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Intel Pushes Into Tablet Market, Pushes Away From Microsoft
jfruh (300774) writes "The Wintel cartel appears to be well and truly dead, as Intel chases after ARM with grim determination into the rapidly growing world of Android tablets. 'Our mix of OSes reflects pretty much what you see in the marketplace,' the company's CEO said, a nice way of saying they see more potential growth from white-box Chinese tablet makers than from Microsoft Surface. Intel managed to ship 5 million tablet chips in the first quarter of the year, although plunging PC sales meant that company profit overall was still down."
Looking at their stock, it never required from dotcom, and has been on a slow decline since (but up from 1 year ago).
I can't imagine mobile CPUs will ever have the margin or profit of desktop CPUs. Or even close.
Sure, there are a bunch of cheap PCs. But apple or samsung comes out with a phone, that's just the same cheapish cpu several millions of times over with no variation.
Is this just another case of a company chasing elusive profits once it's market has been commoditized? In a way, Intel isn't important once Microsoft isn't important anymore.
No need to run x86. So why push x86 into the portable space?
I thought Windows 8.1 was the defecto standard.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
ARM is the defecto standard upon all software that is mobile.
How so? Android apps are written in Java that compiles to Dalvik VM. Free apps that use NDK, such as those on F-Droid, can be recompiled by anyone. Proprietary apps that use NDK can be recompiled by their publisher if the publisher wants sales on the other platform. How big is the remaining set of apps that 1. use NDK, 2. are proprietary, 3. whose publisher is unwilling to take the money from Android/x86 users?
No need to run x86. So why push x86 into the portable space?
So that you can have x86 apps that work in touch-based mode while away from the desk and switch to mouse-based mode when the user pairs a keyboard and connects an HDMI monitor.
I thought Windows 8.1 was the defecto standard.
Never have I seen a more apt typo - funny thing is, I saw a commercial last night for one of those PC repair/registry/whatever apps that practically shouted about how "Microsoft is using fear to make you buy Windows 8" (as opposed to your beloved XP box, natch.)
It all ties back to why Intel is now (should say, now more than ever) casting about, looking for new markets for their chips... PCs ain't selling, server lifecycles are getting longer (VMWare pretty much helped stretch that out), and there's not much outside of those two which would encourage PC sales.
(I wonder if Intel will ever stop navel-gazing at tablets and fire up their now-dead Digital Home Group again; they had a fairly decent idea with the chip-in-a-TV thing. Fun group of guys to work with as well...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Intel-powered Android tablets can run almost all Android-ARM apps. Those that are native ARM apps are handled through binary translation. It works very well. I've used a Dell Venue 8 (Intel CloverTrail+ Android) and did not find any apps that wouldn't run just fine.
What's weird is that Intel was in the ARM business for a while, before selling XScale to Marvell in 2006, just as it was taking off. Maybe the prices were getting too competitive.
My limited experience with Android Arm and Android X86 indicates that Android X86 seems to be a 2nd tier platform with limited support. It seems to be less-reliable.
ARM:
Android: multiple phones, Galaxy Tab II tablet
- reliable, work well, tons of apps most that just work
Other: Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, multiple embedded systems
- strong, reliable, generally works well (except for Rpi network issues)
X86:
Android: Google TV (Logitech), Galaxy Tab III tablet
- flaky apps and limited selection on Google TV
- charging and power consumption issues on Galaxy Tab III
- feels like a 2nd tier platform in beta or version 1.0
Other: laptops, desktops, and servers
- Linux ROCKS for standard x86 netbooks, laptops, workstations, servers
What makes you think it was a typo?
I assumed it was humor.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
We all knew what he meant. Frankly, I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out. If you're so observant wouldn't disecting nuances of the article be a btter use of your time than spelling/grammar monitoring?
"The Wintel cartel appears to be well and truly dead
We're in the process of revamping my company's IT infrastructure: About 30 Wintel PC's, 3 Wintel Servers, and 0 *pads.
Unfortunately for my company's employees, we don't make money from watching Netflix or playing whatever this week's hot game is on tablets. We have to do work to earn money, and we can't do work on tablets or phones.
I don't respond to AC's.
Intel can do fine. They make some amazing tablet platforms. They just need to stop deliberately making them incompatible with the sort of software people want to use, defeaturing the platform to prevent competition with their other products, and providing price incentives that encourage a gimped final product. It is not that difficult.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
For years MS had a near monopoly on drivers. Basically every device manufacturer made a driver for MS and maybe, kind of, sort of, possibly got around to a Mac driver, and then occasionally made a Linux driver. Thus anyone wanting to take on Windows would have had to reverse engineer and make a whole slate of device drivers. As an example, by Mac OS X making the switch to Intel it allowed hardware companies to more easily port their drivers so a few more did.
