Is ARM the end of Intel's monopoly?

[GillyBillyDilly]

Or will Intel come up with a super duper chip and wipe them off the market?

Any comment which makes the most sense will get a triple :thumbsup: as prize.

 

[Fjodor2001]

You have to separate that question per market. For example Intel may be dominant in the desktop space, but they are no big player in the mobile phone space which is ARM's domain.

And there will not be a one single "super duper chip" that will rule all markets.

Whether Intel will successfully compete in ARM territory and vice versa is hard to tell.

 

[dma0991]

Let me echo a question back at you. Will ARM be able to compete against Intel in the space where there is a demand for high performance like desktops and servers?

 

[BrightCandle]

Intel is planning to release chips into Arms world soon on the latest processes and using full on x86 chips. Will Arm survive that incursion into its market of such a higher performance design in comparison to its own combined with a massive process advantage?

I am more worried about ARM and its partners than Intel.

 

[Lonbjerg]

No.

 

[GillyBillyDilly]

No.

:thumbsup: just for your sig.

 

[GillyBillyDilly]

You have to separate that question per market. For example Intel may be dominant in the desktop space, but they are no big player in the mobile phone space which is ARM's domain.

And there will not be a one single "super duper chip" that will rule all markets.

Whether Intel will successfully compete in ARM territory and vice versa is hard to tell.

One may argue that mobile chips may someday become good enough for desktops too. If in 5 years from now I could get a cpu which has the power of a cheap i3 chip, runnig at 5 watts costing 20 dollars , I'd get one for the desktop.

 

[khon]

ARM has the advantage right now, mainly because Intel hasn't been very serious in it's attempts to enter the low power market yet, with Atom always being a node or two behind their other chips.

However, now you have Intel pushing to make Atom a top priority, and Intel has a much larger R&D budget than it's competitors + a clear process advantage.

It'll be an interesting battle, but personally I'm expecting Intel to come out on top.

It's also worth noting that as cellphones/tablets get closer to desktops in terms of performance, people will start to expect to be able to run their desktop programs on their portable devices, and desktop programs are all designed for x86 ...

 

[bunnyfubbles]

no way

the only thing standing in intel's way over the short term (say ~5-10 years) is themselves, only thing standing in their way in the longer term is some crazy new CPU technology at a fundamental level that competes with / replaces silicon and nullifies intel's huge process advantage (and assuming Intel isn't already into this tech with their R&D)

 

[Idontcare]

no way

the only thing standing in intel's way over the short term (say ~5-10 years) is themselves, only thing standing in their way in the longer term is some crazy new CPU technology at a fundamental level that competes with / replaces silicon and nullifies intel's huge process advantage (and assuming Intel isn't already into this tech with their R&D)

That is it in a nutshell.

Unless Intel suffers the same fate as Eastman Kodak, Intel is safe for quite a few years.

The same can't be said of existing ARM suppliers. If ARM itself turns out to be the winning architecture then Intel need merely decide it is time to build itself a super-duper ARM-based CPU and produce it on their advanced node. The existing ARM guys don't have that option should x86 turn out to be the solution of choice by the market.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Right now ARM makers are canibalizing on one another. Plus they are fabless (Cept Samsung) and got lower R&D. The ARM segment also went backwards in 2012 like x86. Dont get confused with 2 companies having success.

So I dont get why people keep thinking ARM is so great.

Right now ARM doesnt scale up, but x86 scales down.

 

[sontin]

The ARM segment also went backwards in 2012 like x86. Dont get confused with 2 companies having success.

Tegra 3 and Samsung's E4 serie with four A9 cores and Tegra 3 with a companion core.
Krait and A5 as the first 28nm/32nm ARM cores.
Samsung's E5 with the first A15 implementation.

2012 was a great year for the ARM segment.

So I dont get why people keep thinking ARM is so great.

Because there is competition. And that means we see more performance in a much shorter timeframe.

Right now ARM doesnt scale up, but x86 scales down.

What? Every step - A8->A9 and Krait -> Swift -> A15 - increased every time the performance.
x86 is not scaling down. It needs a smaller process to be competitive. On the same node ARM it's much better. With Krait there is the perf/watt part and with A15 the performance part. Atom is right in middle with no advantages. Right now it's x86 which "doesn't scale up" or down.

 

[GillyBillyDilly]

Intel is safe for quite a few years.

You mean Intel or Intel's monopoly?

 

[Nemesis 1]

ARM ended the Intel Monopoly . Arm as a whole makes more chips than does intel . Its just NV Apple Qual. ect ect. Intel is no longer a monopoly with the release of Windows 8/RT. There is no x86 lock anymore.

 

[Ferzerp]

This thread has been posted so many times, I don't know that there is anything different to say.

 

[Idontcare]

You mean Intel or Intel's monopoly?

Intel doesn't have a monopoly on anything, so of course I am speaking just about Intel.

The day Intel does secure itself a monopoly is the day it is no longer safe because the FTC and DoJ will see that they are broken up ala AT&T and RCA.

To understand why Intel is avoiding using ARM to beat existing ARM producers at their own game (which they could arguably accomplish simply for sake of having superior process tech) you need only look to Larry Ellison and understand what he means by the following (in speaking of his decision to buy SUN):

We have no is interest in selling other people's IP. X86 includes Intel IB, Microsoft IB. We don't make money selling that. Sun sold that stuff and we are phasing out that business. We have no interest in it whatsoever. We have interest in selling systems that include our IP. That's how we're going to drive the profitability of our overall hardware business.

