Intel launches Oak Trail tablet chip in attempt to catch iPad

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  • Reply 21 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addicted44 View Post


    Intel is going about this the wrong way. The reason they were able to win in all the other areas is because people knew how to develop for x86. The legacy applications built on x86 gave Intel a huge edge.



    In mobile, its the complete opposite. Legacy code (and more relevantly, instruction sets) are anathema, because battery life, and not processing power, is king in this space.



    If Intel really wants to become relevant, they need to invest a ton of money developing better battery technology, so the inefficient power consumption of x86 chips, vis a vis ARM chips, is not relevant anymore. Only after Intel is able to move the discussion away from battery life, to speed and performance, will x86 even stand a chance against ARM.



    Apple is the king of battery tech, don't fancy Intel's chances much.
  • Reply 22 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post


    Intel is DOA when it comes to this space and they know it. They blew it by selling off XScale and they will never overtake the ARM stronghold in this area.



    Intel is feeling it on all fronts with AMD and ARM and they are crapping themselves knowing their overly split stock isn't going to boom ever again.



    They could break up Intel into separate branches ala IBM but I doubt they'll ever do that.



    What if Intel were to swallow their pride and buy Marvell nee XScale -- then apply their expertise in miniaturization, manufacturing and economy of scale?
  • Reply 23 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


    No, there aren't.



    There are laws against doing certain things to leverage your monopoly in one area to get into another area, but simply saying "we have a monopoly in A and we're going to take over B" isn't illegal.



    Umm... that's exactly what I was saying, they are going to use their monopoly in desktop/notebook to (attempt to) take over mobile.
  • Reply 24 of 50
    Quote:

    Intel formally launched the new Atom chip, codenamed Oak Trail, which is built specifically for tablet computers on Monday, alongside the news that 35 tablet and "hybrid" computers are slated to make use of the chip, the Associated Press reports.



    "You won't find a lot of Intel based tablets on the shelves at the moment," the BBC reported Kevin O'Donovan, Intel's marketing manager for notebooks and tablets, as saying. "2011 is about becoming relevant."



    The first tablets implementing the new 45nm-process chip are expected to launch in May.



    I am wondering what this actually means. I am by no means a computer scientist, programmer, or hacker. But when I read this all I can think is that these companies are still nowhere near ready, or able, to compete with Apple head on.



    My question is this. Is 'Oak Trail' a chip design change/modification? (i.e. Akin to Apple's chip design changes/modifications to ARM's architecture.) If so, and if this is the first we've heard about it (is it??), wouldn't launching it next month give zero time for programmers to properly optimize the OS/apps; yielding an even more beta feel to it?



    If this is in fact the case, it's very obvious that there is still a long ways to go before anyone catches up to April 12, 2011 Apple. Am I missing something here?



    Thanks and I apologize for any incorrect or improper use of terminology.
  • Reply 25 of 50
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post


    What if Intel were to swallow their pride and buy Marvell nee XScale -- then apply their expertise in miniaturization, manufacturing and economy of scale?





    I think the problem is that x86 instruction set uses too much juice. Miniaturization of the silicon doesn't address the problem. The only thing that could level the playing field would be some battery chemistry breakthrough where you only need to charge it up once a year so that the efficiency of the code is not such a critical aspect of the design. At that point the legacy x86 guys could compete.
  • Reply 26 of 50
    macrulezmacrulez Posts: 2,455member
    deleted
  • Reply 27 of 50
    gwlaw99gwlaw99 Posts: 134member
    I wouldn't exactly count Intel out. AMD was gaining on Intel rapidly until Core2Duo chips came out. They have an enormous research budget to develop new chip advancements.
  • Reply 28 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    I think the problem is that x86 instruction set uses too much juice. Miniaturization of the silicon doesn't address the problem. The only thing that could level the playing field would be some battery chemistry breakthrough where you only need to charge it up once a year so that the efficiency of the code is not such a critical aspect of the design. At that point the legacy x86 guys could compete.



    I wasn't clear -- I meant that what if Intel were to begin (again) supplying ARM chips and apply their expertise to that effort. They could become the best OTS ARM chips.



    In its days of dominance, IBM had the philosophy:



    "If someone's going to compete with us -- it might as well be ourselves".
  • Reply 29 of 50
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mbarriault View Post


    Umm... that's exactly what I was saying, they are going to use their monopoly in desktop/notebook to (attempt to) take over mobile.



    And as I said, that's not illegal.



    Specific actions can be illegal. For example, if they told Dell that they could not buy Intel chips for their desktop systems unless they used Intel chips in their smartphones, that would be illegal.



