a nice value for the stock portfolio. intel ignored the lowpower gadget market for years. just to come back now with a decent and complete setup for these markets. smells like success here.
Yep. It's possible we'll all have Intel SoC's in our phones in the next few years. as great as ARM is, the only licensee that can compete with Intel in manufacturing is Samsung, and as great as Exynos is on paper, Apple's SoC's still trump it (and everyone else) in raw performance with a fraction of the cores. Given Apple and Intel's close relationship, it isn't far fetched to see Intel minting Apple SoC's in the future, ARM or otherwise.
Qualcomm makes almost 80% of the SoC's for Android now, and I see no reason why that will change in the near, or mid future. Samsung makes crappy SoC's. I'd be willing to bet their costs are higher than Qualcomm's. One would think it odd that Samsung finds it necessary to use Qualcomm chips in more than half of their own phones, and they find it almost impossible to sell them to anyone else. Apple has been, by far, the largest beneficiary of Samsung's chip manufacturing, estimated to have been, when they only used Samsung, 65% of Samsung's capacity. Most of the rest of those chips being chips Samsung themselves use, but again, only for some of their devices, and rarely the high end ones sold in N America, or places where the best performance is demanded.
Remember that Samsung only has a design license, not an architecture license, as Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia has, so they can't design better chips than those designs ARM provides.
Qualcomm has a short-term issue now, they don't have a 64bit version of their Krait cpu core.They're using ARM designs as a stop-gap but their advantage just disappeared. Nvidia may even get Denver out being Qualcomm has a 64bit Krait core.
Qualcomm's advantage has at least as much to do with a quality integrated modem as it does a better performing CPU, so I think moving from Krait to stock cores for a generation or two won't be the end of the world for them. I would like to see Denver in more devices, though.
Qualcomm has some advantage, Broadcom, TI, and ST-E exited the market. But good modems/radios are coming now (for LTE) from Intel, Samsung and others. A good Application Processor with a Qualcomm, Intel or Samsung modem can get pretty far at the moment. Hell even Denver is used with Qualcomm modems. Adreno has been pretty solid but both ARM and ImgTec solutions are quite good at the moment. Intel is getting there too. Samsung radios does 3x20 aggregation, Intel does have a decent cat 6 lte-a solution. Denver plus Icera might be a tougher sell. Icera as a discrete modem is really only in Nvidia's own products.
Samsung collaborates with ARM through a foundry program, which means they do adapt the processors for it's processes and are actually involved deeply developing the IP and can do plenty of optimizations, but don't change the architecture. Integration and support matters, and Qualcomm isn't using their own arch with 64-bit yet. Nothing is stopping Samsung going custom though.
Samsung uses chips form different vendors and it's really another part of the conglomerate that does semiconductor stuff, it's not just for in-house use. We have Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung at Samsung phones and tablets already. Wouldn't be surprised to see more vendors there. They want to sell stuff, they also sell LCD and OLED displays, batteries, memory and NAND in this field and to far more customers then to themselves.
Your comment makes no sense and is all over the place. You're basically implying one one side that ARM isa sucks, and then praising Apple's SoC - which is based on ARM - for how great it is.
News flash. Apple's ARM chips can beat Atom on an older process than what Intel uses. What does that say about Atom's IPC? That it's pretty crappy, right?
Seamus doesn't say or even imply anything bad about the ARM ISA. His point is that only Intel has both top-notch process and top-notch SoC design. Samsung has process, but not design. Apple has design but not process.
Yes $7 billion loss in 2 years and being forced to license out its Atom micro-architecture just to get some damn market share already (wishful thinking anyway) sure smells like something, but not sure it's success.
Considering Intel still has a net income in the multi-billion dollar per quarter range, after losses in the mobile division are accounted for, and given the perceived importance of long-term success in the mobile arena, and given how far out ahead of Intel ARM designs were with respect to power usage, I think Intel is not only doing the right thing in pursuing the mobile market, but also seems to be quickly closing the power usage gap, and given a bit more time will likely be a serious competitor in the space.
The only long-term problem I see for Intel in mobile is that no one is committed in any way to the x86 ISA, and so the natural advantage Intel enjoys in PC computing doesn't exist. They will have to compete purely based on the inherent non-ISA merits of their products. That is a good thing.
