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Intel's Plans For X86 Android, Smartphones, and Tablets
MrSeb writes "'Last week, Intel announced that it had added x86 optimizations to Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, but the text of the announcement and included quotes were vague and a bit contradictory given the open nature of Android development. After discussing the topic with Intel we've compiled a laundry list of the company's work in Gingerbread and ICS thus far, and offered a few of our own thoughts on what to expect in 2012 as far as x86-powered smartphones and tablets are concerned.' The main points: Intel isn't just a chip maker (it has oodles of software experience); Android's Native Development Kit now includes support for x86 and MMX/SSE instruction sets and can be used to compile dual x86/ARM, 'fat' binaries; and development tools like Vtune and Intel Graphics Performance Analyzer are on their way to Android."
Since most of x86 architecture and related hardware is getting smaller and most smartphone are getting bigger, they are bound to meet somewhere.
hmm, I guess it will be called a tablet or an i(ntel)Pad. ehm ehm
In this field no matter how much you know, You still don't know anything.
I thought x86 is a power hog compared to ARM. It seems like that is a serious consideration for mobile devices to me. I'll be interested to see where this goes. In the mean time, x86 chips are going to have to get a lot cheaper to compete with ARMs prices.
ARM chips using PowerVR Graphics: Amazing!
Intel chips using (literally the exact same) PowerVR Graphics: Intel Graphics Sux0rz!
Par for the coarse on this site.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Give em a chance. Maybe they can add animated gif support to android...
have you used intel graphics lately(stuff they're shipping in 2011)? it's like having a discrete mobile gpu from 2004.
but this article is not news of any kind. intel has had these plans out in public for years and years, android ndk has support for multiple targets. if they actually started shipping _that_ would be news.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Just give me a debian build for my phone including dialer, messaging, etc..
Then I can play REAL games on my phone.. Or as real as they get in Linux!
have you used intel graphics lately(stuff they're shipping in 2011)? it's like having a discrete mobile gpu from 1994.
but this article is not news of any kind. intel has had these plans out in public for years and years, android ndk has support for multiple targets. if they actually started shipping _that_ would be news.
FTFY
While it is always nice to hear about companies contributing to opensource, I don't see there being a big demand for x86 android. Who would use it? It's not low power enough for most tablets/phones. And while the ability to run existing x86 apps is nice they are mostly tied to Windows which is also not likely to see much traction in the mobile space. So what is the point?
What I would like to see is Intel creating a SoC and softcore suite. Intel has some big advantages that they could use to seriously compete:
1) Lots of experience in chip design. I don't see why they can't create an ARM-Core competitor.
2) They can start from scratch. Unlike ARM there is no need to legacy support or backward compatibility.
3) They have in house designers for everything from graphics, wired, wireless, etc. chips. I don't see why they cannot design from this a whole suite of modules that work on their SoC platform.
4) They have (to my knowledge) the best chip fab plants in the world by a sizable margin. Die shrinks offer a great way to reduce power consumption.
5) They have produced great x86 compilers for years, so producing a new compiler for a new chip shouldn't be too difficult since they are already experienced with x86 and Itanium.
6) They have shown that they already know how to support Android.
7) They have the cash and business partners to make it work.
I'm not saying they are guaranteed to make big bucks. Fighting an intrenched ARM with wide industry support will be hugely difficult. But if any company can do it it's Intel. Of course this means they would have to get over the Itanic debacle and stop trying to shove x86 down the throats of every problem.
Google allowed them to mess with the graphics engine? OMFG, we'll end up with tablet devices that run 1990's era graphics tech.
Wow. I hadn't realized Intel's graphics offerings have improved to even that point.
At least it wasn't ATI/AMD, then it would be fast, but crash a lot...
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Add some x86 optimizations to the battery.
...Intel also wants a piece of the pie. Intel.Atom.Ant awayyy
If you want a software platform to be able to build native code to your hardware you add code to their software base.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Even if they develop their own graphics chip for tablet use, it'll a) probably be enough for what you'd do on a tablet (seriously: on a desktop PC, for anything except gaming, Intel's stuff is good enough), and b) it depends on how well the software's done, anyway (case in point: on many recent Linux distros, and again, unless you're gaming, Intel's chipsets provide a better overall experience than much more capable nVidia or ATI hardware).
--srj/mmv
What's more interesting to me is the Android@Home announcements (from Google IO 2011) that Google is implementing its own networking stack (instead of Zigbee) on 802.15.4. 802.15.4 is a very low power low-level radio network, with cheap embedded microcontrollers that are often ARM. There's probably not enough power in the node's ARM to run Android, but some nodes could have extra power and extra ARM cores that do run Android.