    But simply using a monopoly in one area as leverage in another area is not per se illegal (for example, it is 100% legal to use the profits from one market to fund entry into another market).
  • Reply 30 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by josephwinters View Post


    Most names from intel chips are biblical references or places and things out of the holy land...



    Let me be the first to say ... blech!



    Why can't people keep their religion to themselves? Since no one religion particularly dominates the rest, it's pretty much a sure thing that wearing it on your sleeve will offend the majority of people you deal with in a given day.



    In business especially, religion has no place and literally no upside beyond limiting your sales to "non-christians" or whomever isn't in your little group.
  • Reply 31 of 50
    charlitunacharlituna Posts: 7,217member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by d-range View Post


    An full-blown OS X version running on ARM would be much more interesting if that's what you are after. If Apple were interested in a true OS X netbook (which they aren't), they'd built one long ago, based on the older Atoms.



    That is correct. Sort of. Apple is NOT interested in the ipad being a netbook or in a netbook just being a cheap shadow of a laptop. Especially just to do it because some folks think they should or because every other company is going that way



    In the future, when the parts are there to make an ipad that is more powerful, more storage etc then it will likely happen to at least some degree. But it will be when Apple thinks it is ready, how they want to do it and so on. And probably a good 3-5 years away.



    Considering all the articles about what folks are doing with this toy, including Adobe "There's nothing wrong with Flash, Jobs is just a jerk" Inc and their new Photoshop add on apps, I'd say that the ipad and Apple's plans are just fine.
  • Reply 32 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody View Post


    Let me be the first to say ... blech!



    Why can't people keep their religion to themselves?



    You are asking to be kept from the truth.
  • Reply 33 of 50
    shrikeshrike Posts: 494member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post


    What if Intel were to swallow their pride and buy Marvell nee XScale -- then apply their expertise in miniaturization, manufacturing and economy of scale?



    Well, swallowing their pride is probably too hard to do.



    They really don't need to buy anybody. They can just license the IP from ARMH and produce a nice Cortex-A15 + PowerVR545MP + LTE MCM SoC in late 2012 at 32 nm. Marvell isn't going to help them with that really.



    They essentially lost 2 design cycles since Monahans. Their 65 nm, 45 nm and 32 nm nodes were basically homerun nodes, all of which basically fabbed zero ARM chips. If they built ARM SoCs for mobiles starting in 2007, they would be the dominate ARM SoC producer right now.



    Today, like MS, they basically have to wait another year or two minimum before they can leverage their whole fab prowess. And it may be too late. They basically have turn on a dime now, and I don't think they are institutionally capable of doing it anymore.



    Part of the problem is that the Atom architecture sucks. Really really sucks. They bet that SMT would be a big win! Similar to IBM's PPE in the PS3 and xbox 360. In hindsight, not so great a decision I think. They really need to get Atom TDP to less than 1 W TDP, if not 500 mW. Even with Oak Trail, it doesn't even come close and won't be a good fit for slate tablets or smaller.



    If they started out with a target of 500 mW TDP for Atom back in 2008, x86 powered phones could be the dominant platform today. They just can't get there with the current Atom microarchitecture.
  • Reply 34 of 50
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cy_starkman View Post


    I don't see why Intel is trying to catch Apple, useful click bait maybe but seriously they are trying catch ARM.



    The only far flung notion is that either Apple would switch to Intel, or if Apple stays massively dominant so Intel customers don't really buy much volume. They are unlikely to get Apple's buy as Apple is designing custom silicon which they could not do with an Intel chip. As for everyone else, well Intel has to compete against other shelf variants of ARM chips making volumes even smaller.



    One wonders if Intel can justify in the long haul continued dollars thrown at something that may never yield volume sales and return.



    Framing this as "trying to catch iPad" isn't such a reach. At the moment the iPad is virtually synonymous with the nascent and exploding "tablet market." If quite a few analysts can be believed, the iPad is going to retain the lion's share of that market for the foreseeable future.



    So Intel is confronted with a fundamental shift in the computing landscape, one that is largely represented by the iPad, for which they have no appropriate chipsets. So, yeah, I think you could say they are "attempting to catch the iPad", in that they better be able to provide something that runs a very popular tablet pretty soon or risk getting locked out of the next big chip market altogether.
  • Reply 35 of 50
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member
    Atom is slower, more power-hungry, and more expensive to purchase and implement. Those are just a few of the reasons why Apple ditched Intel for their iOS devices. The same reasons why Atom probably won't ever break out of niche player jail.