Sure would be nice if they'd show a little customer appreciation, maybe give us a 3+Ghz Quad Core with HT for under $200. Haha, yeah, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
Even better, you can get the Devil's Canyon Core i5 at Microcenter for $199. I just bought one last week, and have it easily running at 4.4Ghz. Much better deal, simply due to the the overclock you can do.
No interest in overclocking at all. Reliability > speed. AKA Warranty rules all. Intel SHOULD be selling the chips at the highest frequencies they're stable at, if they're not that's their bad. But if I gotta spend more on the electric bill then that's also bad. Point is, OC is fine as a hobby or whatever, but it's not practical and will never be mainstream. The turbo functions on modern CPU's are as close as that will ever come to mainstream, and that's fine. So OC is out as a "value add".
Again, 3+Ghz on a quad core with HT for under $200. Intel could do that TODAY and still be making mad profits, it's disgusting that they don't.
Oh boo hoo. There's no reason for them to do that. HT isn't useful for most people and for those it is will be willing to pay more for it. Maybe if AMD stepped up their game Intel would respond but AMD has been garbage for years.
It is only possitive for consumers that Intel is struggling in the low power area.
Look at general PC and server devision where Intel is so dominating that they are charging double digits for there CPU and useless platform refreshes.OEM only focus on the subsidized R&D portfolio by Intel. Consumers don't get it and take the usual djingle brand for everything even if its bad pushed by the large electronic warehouses who guess what get reductions from OEM by selling certain brands. result: consumer is the one who suffers from this but they don't get it....
THANK YOU ARM for BEING IN THIS IT SPACE, else we would still be working with button phones or systems able to run 1h max on battery.
In the industry, the losses incurred by the mobile sector is considered to be a major problem for intel, not even being close to a success. It's been pointed out that intel hasn't even one major best seller in any of the devices that use those parts. In addition, the subsidy is going to prove a problem. If their parts cost enough more than ARM that they need to subsidize that difference to enable sales, then unless somehow they can bring those prices in alignment,, they will continue to incur those huge subsidy costs.
ARM performance, in the form of the Apple A8X and the new, but not yet released, Tegra X-1 are already equal to, and even exceed the best Atom units out there. With ARM performance growing at a rate that's significantly faster than any x86 designs, it looks as though Atom will fall behind in a year or so. That will make it very difficult to convince manufacturers to use the product, subsidies or not.
You make some good points. Intel is probably having headaches over the direction of mobile SoCs, because in order to compete, Intel will have to produce chips that perform like desktop chips, while using power like mobile SoCs, with ARM-like margins. I don't doubt Intel can do that, but it would kill their profitability -- which I would consider a bad thing.
Intel can, they just don't want to. At one point they have the best performing ARM chips in the world (Intel X-Scale). Then they decided that x86 needed to be everywhere and sold off the X-Scale to Marvel (who did very little with it) and started trying to build a low-power chip based on the original P5 design from the first Pentium (this was the Atom). Intel could be dominating the ARM landscape, they just chose not to.
This is where those nominal 5% increases in IPC are going to come back and bite Intel. ARM has the advantage of Many many companies working to improve the ISA and overall performance/watt.
Based on WHAT? No freaking way they sold $591 million of Quarks or Edison boards. So is this more financial smoke and mirrors from Intel, recording cloud services or whatever as in the IoT bucket of revenue?
Frankly, you'd be shocked at the number of things Intel's IoT group sells into: Digital signage, retail PoS, industrial controllers, mil-spec chips, etc. There's probably a dozen major groups under that IoT umbrella. Once you add that up, getting to that number is easy.
Ah I am so glad that Intel has managed to force feed it's way into Android platform. Because it's Atom chips can finally be properly compared to ARM competition! Take a look at the benchmarks of latest Atom:
How aren't they? There's Geekbench 3 score of both, and Snapdragon 800 takes it easily. As for the other raw Android benchmark-Antutu - the difference is massive, Snapdragon being ahead by over 15 000 points.
The Atom can put up a fight in browser benchmarks, but overall it is clearly inferior. Take into account the superior chipset is done on inferior process, and tell me which one has the better architecture.
Btw, the latest Moorefield Atom uses Imagination GPU instead of Intel's.