But over time Linux did managed to do just that, but being open source those drivers are then much more portable to entire other architectures such as ARM. This is then combined with the fact that few people hook devices up to their tablets makes for a near perfect environment to completely overtake the Wintel monopoly on drivers.
So for the first time in decades a consumer does not worry or even know about any driver issues and can choose their device and OS based upon features that are genuinely meaningful to themselves; such as price, app availability, and quality of the hardware.
So with the playing field is now much more level it is not surprising that the former Wintel monopoly is losing market share.
But there is a second and very critical issue and that is of CPU power. Quite simply a Raspberry Pi is around the minimum power that a typical Browser surfing, youtube watching user needs to have. Thus most people don't need the latest and greatest CPU to power their needs. So a halfway good arm inside a device is well enough for the vast majority. Also most people don't need to do much on their computers. A few simple games, some surfing, some video, some messaging. Thus a mobile device is becoming most people's primary portal to the world. Again this does not need to be a powerhouse; it just needs to be reasonably price, work well, and have a good battery life.
But lastly there is the way that ARM is structured. From what I can tell, if you want to buy 10 million arm processors then you buy 10 million arm processors. But if you want to buy 10 million Intel processors then Intel wants to make it complicated and have you enter into a "relationship". The same with the android OS vs the Microsoft OS. Personally I would be very wary dealing with either Intel or MS in that if suddenly my product was somehow incompatible with some corporate vision they had then they would cut me off or otherwise strangle my company. But ARM and Android just want you to buy/use their products.
I suspect that neither of these companies are going to adjust well to actually having competition who aren't even playing the same game meaning that neither Intel or MS will be able to squirrel the rules. Does anyone remember the phase Dell went through where they were Intel only? Can you imagine the angry conversations when Dell, HP, or anyone like that started to ship Linux machines? Do you think that anyone shipping ARM devices even wonders what ARM thinks?
defecto
De facto. Don't try to write fancy if you don't know how to spell the proper words.
FTFY.
Don't try to think fancy if ...
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Does any ARM tablet have any of that?
Seriously, if you value openness and hackability, I do not see why would you ever consider an ARM tablet....
Intel are determined to sell 40 million of their tablet chips, but they certainly aren't going to make any profit, because of "contra revenue".
"Intel is charging customers about the same as Allwinner and Rockchip for tablet CPUs â" $5 a pop, reports Digitimes"
http://www.electronicsweekly.c...
No surprise that their mobile group lost nearly $1 billion last quarter.
Still in bed, the two of them. Just like two old lovers, they push away but then relent and then the old in-out continues.
But who's the top and who's the bottom?
Intel Inside
Microsoft.
Oh.
I would not dismiss Windows on the tablet. The new Phone OS is going to support universal apps so one app can run on the phone, tablet, and PCs which will help. I personally like Android but Windows big advantages are great development tools and a lot of developers. Now if Microsoft would just allow side loading on tablets and PCs like you do on PCs and PC based tablets.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
No, at the time Intel was trying to trim down as they had overextended themselves and too many unprofitable departments. I worked in that department shortly before it was sold off; right before that, the department head "resigned" on the heels of very poor performance. Around that time, they also got rid of their consumer products division which made wireless keyboards and mice and a crappy digital camera. Not long after, they went through a big downsizing called "SET" where they just got rid of people all over the company. They went from around 100k employes down to around 80k in just a couple of years.
No, the PC is the refrigerator. Tablets are the beds. A home needs exactly one refrigerator (more are a luxury), but it needs about one bed per person. Now consider that people have been sleeping in refrigerators for the past 20 years. Thus, the market for refrigerators is highly over-saturated, and the market for beds is seeing explosive growth as millions of people have never had one before. In the end, though, everybody still needs a refrigerator. There may come a day when they don't, but everybody knows that a refrigerator isn't a bed.
Yes, the metaphor is a bit strained.
Point being that consumers are realizing that tablets do about 90% of what they want in a PC, so they just buy tablets. That doesn't mean they don't occasionally need something for that remaining 10%. We may see tablet docks that turn a tablet PC into a full desktop setup, but we're not there yet. I can browse the web, watch a movie, play a song, look up information, and type an email or text on a tablet or phone. I can probably do my online banking -- although it's a bit cumbersome. I wouldn't want to write a paper, or seriously manage my finances, or do photo editing, or do my taxes on a tablet (unless I was single, had no kids, had one job which withheld taxes, and did not own a home).
Besides, all Intel has to do is make a better ARM than ARM. They did that before when AMD introduced AMD64, and now that Intel fabs ARM, they can learn the ins and outs of that, since obviously there's something there that they missed. Intel still has the most advanced fabrication plants in the world. It would be foolish to write them off so quickly.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
I'm not seeing what Intel marking bay trail etc to Chinese tab makers has to do with their use by Microsoft (or anyone else for that matter).
