Who killed the Intel microprocessor?

http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/10/who-killed-the-intel-microprocessor/

by strandev • 16 years ago

62 42 16 years ago

ergo98• 16 years ago

Another terrible asymco entrant. Interesting how the author pushes one philosophy for processors (the inevitable superiority of a licensed model) but if you've read their many pro-Apple screeds, exactly the opposite conclusion is pursued relative to Android.

Quite humorous really.

Hagelin• 16 years ago

I read it as the inevitable superiority of customized components over off-the-shelf components.

simonh2• 16 years ago

Supporting a given business model in one industry doesn't mean that you must support the same business models in all industries, regardless of the different market conditions, in order to be consistent. That would be blind fundamentalism, not analysis.

ARM's business model is well matched to their market (mobile phone designers). Apple is selling to a different market (mobile phone users) with different requirements and dynamics, and so a different business model is appropriate.

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

It's worse than that. Asymco has this "modular"/"integrated" split, which they refer to in this post as well, though reversed from their usual position as you note, but they happily admit that Nokia and RIM are "integrated" but in trouble while downplaying HTC and Samsung's success (and Motorola's miraculous reversal) on the "modular" side. They leave these inconsistencies dangling as long as they can massage the data enough to conclude that Apple is great and so are the people who buy Apple products. It's blatantly pandering sophistry masquerading as overwrought analysis.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

Here's a prediction, Intel will still be a dominant player in CPUs 10 years from now. ARM is making progress, great, good luck competing with Intel in FAB capacity and engineering capability. The world isn't going to suddenly switch to 100% mobile CPUs, desktops and severs are still not just a big business but the biggest part of the business.

DenisM6• 16 years ago

FAB capacity?

Most ARM CPUs are manufactured not by ARM itself but by Samsung, Qualcom, Texas Instruments and the like. These guys certainly do have all the requisite capacity as they provide the silicon for all of the world's mobile phones.

Granted, the Big Gorilla is faster to shrink the processes, because they have no problem dropping a few billions on a brand-new fab, but what good did that do? On both supposed benefits of the smaller process (cost and power drain / performance) ARM CPUs are still winning.

This whole situation is a replay of the Pentium 4 Megahurtz madness. Back then Intel was pushing raw performance disregarding power consumption, then they hit the heat dissipation wall, AMD snuck in from behind and punished them in a major way with Athlon-64. Intel regrouped with Core* series, won back the market share, pushed AMD back into oblivion, and relaxed about the whole thing. Now they are doing the same thing - prioritizing performance at the cost of power drain, and this time it will be ARM who will punish them. It's not clear how long it will take Intel to change their ways this time. The last time they still had Pentium 3 / Pentium M group of engineers to lean on, and that they did rather well. This time they are not so lucky - they have actually sold off their embedded CPU division a few years back, and now I doubt whether there is anyone left inside Intel to insist on a much needed pivot.

[EDITED for typos]

pjscott3• 16 years ago

> Most ARM CPUs are manufactured not by ARM itself but by Samsung, Qualcom, Texas Instruments and the like.

Not quite. With the exception of Samsung, those companies design ARM-based systems-on-a-chip, but do not manufacture them. They take an ARM core, perhaps modify it, add on a bunch of other stuff like graphics accelerators, memory controllers, ethernet MACs, and so on. Then once the design checks out, they send it to another company, like TSMC, UMC, or GlobalFoundries, that actually does the manufacturing.

The capital costs of building each new generation of chip fabs have grown tremendously, which led to this centralization and commoditization of chip manufacturing. Intel is one of the few holdouts, and they're usually a bit ahead of everybody else, which is one of their big competitive advantages.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

Clearly Intel is changing their ways already. Going back to at least Canmore they've realized that the consumer space is different.

I'd be really surprised if Intel isn't looking pretty good come this time next year.

ssp• 16 years ago

Granted, the Big Gorilla is faster to shrink the processes, because they have no problem dropping a few billions on a brand-new fab, but what good did that do?

Their best-in-industry process is actually sort of a problem for them, because they need those billions they dropped to translate into high margins. Which means they need their fabs to be making Xeons, not Atoms.

Or to put it another way: it isn't clear that mobile CPUs can pay for expensive fabs, which means the cheaper fabs in Taiwan have an advantage. Intel more or less admitted this when they ported the Atom to TSMC's process.

