News - Information leaks on Intel's 32nm "Medfield" mobile chip

[HEXUS]

Intel's first true SoC (System-on-a-Chip).

Read more.

[MSIC]

Thanks for the info.
For me, if I were a betting man, i'd far sooner back the ARM guys to increase the CPU ability than the Intel approach of taking a current chip and trying to bring the power down.

Does anyone else think that AMD and ARM should join forces? God knows that AMD need to learn about better power management if they are to survive in the consumer CPU arena....

[ca197]

As AMD are an ARM licencee then there is nothing stopping them producing an AMD ARM Chip (Which I am surprised they haven't done lately). I think also under some ARM licencing models AMD would be allowed to change the reference design to their liking much like Qualcomm. In other words I think AMD could easily be a big part of the ARM ecosystem if they chose too.

My personal hope here is that Intels plans fall flat on their faces. Come on ARM is a UK company after all :-) God Save the Queen.

[Terbinator]

AMD ARM + AMD GPU = mobile device winning?

[kingpotnoodle]

Oh for ^&%*s sake ARM isn't the saviour of all mankind, it's just another instruction set.

ARM Holdings don't even make most of the money off the architecture, they license their IP/designs, some people use them straight up whilst others (Qualcomm) improve the designs. Both AMD and Intel have been licensees in the past, Intel sold XScale to Marvell and and AMD pulled back and sold their low power graphics to Qualcomm.

ARM based CPUs are as far away from being good on the desktop as Intel are from shrinking x86 into a decent smartphone. The performance gap is huge between a Core i3 and even the latest A15 designs. There simply isn't going to suddenly be ARM CPUs as fast as Intel/AMD's finest but using 10% of the power, physics doesn't work like that.

An ARM core + AMD GPU would destroy the whole advantage of having an ARM core - low power. If you aren't going to bother with a low power GPU you might as well use an x86-64 core like AMD already do and benefit from the compatibility instead, remember there is currently no DirectX for ARM so the fancy AMD GPU would be totally pointless.

If you want your holy AMD GPU with the saintly ARM core then the closest you'll get is a Qualcomm Snapdragon with Adreno graphics, based on improved ARM and AMD technology respectively.

Given that Intel are an order of magnitude bigger than ARM Holdings and also bigger than all of the ARM licensees I wouldn't bet against them too quickly.

My personal hope here is that Intels plans fall flat on their faces.

Why? Competition is a good thing, keeps everyone on their toes. Intel vs Qualcomm vs TI vs NVidia would make for some serious competitive pressure in the low power and SOC market.