Desktops and laptops still have a firm ground in x86 software bound enterprise, professional and business market, and that ain't going to change any time soon.
The reason Intel is having record revenues is the following - an absolute lack of competition in that space. AMD was the only viable alternative for a long time but now those times are gone.
Even from hundreds of miles away, you can smell the bile rising, and hear the gnashing of teeth, fingers and keyboards from the offices of Semiaccurate and Charlie Demerjian.
Oh, the lulz! That place seems to be ground zero for irrational, pathological and delusional Intel/Nvidia (and occasional Apple) hate.
As somebody who've had hardware from all of the above and AMD and Cyrix, I really couldn't be bothered to hate a company* and find the phenomenon disturbingly amusing!
*Unless a company killed my cat or firstborn or something. I suppose that might lead to blind, furious rage...
Actually, what's the power profile of the cortex A57 anyways? It seems that the Core-M should be getting pretty close at 5 watts. I wonder how its performance compares to the cores based on the ARMv8 ISA?
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
38 Comments
Back to Article
stefstef - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
a nice value for the stock portfolio. intel ignored the lowpower gadget market for years. just to come back now with a decent and complete setup for these markets. smells like success here.Samus - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
Yep. It's possible we'll all have Intel SoC's in our phones in the next few years. as great as ARM is, the only licensee that can compete with Intel in manufacturing is Samsung, and as great as Exynos is on paper, Apple's SoC's still trump it (and everyone else) in raw performance with a fraction of the cores. Given Apple and Intel's close relationship, it isn't far fetched to see Intel minting Apple SoC's in the future, ARM or otherwise.melgross - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Qualcomm makes almost 80% of the SoC's for Android now, and I see no reason why that will change in the near, or mid future. Samsung makes crappy SoC's. I'd be willing to bet their costs are higher than Qualcomm's. One would think it odd that Samsung finds it necessary to use Qualcomm chips in more than half of their own phones, and they find it almost impossible to sell them to anyone else. Apple has been, by far, the largest beneficiary of Samsung's chip manufacturing, estimated to have been, when they only used Samsung, 65% of Samsung's capacity. Most of the rest of those chips being chips Samsung themselves use, but again, only for some of their devices, and rarely the high end ones sold in N America, or places where the best performance is demanded.Remember that Samsung only has a design license, not an architecture license, as Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia has, so they can't design better chips than those designs ARM provides.
Flunk - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Qualcomm has a short-term issue now, they don't have a 64bit version of their Krait cpu core.They're using ARM designs as a stop-gap but their advantage just disappeared. Nvidia may even get Denver out being Qualcomm has a 64bit Krait core.icrf - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Qualcomm's advantage has at least as much to do with a quality integrated modem as it does a better performing CPU, so I think moving from Krait to stock cores for a generation or two won't be the end of the world for them. I would like to see Denver in more devices, though.Penti - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
Qualcomm has some advantage, Broadcom, TI, and ST-E exited the market. But good modems/radios are coming now (for LTE) from Intel, Samsung and others. A good Application Processor with a Qualcomm, Intel or Samsung modem can get pretty far at the moment. Hell even Denver is used with Qualcomm modems. Adreno has been pretty solid but both ARM and ImgTec solutions are quite good at the moment. Intel is getting there too. Samsung radios does 3x20 aggregation, Intel does have a decent cat 6 lte-a solution. Denver plus Icera might be a tougher sell. Icera as a discrete modem is really only in Nvidia's own products.Samsung collaborates with ARM through a foundry program, which means they do adapt the processors for it's processes and are actually involved deeply developing the IP and can do plenty of optimizations, but don't change the architecture. Integration and support matters, and Qualcomm isn't using their own arch with 64-bit yet. Nothing is stopping Samsung going custom though.
Samsung uses chips form different vendors and it's really another part of the conglomerate that does semiconductor stuff, it's not just for in-house use. We have Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung at Samsung phones and tablets already. Wouldn't be surprised to see more vendors there. They want to sell stuff, they also sell LCD and OLED displays, batteries, memory and NAND in this field and to far more customers then to themselves.
