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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."
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?
Kinda what I was thinking. x86 is now ancient, and unless things have changed a lot in the last few years, tend to be pretty power hungry.
So, I guess if I want to run Windows on it, or legacy software, or have no real battery life this could be a good thing. And, really, who expects to run legacy software on a tablet?
Or, Intel could actually try to make a lightweight/low power chip meant specifically for tablets and not try to further saddle us with an architecture which is already long in the tooth. But, apparently they've grown beyond the 'innovating' phase of a company, and are well and truly into the 'flogging a dead horse' phase.
If you're going after Chinese white-box tablets, you're not aiming very high.
Me, if I saw a tablet which said "Intel Inside", the tablet would still be inside the store when I left. Because, right or wrong, my perception is it's going to suck power, and it's probably going to be geared to people who want to install Windows applications.
No thanks.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
Intel are reducing power consumption and maintaining performance faster than ARM can improve processing power while keeping power consumption down. The current version of the iPad has a lot more processing power than the first one did but it has a battery three times bigger to give it the same endurance between charges, in large part because the newer ARM chips suck more power than their predecessors did.
Intel-based tablets like the Iconia W series (i3/i5) or Toshiba Encore (Atom quad-core) have the same endurance as ARM-based tablets with similar battery capacities while running a full-fat desktop OS rather than a phone OS with delusions of competency.
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.
"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.
I don't know about you, but the last thing I want on a tablet is a "full-fat desktop OS".
It's not a freaking desktop. I don't use it like a desktop. I don't need the bloat and overhead of a desktop or a desktop OS.
If you want a full-fat desktop OS, get a Windows tablet or a laptop. Because until I can get a tablet with 1TB of storage, I'm not wasting several hundred megs of it on a piece of software which has been steadily growing bigger for the last decade.
The average app I download on Android is well under 30M. And, for me, that's a selling point.
And, really Android is essentially Linux. Are you suggesting Linux is lacking competency? Because Linux has been running efficiently on smaller systems for 20 years now.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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....
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.
Kinda what I was thinking. x86 is now ancient, and unless things have changed a lot in the last few years, tend to be pretty power hungry.
They're power-hungry in comparison to lower-end ARM - a Cortex-A9 is far more efficient. However, they also perform circles around them. But the latest Atom tablet chips are neck-and-neck with similar Cortex-A15 chips (both in performance and in battery life), and the Core ones get a usable battery life while being more powerful than many laptops. In terms of performance-per-watt they're effectively the same.
Oddly, Intel's biggest tablet success was the Surface Pro - while it tanked as a general tablet, it found a niche among artists, who liked its full Wacom hardware and compatibility with Photoshop. I can see Intel having a future in high-end tablets because right now, they're the only ones who can do it - even Apple isn't able to match that much power, yet, and none of the Android chips are even close.
A mobile 'desktop' has its uses. I LOVE having an 8" tablet that can act as a server or AP if i need it to. No website ever tells me 'not available on mobiIe'. I bought it to make up for any bullshit deficiencies my ARM based mobiles devices might have, like transferring files to each other.
Good-bye
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.
Yep, I have a surface pro 2. I love it for zbrush. It's a one of a kind device for that kind of work. Literally nothing else exists. For the price of a cintiq you get the computer too. I wish they advertised it heavily to artists, instead of ipad users. An ipad user is going to be like "this thing weighs like 5 pounds and is a half an inch thick, I want my dollar/mass ratio to be close to infinity!". An artist will be like "You mean I can do my zbrush sculpting at a coffee shop with the same workflow that I use on a cintiq, AND it can handle 15m tris like a champion? Yes please."
Thank you. So few people seem to see what is going on and how that is going to continue.
Android x86 is going to take down Android ARM within a few years and Windows 9 is going to go down with it. In fact, if Android x86 had been a bit more mature a week ago, 80% of the people that have switched to Windows 8.1 would have switched to Android x86 instead.
It is clear that Intel has been asleep in this market, but it is even clearer that they are on the war path and intent on destroying Qualcomm and ARM in general.
Producing low-power chips and pushing Android x86 are the obvious ways to do that.
If you take into account the interoperability between Android ARM and Android x86 (made possible by Java and an intelligent package creation and delivery system for the bits of NDK code), most consumers won't even know the difference between their desktop / tablet Intel x86 SoC running Android or their 'old' phone Samsung ARM SoC running Android. Everybody will just gradually transition to x86-based mobile devices as Intel uses all their tactics, money and power to push their ARM competitors to the same corner where AMD is allowed to exist currently.
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.
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
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.
It runs fine. It just doesn't sell. With 200 million tablets moving each year, Intel would like to own more of that space than Windows tablets can give them. It doesn't matter how well they make Windows run on a tablet if people won't buy tablets with Windows on in any significant number.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You mean like "640kB of RAM should be enough for anyone?"
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.
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.
Microsoft is really onto something with the whole Surface Pro idea, and It boggles my mind that not a single one of the "regular" OEMs have managed to build anything even in the same league. This product alone is justification for Microsoft being in the non-peripheral hardware business, despite the OEM friction it undoubtedly causes.
The Surface Pro is further proof that Steve Jobs was flat wrong when he said of iPad competitors, "If you see a stylus, they blew it!"
First of all, a quality digitizer pen is not a stylus. Second, and far more importantly, there are *really* good reasons why we gave up drawing and writing with rocks and fingers, and started using sticks, brushes, and pens instead...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last