Intel sells Xscale line to Marvell

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Very interesting move by Intel.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    XScale that is. If someone posted this against ARM already then my apologies for duplicate posts.
  • Reply 2 of 12
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,425member
    600 million dollars from Marvel huh? I didn't know they made that kind of money.
  • Reply 3 of 12
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison

    600 million dollars from Marvel huh? I didn't know they made that kind of money.



    What have you missed all those superhero films lately grossing record box office numbers?



    Not only that. Their #1 in comic sales. Heck I buy marvel comics every week. THey are the best at what they do.



    DC pretty much sucks IMO. Their superhero stuff is weak, and it's all been done a thousand times over, and they just started doing it again. It's pathetic. They can't come up with anything original to tell anymore. They just keep rehashing old stuff again, and again. Their other publishing stuff is awesome reading like vertigo, and wildstorm. Y: THE LAST MAN, and EX MACHINA are excellent titles.
  • Reply 4 of 12
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Marvell does something like 1.6 Billion in revenue per year, so this was a fairly big acquisition for them. You must also realize that the XScale line covers a fairly decent range of products, some of which fall squarely onto Marvell's turf.



    If Marvell continues to develop portable CPUs, which are the XScale models we know best, we'll see the inelegant Bulverde core (PXA270) fade away, and we'll get XScale devices that are more like the Samsung S3C24X0 chips, but have all the benefits of Intel's very careful design and tweaking of the ARM core. A 65nm PXA255 with updated on-die peripherals would make me very excited, but it's also quite possible that Marvell will dump the PDA/Smartphone market altogether, in which case we'll see much better S3C24X0 support across the industry, which suits me almost as well.
  • Reply 5 of 12
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel

    Marvell does something like 1.6 Billion in revenue per year, so this was a fairly big acquisition for them. You must also realize that the XScale line covers a fairly decent range of products, some of which fall squarely onto Marvell's turf.



    If Marvell continues to develop portable CPUs, which are the XScale models we know best, we'll see the inelegant Bulverde core (PXA270) fade away, and we'll get XScale devices that are more like the Samsung S3C24X0 chips, but have all the benefits of Intel's very careful design and tweaking of the ARM core. A 65nm PXA255 with updated on-die peripherals would make me very excited, but it's also quite possible that Marvell will dump the PDA/Smartphone market altogether, in which case we'll see much better S3C24X0 support across the industry, which suits me almost as well.




    Obviously I was talking about a different Marvel.
  • Reply 6 of 12
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,425member
    See the trouble I've started by missing an "L"?







  • Reply 7 of 12
    henriokhenriok Posts: 537member
    I think it's pretty remarkable that Intel sells the ARM-division and choses to keep Itanium floating. ARM has a future, the market is enourmous and Intel's share was small so they had ample room to grow. But selling this part won't ammount to public humiliation.. I think that's the only reason the keep pumping money into the sinkhole that is Itanium, to save face.
  • Reply 8 of 12
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Henriok

    I think it's pretty remarkable that Intel sells the ARM-division and choses to keep Itanium floating. ARM has a future, ...



    ARM is owned by ARM Technology Holdings Ltd. Intel licensed the ARM7 core a while back and then built the StrongARM. Then they re-engineered and optimized the StrongARM to get the PXA250, a lower-power but also [slightly] lower-speed variant. Then they turned it into a Pentium to get the PXA270.



    XScale does not equal ARM. Samsung, TI, and about 1000 other companies make ARM-based products. There's virtually an 100% chance that your cell phone has several ARM-based chips in it. Some XScale chips use ARM-based cpu cores: others do not. XScale is a market name for several families of low-power network processors and application processors. In other words, embedded CPUs.



    Lastly, the Itanium is the future. Wait and see.
  • Reply 9 of 12
    henriokhenriok Posts: 537member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel

    Lastly, the Itanium is the future. Wait and see.



    For how long? Will it perhaps always be in the future?



    Thanks for the other info.
  • Reply 10 of 12
    skatmanskatman Posts: 609member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel



    Lastly, the Itanium is the future. Wait and see.



    I fully agree there.

    All of the architectures are moving in the direction of in-order massively parallel units with large cache.
  • Reply 11 of 12
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel

    Then they re-engineered and optimized the StrongARM to get the PXA250, a lower-power but also [slightly] lower-speed variant.



    StrongARM is DEC's creation, not Intel's. Intel merely bought the IP and later on built XScale on top of that.
  • Reply 12 of 12
    Wow. Talking about embedded processors makes people grumpy. I've split off the discussion about grammar to the General Discussion forum in the following thread:



    http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=64527



    Please get back on topic here.
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