Android's Java means in addition to network RPC, code can be straightforwardly programmed to safely migrate around the network for distributed local execution near the data, whether that's network metadata, sensor data, or just the power of massively parallel distribution. I wonder whether JavaSpaces or something like it (probably a very lite version) will find a fit in making cheap distributed networks represented in computational tuplespace. Distributed around one's home, office/classroom or car, or among one's clothing (daily worn watch/jacket/shoes/belt/keyring), or eventually merging among those personal spaces as they're either near or just related (linked by the Internet).
Intel's x86 architecture still has too much power consumption (and the legacy HW baggage that consumes it) to be a design win for this distributed architecture. By the time x86 is suitably low power, Android will probably have defined the space of these smart spaces, and the smart things in them.
FWIW, there's still few details of A@H, though supposedly there is a reference implementation (network backbone embedded in LED bulbs). Anyone seen any specs, like whether it's really a SNAP/6LOWPAN hybrid, or which specific alternative Google is now pushing? Where to get the devkits (HW and SW)?
--
make install -not war
Not very popular on /., but Android being Java based will make life very easy for Intel to crack the mobile market. Most of the apps (sans native ones) will just work. It would have been almost impossible otherwise without some serious virtualization.
LOL. Tits on a bull much?
Intel isn't just a chip maker (it has oodles of software experience)
Has Intel ever done any software other than to boost hardware sales?
Sure, they write lots of software, but they *are* just a chip maker.
x86 arch will mean that Android will be a great virtualization platform in the future. Its already being done with android but with x86... much much easier!
VMware... where are you?
The only benefit to native support of x86 is to run existing code* at high performance. If speed is not important, then emulate the instruction set. 9and then you will need to emulate the OS to for win32 compatibility, which is beyond the scope of this)
If you create a brand new instruction set and offer it to the world, there is a real issue that no one will buy it and the market will go a different direction and buy a competitor's product.
*If it is windows code, in my AC opinion, you are daft to want to run a program, written 5+ years ago, as fast a it can be run, on a tablet. Novelty/hobbyists aside, who is going to buy a shiny tablet with (oh say) windows 8, and install Office 2003 on, and be pissed that is doesn't run as fast as it does on their desktop.
At least it wasn't ATI/AMD, then it would be fast, but crash a lot...
And then there would be the Android malware mining bitcoins, too!
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Animated gifs do work (well hit and miss) in the browser... for some reason sometimes they will play on failblog.org, other times they are just a static images...
Hey, don't knock my Diamond Stealth 64! It's got VLB!
Program Intellivision!
Don't forget Tizen. :)
Yay.. universal binaries again, like apple had the foresight to do but then later quit. ( no, that was not sarcasm, just disappointment )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Intel's stuff is generally good, but it's expensive and I don't personally think we need to allow a foothold for the same sort of anti-competitive behavior that Intel is known for in the desktop/laptop processor market.
You forget too easily that many people depend on this legacy code to run software of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Then keep your legacy code and run it in an emulator on an ARM CPU. The legacy code was probably written so long ago that it'd run as fast in a JIT emulator today as it did natively then.
You know, like Quake 4, Doom 3, Vendetta, and X3
Vendetta is from 1991. It's like pointing out that Mega Man X3 runs in a Super NES emulator: interesting, and probably fun for a while, but not what grandparent had in mind. As for Quake and Doom, can you recommend things other than first-person shooters that commonly get ported to Linux, especially well-praised E or E10+ rated game series?
And nevermind that wine actually works really well
Only on x86 phones. Most existing smartphones are ARM; let me know when Atom phones start to come out. And even if you stick to games from the Pentium 4 era, knowing that Atom is roughly comparable to a similarly clocked Pentium 4, you'll still have to work around copy protection measures that rely on the machine having an internal CD-ROM drive.
I bet everybody think about Android Market and all the cool stuff there. Well, don't do that unless your Android runs ARM.
I've got recently my hands on a Android MIPS phone. Extremely frustrating experience -- two of every three downloads from the Market simply refuse to install, because they have some tiny snippet or library compiled to ARM native code. Unless Intel heavy invests in app developers recompiling their works for Android/x86, it will be barely usable outside of the base system.
That's why you should always remember to check the AC box and use the word "nigger", as referring to darkie-americans, when you get a first post..
Can you read? GP mentioned that the graphics hardware is not made by Intel. Fuck, the summary doesn't even mention Intel graphics hardware (it mentions a software analyzing program) so this whole fucking thread is off topic. Retards.
It's not like Android is going to run on top of Windows.
Let the Linux kernel loose Intel.
Give em a chance. Maybe they can add animated gif support to android...