Intel-powered Android tablets can run almost all Android-ARM apps. Those that are native ARM apps are handled through binary translation. It works very well. I've used a Dell Venue 8 (Intel CloverTrail+ Android) and did not find any apps that wouldn't run just fine.
Is that done in hardware? Is there a performance penalty?
A related question about the programs you tried: were these computationally intensive games, or things like office apps and file managers?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I used up my mod points tonight, and well you did post AC so it's kinda a waste. That said I agree with you. Why is it that my W8.1 tablet (ok its i5) boot up in a few seconds whereas my W8.1 phone takes over a minute? Same kernel.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
It's done in software with hardware assist - Intel calls this technology "Houdini". Most Android apps are Dalvik which Intel has an X86-optimized implementation of. The translated apps run quite well for most purposes, but yes, there is a performance penalty. I did run some games but probably not the really compute-intensive ones. I found the performance overall quite good - at least as good as my iPad 3 - and to most users the choice of processor would be transparent. For apps which are ARM binary, a growing number are also providing X86 binaries.
Ah, yes. After 19 years of crawling the Windows tablet is just coming of age.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Took the mouse about as long to take off.
As I said I am a big fan of Android and have an Android phone, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. I also have a macbook and run Windows and Linux on my desktop.
Microsoft has great development tools and lots of developers. It would be foolish to not recognise those strengths.
I want Microsoft to do well in the tablet market and I want Apple to do well and I want Android to do well. I like the idea of choice.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Try a Nexus 7 2013. It has all the performance and power you need with all day battery life and a glorious high-def display for only $229, or less on sale. This was the target last fall, and Intel doesn't have a chip in this class. Soon maybe, but then they will probably try to tie it to Windows again and fail utterly. This Christmas you need this and QHD to make a splash.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I like the idea of choice.
Also known as the "embrace" phase of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish".
This is the phase where the whole opportunity lies before. The beginning of the hunt, when the outcome is uncertain. There is a lot to like about it. It is the most exciting part.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Good developer tools, yes, but I wouldn't at all say lots of developers. Windows (x86/x64/WPF) has a lot of developers. Windows RT has almost none. Windows Phone has almost none. Microsoft has been pushing really hard for developers to migrate, but they won't budge. (Examples that come to mind include them sending private emails asking developers of popular Windows apps to port them to the 8 store; most don't act on them at all, but outfits like the Mojang developers famously refused in public.)
I think a lot of developers came to the PC platform to begin with because they don't have to deal with licensing, royalties, skimming, etc. Microsoft demands all of these if you want to publish RT or WP apps, hence it makes sense that nobody wants to go there. They'll probably only accept that if their target platform is too popular to pass up, e.g. iOS, but such popularity doesn't exist in the case of RT/WP, and it probably never will to be honest.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Intel inherited XScale from DEC, which called it StrongARM, as part of the patent lawsuit settlement that also netted Intel DEC's Hudson, Massachusetts chip fab. Xscale actually did quite well for Intel, but as you say, they sold it off to Marvell.
Microsoft and Intel should be best friends. They are each others main hope for relevance. Intel competing against the horde of ARM vendors on even ground is not going to end well for Intel's margins no matter how much share they hypothetically get. In much the same way that MS is nothing without the momentum of decades of x86-only applications, Intel isn't much without MS applications. Well, Intel's products are a bit respectable in their own right, but the primary driver of their large margin is the x86 ecosystem where MS is ubiquitous.
Intel may be hedging their bets to try to assure they aren't completely left behind in an Android-centric world, but I wager they are strongly hoping for MS to provide a software platform experience on x86 that is too compelling to overlook. I will say that even the 'best' Android apps I deal with are pretty crappy ( having to mysteriously be killed because it hangs, sometimes needing their persistent storage wiped because it has no idea how to work back to working state from whatever state it stored persistently). Even chrome randomly decides 'I'm just going to stop being able to render certain pages altogether'. It's bizarre, since on Windows and Linux desktops I don't see nearly as much wonkiness from many of the exact same application vendors doing about as equivalent a product as can be imagined. For a given price, I'd honestly prefer an x86 tablet so long as secureboot can be disabled to run platforms I have a great deal of familiarity with.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Though both are hedging as you say, I think both desperately want the other to overwhelmingly succeed. MS on ARM is not competitive due to a complete lack of support for legacy x86 applications and an otherwise uninspired design, so MS wants the world to run on x86 where they have home court advantage. Similarly, while Intel still has mostly better offerings, they cannot extract the desired margins out of such a highly competitive market like ARM where people will go without the very latest semiconductor process and gobs of performance. They want a software ecosystem that demands x86, which only Microsoft really has.