Source: Oracle Q1 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Beating ARM with x86 is where the big money is at from Intel's perspective. And it is not a business strategy that is unique to Intel.

But you can be sure they would accept the fall-back position of deploying ARM-based products to take on other ARM-based products if it came down to it, knowing their ARM-based products would have the die-size (cost) benefit of being a full node shrink ahead of the competition in addition to having lower power consumption because of the shrink (look at Intel 3770K vs AMD FX8350 now, that is Qualcomm's future in about 5-7 yrs IMO).

 

[GillyBillyDilly]

This thread has been posted so many times, I don't know that there is anything different to say.

Just say what you said in previous threads and you may win the prize.

 

[MisterMac]

Just say what said in previous threads and you may win the prize.

It is easier to scale down - than it is to invent new tricks for higher IPC.
Intel sits on IP + Process Node Advantages.

AKA - Intel unless they fumble(has happened before) - will win.


The first real battle will be Silvermont - after a few front skirmishes with medfield.

Well see how that goes.

 

[GillyBillyDilly]

Intel doesn't have a monopoly on anything

Technically speaking that is true, but in reality they have been enjoying some sort of indirect ( there must be a better word for this ) monopoly, keeping AMD as a means of evading Anti-trust problems.

(look at Intel 3770K vs AMD FX8350 now, that is Qualcomm's future in about 5-7 yrs IMO).

So you are saying ARM will suffer the same destiny as AMD?

 

[Hulk]

I think the fact that we're even discussing real competition for Intel is fantastic. Let's face it, in the x86 market AMD was always Gerry Cooney to Intel's Larry Holmes. Yeah he had a shot on paper, and sometimes even had spurts of looking good, but never had a chance to win the fight.

Whether Intel decides to compete in the ultra-mobile market using their current x86 designs or goes to ARM doesn't really matter to me. The fact that Intel appears to be
"going into that ring" against legitimate competition is what is important and exciting.

 

[AtenRa]

knowing their ARM-based products would have the die-size (cost) benefit of being a full node shrink ahead of the competition in addition to having lower power consumption because of the shrink (look at Intel 3770K vs AMD FX8350 now, that is Qualcomm's future in about 5-7 yrs IMO).

ARM cores are much smaller than Intels Core and ATOM. Even ATOM at 22nm will be much bigger than Cortex 15. Even with a full node shrink ahead, Intel will not be in the same position they are now against AMD.

One more think, I see nobody talking about GPGPU, something that Intel is even more behind and will play a bigger role in the future.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2294334

 

[Hulk]

How does the fact that x86 doesn't run Android (AFAIK) figure into this? Doesn't that mean the fight is really Intel/MS vs. Android/ARM?

 

[Lonbjerg]

How does the fact that x86 doesn't run Android (AFAIK) figure into this? Doesn't that mean the fight is really Intel/MS vs. Android/ARM?

This might interest you:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones/5

ARM Compatibility: Binary Translation
Similar to Apple's move from PowerPC to x86, Intel finds itself in a difficult position with bringing Atom to Android. The OS isn't an issue as it has already been ported to x86 and all further releases will be available in both ARM and x86 flavors. The bigger problem is application compatibility.

There's already support for targeting both ARM and x86 architectures in the Android NDK so anything developed going forward should be ok so long as the developer is aware of x86.

Obviously the first party apps already work on x86, but what about those in the Market?

By default all Android apps run in a VM and are thus processor architecture agnostic. As long as the apps are calling Android libraries that aren't native ARM there, once again, shouldn't be a problem. Where Intel will have a problem is with apps that do call native libraries or apps that are ARM native (e.g. virtually anything CPU intensive like a 3D game).

Intel believes that roughly 75% of all Android apps in the Market don't feature any native ARM code. The remaining 25% are the issue. The presumption is that eventually this will be a non-issue (described above), but what do users of the first x86 Android phones do? Two words: binary translation.

Intel isn't disclosing much about the solution, but by intercepting ARM binaries and translating ARM code to x86 code on the fly during execution Intel is hoping to achieve ~90% app compatibility at launch. Binary translation is typically noticeably slower than running native code, although Intel is unsurprisingly optimistic about the experience on Android. I'm still very skeptical about the overall experience but we'll have to wait and see for ourselves.

 

[Homeles]

Android does run on x86. Intel's invested quite a bit of resources to ensure that.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones/5

Beaten to it, lol.

 

[Idontcare]

ARM cores are much smaller than Intels Core and ATOM. Even ATOM at 22nm will be much bigger than Cortex 15. Even with a full node shrink ahead, Intel will not be in the same position they are now against AMD.

One more think, I see nobody talking about GPGPU, something that Intel is even more behind and will play a bigger role in the future.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2294334

That specific portion of my post which you quoted was intentionally referring to the outcome of Intel's fall-back position which would be Intel producing their own ARM cores to compete with everyone elses ARM cores, at that point the primary difference would be process technology.

Unless TSMC manages to best Intel in the process node race, Intel ARM would have no excuse for not being cheaper to produce and lower power in operation compared to the ARM chips coming out of TSMC (or GloFo, or Samsung). But Intel would of course attempt to make x86 successful first and foremost for the same business strategy reasons Ellison speaks to.

Intel has two options (ARM or x86) and a serious lead in process tech. Everyone else they are competing with (except AMD) only has ARM to put forward and no process tech advantage. It is up to Intel to decide how they want to skin this cat, but obviously they are going to attempt to do it in a way that maximizes margins and profits first. If that fails, plan B is still practically guaranteed to beat out everyone anyways (because of the process tech advantage).