But then the question becomes: is an Atom made at TSMC better than an ARM made at TSMC?

DanBlake3• 16 years ago

The only real advantages ARM has over x86 currently is:

a: licensing cost / production cost

b: Power consumption

If you think that intel wont have both of those factors down to ARM levels shortly, you dont know intel very well. They are very competitive and dont like to get beat.

melling• 16 years ago

Intel has been trying to reach ARM's power consumption for years. Not so easy with legacy chips. Anyway, if ARM gains a strong foothold in tablet computing and Chrome netbooks, for example, what's the motivation for switching to Intel in 3-4 years? Intel needs to be a lot better, not just competitive.

DanBlake3• 16 years ago

ARM feels like its attempting to have a offering that would have tons of cores, but lower clock speed ( ie- a 24 core, 1ghz processor ) whereas Intel has the advantage in clock speed- In a few years I would not doubt Intel to hit 5ghz+.

The graphically intensive games of tomorrow are not optimized for many cores (still) and will need the raw power of a higher clock. This is especially true for strategy games like starcraft that make heavy use of the CPU.

As time moves on, I do imagine the ability to run x86 operating systems / applications will be worth a lot as well. Yes, there may be virtualization as a option but I am not optimistic in the performance of such a feature.

Back to your question. When you asked what the motivation will be to switch to x86 in 3-4 years, I think the answer is: Even in 3-4 years, the amount of developers familiar with x86 and the sheer amount of software already available for it will trump the offerings of ARM.

Andys2• 16 years ago

You don't realize what has taken place in the market, to enable you to have a portable web-browser in your phone.

Costs have been cut in every place possible in order to maximize shipment volume to make consumer-level smartphones possible on thin margins.

Intel's Atom x86 is Intel's lowest margin x86 CPU. Accordingly, it is built on years-old hand-me-down fabrication process, with very little investment put in to power saving technology. Despite this, for years now it only consumes a watt or so per core, with the cut-cost platform (chipset) surrounding it in the average laptop, consuming vastly more.

Intel already has a 32nm System-on-a-chip platform developed, simply waiting for the right time that it makes sense to ramp up volume.

And so, the thing that can kill Intel, is that performance from a budget-priced CPU out of a Taiwan fab is all that consumers want or need any more in any device.

DenisM6• 16 years ago

You seem to suggest that cost and power consumption are not that important in CPUs. What do you think matters, then?

DanBlake3• 16 years ago

Well, there is 2 points here. Are you talking about server applications (Dell) or consumer machines (ie- what you buy at CompUSA)

If you are speaking about server applications: ARM doesnt really have a shot here. The sheer computing power differences are too much to have users downgrade to ARM. Yes, you can save XXX on your power bill but most people rent servers, not colo. Additionally, you will likely need 3-4x machines to equal the power of the x86 machine you are replacing, negating any power benefit.

Regarding consumer machines: No, power usage does not matter. Except in the rare cases ("think green" crazies), Nobody checks the power usage of a computer they are buying at best buy. They check processor speed, memory and harddrive space. (and price)

Regarding price: Consumer machines are heavily subsidized by pre installed software, volume discounts to both distributor and manufacturer (ie- HP and best buy ) and other factors. The cost for desktop machines, is already very near what ARM could be (if you need performance- We are no talking about 100$ netbooks here). People pay a premium for quality and speed. Thats the reason MBP's cost 25-33% more than a comparable dell/lenovo.

In regards to mobile: Battery life is important, but I think most people forget to check this statistic before buying a phone. Regardless, as intel gets more and more into this area they should be able to match/beat the offerings of ARM. Let not forget that ARM isnt all that amazing though. Just look at the power usage on a EVO for instance. ( http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/09/dont-buy-the-android-evo-it...)

Anyways: All my comments above hold, even considering that intels power performance isnt near what it needs to be yet. As it gets better and they enter mobile it will be taken more seriously.

Andys2• 16 years ago

Right.

Technology is not the issue here. Technology already can give us a quadcore x86 CPU in a smartphone - the question is just how much are you willing to pay for it.

As long as Intel can keep making chips 5x bigger and sell them for 20x the profit, they will. Consumer demand doesn't appear to be slowing for this; embedded CPUs are simply opening a new market for portable, low power devices with acceptable performance.