So yes, each has some 'worst case' contingency intended to keep them in the market. Those contingencies are both such long shots and will forever reduce margins even if they are 'successful'. That's why Intel has double downed on engineering with MS about platform sleep states and such without giving Android nearly as much attention (basically just token attention).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I would not dismiss Windows on the tablet
I'm pretty sure everyone else will though.
The new universal apps and WP8.1 might change that. I don't even have an WinRT or WinPhone device but I write windows code for a living. The dev tools are probably the best in the industry and to be honest if you want to make a lot of money the WinPhone is a good target since as you point out it is not filled with apps yet but the phones are sell okay. Not at the IOS or Android level but well enough to make good money.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
No, the PC is the refrigerator. Tablets are the beds. A home needs exactly one refrigerator (more are a luxury), but it needs about one bed per person. Now consider that people have been sleeping in refrigerators for the past 20 years. Thus, the market for refrigerators is highly over-saturated, and the market for beds is seeing explosive growth as millions of people have never had one before. In the end, though, everybody still needs a refrigerator. There may come a day when they don't, but everybody knows that a refrigerator isn't a bed.
Yes, the metaphor is a bit strained.
Point being that consumers are realizing that tablets do about 90% of what they want in a PC, so they just buy tablets. That doesn't mean they don't occasionally need something for that remaining 10%. We may see tablet docks that turn a tablet PC into a full desktop setup, but we're not there yet. I can browse the web, watch a movie, play a song, look up information, and type an email or text on a tablet or phone. I can probably do my online banking -- although it's a bit cumbersome. I wouldn't want to write a paper, or seriously manage my finances, or do photo editing, or do my taxes on a tablet (unless I was single, had no kids, had one job which withheld taxes, and did not own a home).
Steve jobs has some sort of quote about PCs (Windows & Mac) being like trucks, always a need for them but not what everyone needs. It's true though. Three years ago when I went on a trip I'd pack my Netbook to use at the hotel, or at my folks place. Now I'll use a tablet. Much quicker to pick up and use than to pull out and set up and boot a PC (netbook). Mobile has excelled at other things. Though I still like my real digital camera, if I want to take a picture of something and quickly email it off it's a lot easier to use my smartphone. Checking my email is a lot easier on my phone than on a computer (especially at work waiting for the Corporate-bogged down IT image of XP to load on my i7), though composing an email (or this post) I rather use a PC.
Like yourself I like PCs for the heavy lifting: manage photos, do finances / taxes, download media, edit videos / photos. Though I do worry that our options and availability for relatively open PC like platforms may diminish, which wouldn't be a good thing.
Here's a
"woosh"
for you. Sorry, that stick up your butt must really hurt being that it has blinded you to basic nerd humor.
Only I can judge you.
I'm sorry sir, but I disagree with you.
I'm typing this reply on Asus Transformer TF701T, and I've checked Bay Trail. If this is Intel's answer, then they better get back to the drawing board, yesterday!
This tablet has 2560x1600 resolution and from my experience the battery holds for 14 hours (it got 2 of them). On many occasions I use it without keyboard and I get around 5.5 hours of battery, try that with Bay Trail (without dimming the screen to an unreadable condition!).
Performance: look at this link (http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/08/intel-bay-trail-benchmarks/) - nVidia's Tegra 4 beats it on almost any test. Try 3D Mark for tablets/smartphones and you'll see that both Tegra 4 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 beats it by a very wide margin.
Tegra 4 is more of an "evolution" of Tegra 4 and nVidia is changing it in the upcoming chip, the Tegra K1, and according to early benchmarks (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/174592-tegra-k1-benchmarks-show-better-cpu-and-gpu-performance-than-snapdragon-800-and-apple-a7) it beats every mobile processor available today including Apple's A7, and what Intel is doing? still working on the garbage Atom processor and improving it. Someone should tell intel that they need to bring the big guns and also do something about the battery. The upcoming tablets will be using QHD & up resolution (wait till next year when you'll see LG shows 4K resolution tablets, they already have prototypes) - Atom has issues with those resolutions.
The competition this time is different. Yes, Intel got the fab technology 2 generations ahead of the competition, but it doesn't matter much! with the current technology the competition is beating Intel and the gap will only wide. Intel cannot stick some i5 because it will kill the battery. They'll have to come up with something different.
nah, no sig... move on..
I'm still waiting for an ARM laptop, preferably with a WACOM-grade touch screen.
-- hendrik
What's the battery life for you?
The Surface Pro is more of a hybrid than a tablet. It does have a lot of value for some users. It is also more expensive. I really want to try one of those 8" Windows tablet but only if they are hackable. I really want to have the option to put Linux on them or keep windows if I want.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Any vendor that doesn't cross compile risks losing market share to one that does.
Unless the vendor that doesn't cross compile sues one that does for patent infringement or nonliteral copyright infringement. Or unless the vendor that doesn't cross compile benefits from a strong network effect among its users.