Krysto - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Your comment makes no sense and is all over the place. You're basically implying one one side that ARM isa sucks, and then praising Apple's SoC - which is based on ARM - for how great it is.News flash. Apple's ARM chips can beat Atom on an older process than what Intel uses. What does that say about Atom's IPC? That it's pretty crappy, right?
ws3 - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Seamus doesn't say or even imply anything bad about the ARM ISA.His point is that only Intel has both top-notch process and top-notch SoC design. Samsung has process, but not design. Apple has design but not process.
Samus - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Atom's IPC is older than Apple's SoC engineering department. Way to go, you win the internet.darkich - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
And it's not just Apple.Krait and Cortex also had it beaten, or at least on par, on inferior process.
And let's not forget the GPU architecture where Intel is embarrassingly bad compared to Imagination, Qualcomm, ARM and Nvidia GPU architectures.
Krysto - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Yes $7 billion loss in 2 years and being forced to license out its Atom micro-architecture just to get some damn market share already (wishful thinking anyway) sure smells like something, but not sure it's success.ws3 - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Considering Intel still has a net income in the multi-billion dollar per quarter range, after losses in the mobile division are accounted for, and given the perceived importance of long-term success in the mobile arena, and given how far out ahead of Intel ARM designs were with respect to power usage, I think Intel is not only doing the right thing in pursuing the mobile market, but also seems to be quickly closing the power usage gap, and given a bit more time will likely be a serious competitor in the space.The only long-term problem I see for Intel in mobile is that no one is committed in any way to the x86 ISA, and so the natural advantage Intel enjoys in PC computing doesn't exist. They will have to compete purely based on the inherent non-ISA merits of their products. That is a good thing.
Hrel - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Sure would be nice if they'd show a little customer appreciation, maybe give us a 3+Ghz Quad Core with HT for under $200. Haha, yeah, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.dgingeri - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...I know, it doesn't have HT, but HT really isn't much of an advantage. Hey, it's a 3.1GHz quad core server chip for under $200.
kmmatney - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Even better, you can get the Devil's Canyon Core i5 at Microcenter for $199. I just bought one last week, and have it easily running at 4.4Ghz. Much better deal, simply due to the the overclock you can do.Hrel - Sunday, January 18, 2015 - link
No interest in overclocking at all. Reliability > speed. AKA Warranty rules all. Intel SHOULD be selling the chips at the highest frequencies they're stable at, if they're not that's their bad. But if I gotta spend more on the electric bill then that's also bad. Point is, OC is fine as a hobby or whatever, but it's not practical and will never be mainstream. The turbo functions on modern CPU's are as close as that will ever come to mainstream, and that's fine. So OC is out as a "value add".Again, 3+Ghz on a quad core with HT for under $200. Intel could do that TODAY and still be making mad profits, it's disgusting that they don't.
peterfares - Sunday, January 18, 2015 - link
Oh boo hoo. There's no reason for them to do that. HT isn't useful for most people and for those it is will be willing to pay more for it. Maybe if AMD stepped up their game Intel would respond but AMD has been garbage for years.Hrel - Sunday, January 18, 2015 - link
Like you said, no HT. But it also doesn't count if I gotta go over $130 on mobo. Or have to buy ECC RAM.duploxxx - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
It is only possitive for consumers that Intel is struggling in the low power area.Look at general PC and server devision where Intel is so dominating that they are charging double digits for there CPU and useless platform refreshes.OEM only focus on the subsidized R&D portfolio by Intel. Consumers don't get it and take the usual djingle brand for everything even if its bad pushed by the large electronic warehouses who guess what get reductions from OEM by selling certain brands. result: consumer is the one who suffers from this but they don't get it....
THANK YOU ARM for BEING IN THIS IT SPACE, else we would still be working with button phones or systems able to run 1h max on battery.
darkich - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
+1melgross - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
In the industry, the losses incurred by the mobile sector is considered to be a major problem for intel, not even being close to a success. It's been pointed out that intel hasn't even one major best seller in any of the devices that use those parts. In addition, the subsidy is going to prove a problem. If their parts cost enough more than ARM that they need to subsidize that difference to enable sales, then unless somehow they can bring those prices in alignment,, they will continue to incur those huge subsidy costs.ARM performance, in the form of the Apple A8X and the new, but not yet released, Tegra X-1 are already equal to, and even exceed the best Atom units out there. With ARM performance growing at a rate that's significantly faster than any x86 designs, it looks as though Atom will fall behind in a year or so. That will make it very difficult to convince manufacturers to use the product, subsidies or not.
