News - ARM chips running at 3GHz on the cards for next year

[HEXUS]

Both TSMC and GlobalFoundries have revealed plans to move to a 20nm process.

Read more.

[maverik-sg1]

There's going to be a point where ARM boost Mhz for Power and Intel engineer lower power consumption and both technologies will reach a vergence of equality.

There's no doubt Intel have the resources and technology partnerships to shrink dies down faster than anyone else right now, 14NM has slipped to 2015 though maybe TSMC and Co will have similar delays or seize the opportunity to catch-up?

The x86 architecture lends itself to easier multi platform software....their challenges has included power consumption versus ARM and being able to break into a portable market dominated by software developed for ARM and it's partners.

This battle is getting interesting because ARM's biggest challenge has been creating a complete ecosystem on platforms beyond phones, tabs and smart TV's, but they rely on developers to do this for them which is why Microsoft finally getting on-board to do this has been a great help to anyone not engaged in iOS.

The actual market is looking mighty crowded, with so many players in it, but this competition will be good for the consumers

[DanceswithUnix]

There's going to be a point where ARM boost Mhz for Power and Intel engineer lower power consumption and both technologies will reach a vergence of equality.

Not sure anyone cares about equality tbh.

Consumers want something that runs their apps. Android games are written for ARM, Android is the dominant OS of the moment, safest bet is ARM. As long as performance is good enough, Intel can go as fast as they want. Angry birds won't fly any faster across the screen.

If I was Intel, I would be looking very scared in the direction of RockChip and AllWinner atm. They seem to dominate the £50-£150 tablet market processors.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Price is going to be the most important factor IMHO. If you look at tablets and phones,battery life is determined more by the screen,wireless components and capacity of the battery.

[kingpotnoodle]

There's going to be a point where ARM boost Mhz for Power and Intel engineer lower power consumption and both technologies will reach a vergence of equality.

That's already happening, there are ARM SoCs (notably A15) drawing more power than CloverTrail+ and Atom powered Windows 8 tablets are faster with similar battery to the ARM powered RT tablets.

Consumers want something that runs their apps. Android games are written for ARM, Android is the dominant OS of the moment, safest bet is ARM. As long as performance is good enough, Intel can go as fast as they want. Angry birds won't fly any faster across the screen.

Samsung are using Atom in some of their latest Android tablets...

If I was Intel, I would be looking very scared in the direction of RockChip and AllWinner atm. They seem to dominate the £50-£150 tablet market processors.

Why? Those are low margin products using SoCs that are significantly behind the ARM market leaders like Qualcomm. If Intel should be worried so should Qualcomm, NVidia et al.

[DanceswithUnix]

Why? Those are low margin products using SoCs that are significantly behind the ARM market leaders like Qualcomm. If Intel should be worried so should Qualcomm, NVidia et al.

*Because* they are low margin (and low risk).

A year ago you would have included Texas Instruments in that high end lineup. Staying in the lead is an expensive and risky game, and apparently not for them.

Phones are basically made by Samsung and Apple atm, with others fighting over scraps. Samsung and Apple are currently both Intel customers, so can be "negotiated" with. Samsung might make an Intel based tablet and they will get attention in the press, but I wonder if they sell many.

Qualcomm are probably a bit of a worry, they have some nice devices and a good reputation.
NVidia don't seem to be getting design wins, I expect only NVidia are losing sleep there.

Rockchip are a complete outsider, yet I know for sure I have two of their dual core chips in my house. For all I know there might already be more. They sell to Chinese factories who can then export through all sorts of channels into our homes. I notice in my daily marketing email from EBuyer that they now have a quad core 10" tablet with 2GB of ram and an IPS screen for the cost of an i5. Intel have an answer to expensive stuff, but they don't have anything to counter the low end.

Someone at Intel once said that they didn't worry too much about AMD, it was VIA attacking them from below that they worried about. Well they managed to fend off VIA, but I don't think the same legal tactics will work against a low overheads consumer ARM chip designer.

Just think, millions of low cost computing devices pouring into the market, and the only way Intel can compete is to lower their margins?