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[PCWorld] Intel kills the Atom line

Ken g6

Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
Moderator
From PCWorld:

The company is immediately canceling Atom chips, code-named Sofia and Broxton, for mobile devices, an Intel spokeswoman confirmed.
Click to expand...

And all I can say is it's about time! PCWorld thinks they're abandoning mobile. I think they can jump right back in with a low-clocked single-core hyperthreaded Skylake.
 
They screwed around too long to make it work. Now they are pretty much forced to use Core, and hope they can somehow make the margins work. Or simply get out.

Ken g6 said:
And all I can say is it's about time! PCWorld thinks they're abandoning mobile. I think they can jump right back in with a low-clocked single-core hyperthreaded Skylake.
Click to expand...

Core at this point still draws far too much for it to really be used in phones/tablets. Maybe Cannonlake. I don't think single core would be competitive enough, it'd have to be dual.
 
Ken g6 said:
So, where will Atom be used? Xeon Phi? 😕
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Low cost PC processors (i.e. Apollo Lake), micro-server/low-end networking SoCs, IoT applications (i.e. Atom processors for in-vehicle infotainment), and so on.

Atom will live but SoCs that use those Atom cores to go into phones/tablets are gone.
 
Intel could just use their huge R&D to design togheter with big core a sightly smaller core for mobile use.
 
Phynaz said:
Looks like Intel is serious.
Click to expand...
So... is not only Broxton and SOFIA but seems to be the end of the whole Atom line? seems that it got worse than expected....
And that is very bad news for the budget market since AMD is no longer there and VIA is MIA.
 
Well that's an earthquake for personal computing. While somewhat expected it is still surprising.

I guess next ARM vs x86 battle will be in laptops. I wonder whether Intel will be able to beat his upcoming opponents there.
 
seitur said:
Well that's an earthquake for personal computing. While somewhat expected it is still surprising.

I guess next ARM vs x86 battle will be in laptops. I wonder whether Intel will be able to beat his upcoming opponents there.
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ARM didn't even win tablets. Its faster declining than PC.

If anything, ARM moves back to phones and x86 moves back to traditional PC space. The fight is over.
 
ShintaiDK said:
ARM didn't even win tablets. Its faster declining than PC.

If anything, ARM moves back to phones and x86 moves back to traditional PC space. The fight is over.
Click to expand...

ARM won tablets, tablets just didn't win customers.
There are clear indications of an upcoming attempt to push Chrome/Android on PCs (NUC like boxes and convertibles) in the following years, mostly for casual costumers and that might be ARMs next opportunity. With Intels latest moves, the low-end market is wide open.
 
ShintaiDK said:
ARM didn't even win tablets. Its faster declining than PC.

If anything, ARM moves back to phones and x86 moves back to traditional PC space. The fight is over.
Click to expand...

The next fight is in servers. Thankfully Intel is bringing its A game with products like the Xeon D, so it should be a much more interesting fight.
 
ShintaiDK said:
ARM didn't even win tablets. Its faster declining than PC.

If anything, ARM moves back to phones and x86 moves back to traditional PC space. The fight is over.
Click to expand...
Tablets are hurting because they are less essential piece of hardware.
In times of bad economy people can to an substainable extent replace tablets with smartphones (or laptops in more productive tasks).

Said that though, I don't believe that some companies won't try to push ARM into laptops more heavily. Whether that is potentially succesful stategy or doomed from the start move is completly diffrent matter.

With sales declining I think some companies will try to run forward and push i.e. more sophisticated/faster Chromebooks or other Android (some possibly Linux)based "laptops" before they agree to scale back with sales&production.

Then there is also question of Apple.

I think the fight is far from over. (sadly because I do personally prefer more open x86 Wintel & Linux ecosystems)
 
Atom was pointless, slow and inefficient. It also represents how clouded the low end is. Core M, i3, Atom, etc. Too many options, too similar.
 
Not necessarily inefficient in term of performance per watt, especially when it started with Silvermont. But Intel failed to improve performance with Airmont and badly executed Goldmont which is still not on sale. And for desktop low end computers Atom was a bad solution because nobody cares if the CPU consumes 5W or 10W, not to mention that the performance was poor for even a low cost desktop machine. Maybe Apollo Lake could be a solution for low cost notebooks, that's it.
 
Nothingness said:
Open x86 Wintel , the funniest oxymoron I ever read :biggrin:
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More open than iOS or even Android. (specifically in practical terms for end-user, I am aware it is more open for other user scenarios)

Althrough I admit MS is certainly working to close their ecosystem with Windows 10.
 
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