Slashdot Mirror
Intel Confronts a Big Mobile Challenge: Native Compatibility
smaxp writes: "Intel has solved the problem of ARM-native incompatibility. But will developers bite? App developers now frequently bypass Android's Dalvik VM for some parts of their apps in favor of the faster native C language. According to Intel, two thirds of the top 2,000 apps in the Google Play Store use natively compiled C code, the same language in which Android, the Dalvik VM, and the Android libraries are mostly written.
The natively compiled apps run faster and more efficiently, but at the cost of compatibility. The compiled code is targeted to a particular processor core's instruction set. In the Android universe, this instruction set is almost always the ARM instruction set. This is a compatibility problem for Intel because its Atom mobile processors use its X86 instruction set."
The natively compiled apps run faster and more efficiently, but at the cost of compatibility. The compiled code is targeted to a particular processor core's instruction set. In the Android universe, this instruction set is almost always the ARM instruction set. This is a compatibility problem for Intel because its Atom mobile processors use its X86 instruction set."
Somehow missing from TFS...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
ARM ran a survey of the top 500 Android apps in the market and found that only 20% are pure Java, 30% are native x86, 42% require binary translation and 6% do not work at all on Intel's platform. To make matters worse the level of compatibility is falling. They also found that running an app in binary translation mode takes a huge performance hit."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
A typical processor design takes around 4-5 years from concept to production silicon. Intel did not even consider power as a constraint (other than a maximum) until 2008.Haswell was the first ground up design where power was a constraint, but still not a major constraint. With Haswell Intel was within shooting distance of ARM power levels without even compromising computing power.
In about 2010 power consumption became not just a feature, but a required feature in low watt to milliwatt ranges. Intel should have a processor to meet that requirement later this year or early/mid next year. Intel's already preliminarily released some (un-handicapped) atoms that have about 75% of the performance of Haswell and are power competitive with ARM.
Up until a year or two ago when the PC market began to crater Intel wasn't interested in playing in the low power market because margins were atrocious, but with the rise of high margin smartphones and the reality that they will likely replace a significant chunk of the personal PC market they've begun to take the market seriously. Writing them off as unable to play this game because they haven't bothered in the past would be incredibly stupid. They are the largest CPU designer in the world and they have some of the smartest CPU designers in the world working for them, it just takes a while to turn such a big boat. Give it a few more years then come back and talk about x86 being unable to compete.
I don't know if Intel will succeed but if they put their resources into it they will easily outpace ARM because in the CPU design game it's about design resources and FAB's and Intel has both in spades (in FAB's Intel is one entire process step ahead of everyone else), more than the rest of the ARM market combined and they won't be designing the same thing 50 times. See that's the ARM markets biggest handicap, there are dozens of companies reinventing the wheel over and over again. Intel's biggest handicap is their desire to not eat existing markets and it might be their undoing (a processor with 75% of haswell's power with ARM's power use could likely cannibalize much of their Haswell sales and the tricks to prevent that, ie sales restrictions, will also handicap the processors chances in competing with ARM). IMO if Intel fails at competing with ARM it will only be because they didn't want to cannibalize sales with lower margin parts.