Intel launches Oak Trail tablet chip in attempt to catch iPad - Page 2

Hardly wearing it on one's sleeve since they are just prerelease code names and not brand names. I suspect you were not even aware of the Israel references until it was just now pointed out. Certainly the target market for Intel cpus has not been offended as they are the world's most popular cpu.

But if you are offended you can always boycott their products should you wish to make a personal statement about your distain for their business practices.

If it dies badly will they rename it Treaty Oak?

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That's pretty cold, lol.

Have you got anything that actually backs up that statement?

I know that Atom is more expensive and doesn't have the performance/watt of ARM, however I had the impression that not only do Intel's chips totally spank anything from ARM as far as raw performace goes, ARM also has very little chance of getting to Intel's performance levels any time in the next decade.

Instead of asking for data go out and do your own research. By doing so you will have a richer understanding of the trade offs between ARM and x86.

The thing you need to realize is that when buying ARM an engineer has a very wide array of performance options. The latest Cortex chips are very powerful and in some ways more advanced than ATOM. Beyond that an engineer has a much freer hand in implementing the hardware required, thus can tailor performance to the application.

With respect to ATOM this simply isn't true or at least needs to be qualified. For many apps a Cortex A9 based system would be an overall winner. Beyond that many ARM based products are under clocked in order to manage power better. Also ATOM comes with what amounts to a terrible GPU, these days Cortex A9's are being coupled to some pretty impressive GPUs. In the end ARM based designs often out perform the ATOM based designs by a large margin. A good GPU and a few special (dedicated) logic circuits can go a long way to delivering better performance at a lower cost.

The other tricky thing with ARM is the configurability. A SOC might be Cortex A9 based but that does not imply it is built just like every other A9 based SOC. For example there are different options for the FPU. So there can be a considerable delta between SOC built on the Cortex A9 platform itself. You really have to be careful about the specifics of a comparison between ARM and ATOM.

As a side note there is a great deal of speculation about Apples A5 and it's chip size. It is actually rather big compared to many Cortex A9 chips. One of the more common speculative assertions is that Apples A5 comes with a fully pipelined FPU. Unfortunately we really don't know what all Apple has stuffed into that chip but eventually we will see some benchmarks that might actually be useful to compare to ATOM.

On top of all of this we have to remember that the overall architecture has a lot to do with the perception of performance. Again looking at Apple and their new AIR laptops we get the impression that even a very slowly clocked CPU can demonstrate good performance, from the user perspective, if the other subsystems helps it out a bit. In AIRs case the GPU and the flash memory help balance the system out. One can not underestimate the importance of a good GPU and dedicated logic blocks in a modern computing device. It is no mystery that iPad 2 got a significantly beefed up GPU as it directly impacts what the user experiences on the platform. In the end Intel can't compete because the ATOM hardware simply isn't balanced to service the mobile devices world needs.

We all know that ATOM simply can't compete with ARM on a performance per watt basis. This seems to be pretty well established fact. Thus in the embedded very small form factor markets ATOM is effectively dead. However ATOM isn't doing to well when put up against AMDs current Fusion product. Zacate for example offers far superior performance with only a minor increase in power consumption. Part of that power consumption goes to a very nice GPU.

So what we have here is AMD actually leading Intel as far as a processor that is suitable for the netbook and larger device market. It is very easy to argue that AMDs Fusion architecture is a better long term play that the current ATOM designs. The tight coupling to the OpenCL compatible GPU is a milestone that will be looked upon as a major turn in the design of computing systems. People often knock AMD for their lack of decent mobile CPUs but in the ATOM space Zacate is clearly superior.

The otherthing here is that I really think Intel is either daydreaming or delusional to be thinking that a move to 22nm will save them in mobile. For one thing ARM is already there, but many ARM SoC have yet to transition to 32nm production. At 32nm we could have ARM chips with double the cores and still running far cooler than Intels offerings at 22nm. 22nm MIGHT give Intel parity with today's ARM chips at 40 to 45 mm but frankly who cares? By the time that happens several 32nm lines will be pumping out ARM SoCs. Also as was mentioned ARM designs have already taped out at 22nm for purposes of process development. So even if Intel comes up wIth a 22nm wonder chip they still have a lot of existing infrastructure to compete with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_codenames

I would've thought Intel was trying to catch ARM, not Apple.

Ah I see you pipped me quite a while back.

Maybe if they call it a "tablet CPU" enough people will forget it's an Atom.