Embedded system-on-a-chip margins are very low, and thus the shipment volume of smart phone and tablet CPU shipments has to be very, VERY high before it can begin to bring Intel the sort of profit margins they already enjoy for x86 consumer parts.

ztan• 16 years ago

I disagree. Reason: I think the problem with Intel is that they are more of a manufacturing company than design company. What I hear from insiders (anyone at Intel care to validate/correct?) is that the company's culture as a whole value their design arm much less than their manufacturing. Their main advantage (also strategy) has always been that they can out manufacture their competition. (ie faster shrink, better yields) Intel does not have a good track record for processor design outside of the x86 CPU space. (and even in that space the P4 is pretty much a failure in terms of design) Looking at their repeated failed attempts at being significant in the graphics space. And then there is Xscale. They had a lot of potential with the StrongARM group when they acquired them from DEC, but they just ended up selling them to Marvell (who is now doing amazing stuff with them). Also how they are now capitalizing on their superior manufacturing capabilities by venturing into producing lower tech products like SSDs. Combine all of that with the notion that the x86 architecture simply does not offer any value on a mobile CPU, (another debate, but one I strongly believe) I really don't think Intel will have anything competitive against ARM "shortly". (Xscale was sold in 2006...)

ajslater• 16 years ago

...and they broke up and misused the Alpha design team.

kbob• 16 years ago

I have no inside knowledge of Intel. But I've always thought it interesting that they use "tick" for their process upgrades and "tock" for new architectures. That appears to corroborate your point, that processes are perceived as more important.

PostOnce• 16 years ago

Speculation, by the numbers:

AMD P/E: 5.46

Intel P/E: 11.12

ARM P/E: 86.94

BvS• 16 years ago

These are number for 2009. For 2010 ARM P/E should be "only" around 50, for 2011 it might fall below 30. Still expensive but not as extreme.

dexen• 16 years ago

I take issue with the notion of Intel's model being obsolete in the mobile world. Quite the opposite; Intel's business model of treating CPUs as commodity is for market of mature technology, while current mobile model of heavily (and costly) customizing SoCs is one for technology being still insufficient for achieving market goals.

If anything, it's the current mobile model that will go obsolete at some point -- simply because it's costly, both in terms of customizing SoCs, taping out small batches of silicon and customizing software for it. Mobile will shift to commodity components at some point.

simonh2• 16 years ago

>Mobile will shift to commodity components at some point.

Selling tens of millions of a single hardware model doesn't count as commodity?

Even discounting that, ARM's business model doesn't preclude the emergence of 'commodity' ARM processors. Maybe such a shift might play to Intel's strengths, but then ARM has total domination of the mobile CPU market in their favour.

I have no idea where this market will go in say 10 year's time, but right here, right now ARM have a lot going for them and there are no short or medium term reasons to suspect that's likely to change.

alexandros• 16 years ago

I wonder if AMD could become the ARM of x86. They've already spun out their foundries anyway.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

There are really two markets for processors: consumer electronics, and real computing. ARM may be the best processor (whatever that means, as it's a design you license, not a piece of hardware) for looking at ads on a 3" display, but I think Intel is still going to be relevant in the server market for a while. Think about some of Intel's key assets like being really fast and having a C++ compiler that makes C++ even faster. This is important because programmers write horrendous code that needs hardware assistance to produce answers in a reasonable amount of time. (There are also problems to solve that require a lot of CPU power, like protein folding and finding the next Mersenne prime. ARM processors are not used for this.)

Now, if you're saying, "yeah, but not for desktops", I can agree with you. Desktops are going to become less and less powerful as the average computer user becomes more and more computer illiterate ("the Facebook dumb terminal", I'll call it), and ARM may help keep the cost down. But I'm probably not going to be running Emacs on an ARM box anytime soon. (Hell, I even use x86 for my router.)

gnufs• 16 years ago

Actually, a typical browser session tends to be more resource-hungry (in both memory and processor) than a typical Emacs session these days.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Hah! Clearly you do not use cperl-mode.

thebootstrapper• 16 years ago

Make sense. Although given that Honeycomb (next version of Android for Tablet) mandates dual core processor how this applies?

Who killed the Intel microprocessor?

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