 22nm mode, showing the tremendous improvements new nodes can bring. I expect Intel to have a 2.5W Core part ready at the 10nm node.
-Intel and AMD are now the only chip companies making x86 chips, in a mature slow growth or declining market
-ARM, in contrast, has 249 Cortex-A licensees, in a maturing but still growing market
-AMD has started making ARM-based chips, Opteron A1100 series, with 8xA57 cores @ 1.7-2.0 GHZ depending on model
-AMD's ARM product is not competitive; software required for the 64bit ARM arch (APCI and PCIe) was not available until this year whereas x86 solutions are mature
-Evidence that Intel can only support one architecture (Core) mounted when Intel discontinued Atom
-Intel can share the Core architecture among servers, PCs, tablets, and maybe eventually smartphones, meaning at least internally to Intel, Core has legs
-Intel's costs are inflated because they solely develop and support Core
-Whereas in the foundry world, ARM is a shared, co-developed technology which permits ARM, foundries, Apple and others to share the costs
-To match the foundry world cost structure, Intel would have to cut all Core development costs, and start contributing to/sharing costs with ARM ecosystem; this is probably impossible in Intel's business culture
Why does Intel refuse ARM technology? ARM would make them more cost-competitive, right?
First of all, no. The cost of legacy Core would have to be eliminated before ARM-ecosystem low costs would be operative. Doing both ARM and Core would layer costs, making the problem worse.
Intel would rather invest in Core than ARM, because of the money to be made by Core in servers. The Atom architecture played second fiddle, wasn't developed sufficiently, and ultimately was trashed. The same would likely happen if ARM was substituted for Atom.
It might be too late for Intel to join the ARM party anyway. AMD has not hit with great success in their evolution into ARM products either.
Hopefully Intel will continue to evolve Core so that it can scale from smartphones (2.5 W) to servers (100+W) and compete with ARM at every thermal design level. Core is at 4.5 W since the 14nm node (Core m3). Core was at 17W at the 22nm mode, showing the tremendous improvements new nodes can bring. I expect Intel to have a 2.5W Core part ready at the 10nm node.
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