    From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_atom):



    "Embedded processors based on the ARM version 7 instruction set architecture (such as TI's OMAP 3 series [...] based on custom ARMv7 implementations) offer similar performance to the low end Atom chipsets[dubious ? discuss] but at roughly one quarter the power consumption, and (like most ARM systems) as a single integrated system on a chip, rather than a two chip solution like the current Atom line."



    Intel will milk the legacy Windows + Office market for all it is worth. The x86 architecture is designed specifically for Windows, an enormous resource hog. Ballmer knows this, and says he is trying to drag Microsoft into the 21st century by porting Windows 8 to ARM. But his real goal is to blame Intel for Microsoft's lack of success in pad computing.



    Ballmer will demo an ARM-based craplet running Windows 8 during next year's CES keynote. He'll say "It runs xx% faster than the junky old Intel craplets we tried to sell you suckers for all these years. You were right not to buy that Intel e-waste. Buy this one instead."
  • Reply 36 of 50
    shrikeshrike Posts: 494member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sagan_student View Post


    My question is this. Is 'Oak Trail' a chip design change/modification?



    You'll have to back up a little more. Oak Trail is just a code name for Intel's Atom x86 SoC platform. So think about what's inside a netbook. For netbooks, it's typically a 2 chip solution (CPU chip + I/O & GPU chip) and supporting hardware like RAM and other IC packages. So for Oak Trail, Intel has put the CPU, GPU, memory controller all on the same die. Similar to what's inside a lot of ARM SoCs.



    Since Intel is integrating so much stuff into one chip, it'll allow OEMs to design handheld devices around them like a tablet or mobile internet device.



    As far as catching up to iPad, no, it's not catching up. Intel won't be doing that until they abandon the Atom architecture or design a 1 W TDP SoC. Since it runs Windows, most of these devices won't be as easy to use, and it's Atom architecture, they'll be thicker, heavier and have less battery performance. Not much has changed.



    Microsoft obviously is taking matters into its own hands by porting Windows to ARM. If they port Office to ARM, that'll be a big turning point. Intel simply has to wake up.
  • Reply 37 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shrike View Post


    You'll have to back up a little more. Oak Trail is just a code name for Intel's Atom x86 SoC platform. So think about what's inside a netbook. For netbooks, it's typically a 2 chip solution (CPU chip + I/O & GPU chip) and supporting hardware like RAM and other IC packages. So for Oak Trail, Intel has put the CPU, GPU, memory controller all on the same die. Similar to what's inside a lot of ARM SoCs.



    Since Intel is integrating so much stuff into one chip, it'll allow OEMs to design handheld devices around them like a tablet or mobile internet device.



    As far as catching up to iPad, no, it's not catching up. Intel won't be doing that until they abandon the Atom architecture or design a 1 W TDP SoC.



    Thanks for taking the time and clarifying that for me, appreciate it.
  • Reply 38 of 50
    rasimorasimo Posts: 61member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by josephwinters View Post


    Most names from intel chips are biblical references or places and things out of the holy land...



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody View Post


    Let me be the first to say ... blech!



    Why can't people keep their religion to themselves? Since no one religion particularly dominates the rest, it's pretty much a sure thing that wearing it on your sleeve will offend the majority of people you deal with in a given day.



    In business especially, religion has no place and literally no upside beyond limiting your sales to "non-christians" or whomever isn't in your little group.



    Only the processors designed in Israel are named after places in the Holy Land. Intel often code-names the processors after geographical locations close to the design center that designed the processor. Some examples are the Klamath Pentium 4, designed in Oregon, was named after the Klamath River in Oregon or the Bonnell Atom, designed in Austin, TX was named after Mt. Bonnell, an Austin landmark.
  • Reply 39 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody View Post


    Let me be the first to say ... blech!



    Why can't people keep their religion to themselves? Since no one religion particularly dominates the rest, it's pretty much a sure thing that wearing it on your sleeve will offend the majority of people you deal with in a given day.



    In business especially, religion has no place and literally no upside beyond limiting your sales to "non-christians" or whomever isn't in your little group.



    And yet by making this statement you are wearing your religious views on your sleeve.



    I'm sorry but there isn't a single person on this planet that doesn't worship something be it a god or science or superstar or money or whatever.



    Religion is everywhere in many forms.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton


    Love these Intel code names. "Oak Trail"? What are they selling? Granola bars?



    I just hope it's not Poison Oak.
  • Reply 40 of 50
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody View Post


    Let me be the first to say ... blech!



    Why can't people keep their religion to themselves? Since no one religion particularly dominates the rest, it's pretty much a sure thing that wearing it on your sleeve will offend the majority of people you deal with in a given day.



    In business especially, religion has no place and literally no upside beyond limiting your sales to "non-christians" or whomever isn't in your little group.



    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.
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