ws3 - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
You make some good points. Intel is probably having headaches over the direction of mobile SoCs, because in order to compete, Intel will have to produce chips that perform like desktop chips, while using power like mobile SoCs, with ARM-like margins. I don't doubt Intel can do that, but it would kill their profitability -- which I would consider a bad thing.Flunk - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Intel can, they just don't want to. At one point they have the best performing ARM chips in the world (Intel X-Scale). Then they decided that x86 needed to be everywhere and sold off the X-Scale to Marvel (who did very little with it) and started trying to build a low-power chip based on the original P5 design from the first Pentium (this was the Atom). Intel could be dominating the ARM landscape, they just chose not to.SunnyNW - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
This is where those nominal 5% increases in IPC are going to come back and bite Intel. ARM has the advantage of Many many companies working to improve the ISA and overall performance/watt.name99 - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
"Intel’s IoT group had revenue of $591 million"Based on WHAT? No freaking way they sold $591 million of Quarks or Edison boards. So is this more financial smoke and mirrors from Intel, recording cloud services or whatever as in the IoT bucket of revenue?
stadisticado - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Frankly, you'd be shocked at the number of things Intel's IoT group sells into: Digital signage, retail PoS, industrial controllers, mil-spec chips, etc. There's probably a dozen major groups under that IoT umbrella. Once you add that up, getting to that number is easy.darkich - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
Ah I am so glad that Intel has managed to force feed it's way into Android platform. Because it's Atom chips can finally be properly compared to ARM competition!Take a look at the benchmarks of latest Atom:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-MeMo-Pad-8-ME581...
A 16 months old Snapdragon 800, done at inferior process, has this one it EASILY beaten (even in benchmarks)
darkich - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
^excuse the grammar mistakes.Michael Bay - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
And it holds very well in the very text you are linking.Why is atom hater always the dumbest in the room?
darkich - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
It looks like Atom lovers are the dumbest, actually!The comparison reference in the review were midrange chips, not the Snapdragon 800.
Had you know anything about SoC's, you'd know what Snapdragon 800' Geekbench and GPU scores are.
darkich - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
There you go, and prepare for clear superiority across the board:http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Samsung-Galaxy...
ppi - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
The CPU bound benchmarks in the links you posted are not comparable.It is well known GPU performance is Atom's weakness, but that tells very little of the x86 CPU core.
darkich - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
How aren't they?There's Geekbench 3 score of both, and Snapdragon 800 takes it easily.
As for the other raw Android benchmark-Antutu - the difference is massive, Snapdragon being ahead by over 15 000 points.
The Atom can put up a fight in browser benchmarks, but overall it is clearly inferior.
Take into account the superior chipset is done on inferior process, and tell me which one has the better architecture.
Btw, the latest Moorefield Atom uses Imagination GPU instead of Intel's.
TheSlamma - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
But but but... tablets are taking over PC's right?darkich - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
Desktops and laptops still have a firm ground in x86 software bound enterprise, professional and business market, and that ain't going to change any time soon.The reason Intel is having record revenues is the following - an absolute lack of competition in that space. AMD was the only viable alternative for a long time but now those times are gone.
V900 - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
Even from hundreds of miles away, you can smell the bile rising, and hear the gnashing of teeth, fingers and keyboards from the offices of Semiaccurate and Charlie Demerjian.Oh, the lulz!
That place seems to be ground zero for irrational, pathological and delusional Intel/Nvidia (and occasional Apple) hate.
As somebody who've had hardware from all of the above and AMD and Cyrix, I really couldn't be bothered to hate a company* and find the phenomenon disturbingly amusing!
*Unless a company killed my cat or firstborn or something. I suppose that might lead to blind, furious rage...
hammer256 - Sunday, January 18, 2015 - link
Actually, what's the power profile of the cortex A57 anyways? It seems that the Core-M should be getting pretty close at 5 watts. I wonder how its performance compares to the cores based on the ARMv8 ISA?Motion2082 - Saturday, January 24, 2015 - link
Looking at the graph above it does not look like INTEL can keep shrinking the die for much longer. Where too from here?