Dear God no
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Intel's past use of PowerVR chips was at a time when smartphone screens were still pretty low-res, and the expectations of graphical performance on a smartphone was very different from what was expected on a notebook. Cedertrail (their upcoming Atom product) is using a Series 5 chip (the 545) rather than a Series 5XT chip (like the PowerVR SGX543MP2 in the iPad 2 and iPhone, or the SGX543MP4 in the Playstation Vita). The 545 is certainly an improvement over their previous single-core chips, but I doubt it will compare favourably to the multicore graphics solutions in modern smartphones and tablets. It's a very odd decision on Intel's prt.
Anyhow, the failure of Intel's chips in the smartphone and tablet space has little to do with graphics, and more to do with the fact that Atom performs similar to a Cortex A8 or A9, and yet early Atom chips used two or three times as much power to do that. Intel has narrowed the gap quite a bit, although they're still not there yet. Their next-gen parts might achieve this, but much like other architectures have had trouble displacing Intel for the desktop/notebook crown, so too will Intel have trouble displaying ARM in the embedded space. Merely matching the performance-per-watt of ARM's chips isn't enough, because at that point, people will ask "what's the point of using Intel's chips over ARM, they perform the same but don't have as big an install base so there are no advantages."
The only way Intel will get anywhere is by doing something BETTER than ARM, and they haven't managed that quite yet.
Really? I worked there for a long time and aside from a few handfuls of people in the architecture labs, there are few companies I've been involved with that had such a low understanding and weak efforts involving software design. I cant think of a single vice president or anyone who reported to a VP who had much of an inkling about software.
Heck, one look at the long running issues with integrated graphics device driver development is a pretty good indicator.
Mind you, I have a fairly recent quad core Intel proc in my Windows 7 workstation, and it runs software only available on Windows (which is why I have it) pretty well.
But, rightly or wrongly, I associate Intel with big hot power hungry hardware, that you *must* have if you have apps that need Windows, and ARM with low power battery sipping appliances. Android seems made for the latter, and out of place on the former. I can understand why Intel wants to get a piece of the Android pie -- they are protecting their market, and they want to have a cohesive appliance design that will run both Metro and Android. But do we really *need* Android on Intel?
I don't really need Android running on my workstation. That's what Winders is for. On the other hand, I don't really want a white hot Intel proc in my tablet. What am I missing?
Adobe is working on porting their products to Android/touch, and eventually I may be able to jettison Windows [1]. At the same time, my intention is to jettison the traditional KVM and switch to touch. [2] At that point I'm not sure why I would still need Intel.
[1] Parenthetically, Microsoft had a chance to jump on the touch market early, with a superior interface, but chose to relegate Surface to Movie Prop status and missed their chance to survive when Windows finally becomes irrelevant. But that's another story.
[2] It should be repeated, Windows is not an application, it's a program loader and resource manager. All those effects we struggle to turn off just makes the hardware run hotter.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Games stress emulators in a way that business applications do not because games tend to use dirty I/O tricks to increase smoothness of animation. Business applications tend to use better-known I/O methods.
I'm wondering if they're optimising for x86 so that it's possible to test 4.0 code using the Android emulator. It was near-impossible to use 3.0 in the emulator due to speed issues, and we found it was easier to buy a 3.0 device for testing on than trying to use the horrendously slow 3.0 emulator.
I can't believe this issue still remains without a fix!
Ha, one of those people that thinks there's a clean, perfect RISC architecture inside Intel CPU cores.
First off, everything is microcoded. Power is microcoded. SPARC64 is microcoded. Itanium isn't, but it's an oddball in that regard. Microcode just lets you hide implementation details and potentially simplify internal design.
Internal microcode isn't necessarily fun to play with. Look up the articles on RealWorldTech on the guts of Transmeta's CPU's if you're interested, and that used a significantly higher-level microcode than Intel does, from what I understand. Most of x86's microcode is related to stuff like turning direct memory references in instructions into load/store instructions. Taking that away does not make the chip magically faster. If you took away the decoder, and just ran on the metal, you'd probably encounter something that wasn't really any faster and felt vaguely like an x86-like microcontroller or a DSP from a programming perspective.
I bet if intel just licensed the ARM architeture, but did their own implementation of it, using all their techniques and their 22 nm fab, it would be a lot faster and eat less power than any other ARM cpu on the market.
Well that is based on an Intel platform, so they do have some experience
Cause we're gonna need a bigger battery.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
guess who dave ditzel works for now?
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
Can you read? GP mentioned that the graphics hardware is not made by Intel. Fuck, the summary doesn't even mention Intel graphics hardware (it mentions a software analyzing program) so this whole fucking thread is off topic. Retards.
yep, it's an off topic rant thread about how intels graphics suck. it's valid, man.
I'm stuck with threeeeethousand hd. on a "pro" machine. it sucks.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.