Posts Tagged ‘Intel’

Food for thought – If you ask Microsoft, Windows 8 is the idea how an aging operating system is modernizing itself and transitions into a new application and usage model for the next ten and possibly 20 years. On the hardware side, Intel appears to have dropped the tablet mantra a bit and is instead heavily pushing the ultrabook to support its core business, while fending off ARM on the lower end with its Medfield processor. While both Microsoft and Intel are succeeding in marketing new products, one could argue that they are merely technologies that already exist and, conceivably, ignore the true opportunity to change the way we interact with computers – despite the fact that such technologies are available today. Both Windows 8 and the ultrabook are stuck in the Now, rather than being guides to the future.

Intel will try to prove its claims that it can be a powerful manufacturer of processors for smartphones and tablets when its Medfield platform emerges in commercial products in H2 this year. In the same time frame, ARM vendors will release their first notebooks that challenge, conceivably, Intel’s most important and profitable business today. Both Intel and ARM are staging aggressive launches and prepare for a fight that will be much more bloody than the historic processor battles between AMD and Intel. Does Intel have what it takes to dent ARM’s segmentation-driven application processor market? Can ARM deliver processors that are compelling enough to face Intel’s prestigious and performance-driven CPUs?

A new report released by market research firm IHS indicates that Intel has lost interest in building processors for smart TVs and especially for Google TVs. Intel held less than 2% of the TV Soc market in the first half of the year.

Intel and Google recently reaffirmed their relationship at the Intel Developers Forum by announcing they will optimize Android for the Atom platform. While some believe that Intel needs Google more than the other way around in order to compete against the ARM onslaught, I disagree.

Question: As an passionate IT user, would you be able to differentiate first-generation from second-generation Core processors? Can you expect sales staff in stores such as Walmart to know the difference? Would you even ask a question about first- and second-gen processors in such a store?

Intel, Freescale and Marvell have been sued over a common power management system in modern processors that allows the control of power usage in an integrated circuit.

AMD and Intel are driving their CPUs with integrated graphics processor (IGP) quickly into the market. More than half of all x86 processors shipped in the second quarter of the year were heterogeneous CPUs.

Intel apparently did not suffer any negative impact from its $700 million Sandy Bridge flaw that was disclosed earlier this year. The contrary was the case: Intel was able to increase its microprocessor market share considerably in Q1, while AMD’s share nosedived.

The market seems to think that the folks at ARM and its licensees (TI, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Marvel, Apple, et. al.) are on the verge of attacking Intel where it is most susceptible – the PC and server space. Indeed, ARM is making inroads with low power designs, and has a virtual monopoly on mobile devices. But the path to PCs and Servers is a very different path than smartphones and tablets. And clearly, Intel doesn’t think it can afford to concede any territory, which is why it is pushing back hard on the mobile heartland of ARM. So let’s step back and see what Intel has going for it vs. the ARM ecosystem.

Intel has big supercomputing plans and claims that exascale supercomputers, which are more than 120 times faster than today’s fastest supercomputer, will arrive within 7 years and 2 years earlier than previously predicted.

The first Samsung Chromebooks are making their way to consumers much earlier than expected. Their high retail prices seem to be justified, given their high production cost.

Is it just us or does it sound hostile if Asustek says that the era of Windows-Intel computers is over?