Samsung Ends Intel's 2-decade-plus Reign in Microchips (ap.org)

Intel has lost its long-held title as the world's top computer chip makerâ"at least by one important yardstick. From an Associated Press report: Intel's more than two decade reign as king of the silicon-based semiconductor ended Thursday when Samsung Electronics surpassed the U.S. manufacturer to become the leading maker of the computer chips that are a 21st century staple much as oil was in the past. Samsung reported record-high profit and sales in its earnings report for the April-June quarter, and while Intel's reported earnings beat forecasts, the U.S. company's entire revenue was smaller than sales from Samsung's chip division. Samsung said its semiconductor business recorded 8 trillion ($7.2 billion) in operating income on revenue of 17.6 trillion won ($15.8 billion) in the quarter. Intel said it earned $2.8 billion on sales of $14.8 billion.

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Intel losing to ARM, not just on mobile

[cerberusss]

Basically Intel is losing to ARM. But not just on mobile. They're also in trouble for tablets, and desktops are going to get real close. Bare Feats regularly does comparative synthetic benchmarks between Apple's tablets (ARM) and laptops (Intel). Last time was in June: http://barefeats.com/ipadpro20...

Below, Intel means 3.5GHz Dual-Core i7 processor + Iris Plus Graphics 650 GPU. And ARM means Apple's ARM-based 2.39GHz A10X processor. As you can see, these tablets are getting really close to laptop performance.

Single-Core (highest=fastest):
Intel: 4650
ARM: 3951

Multi-Core (highest=fastest):
Intel: 10261
ARM: 9332

GPU compute score (highest=fastest):
Intel: 26353
ARM: 27814

GFXBench Metal Manhattan (highest=fastest):
Intel: 37 FPS
ARM: 42 FPS

I for one, am really happy. Intel has needed some competition desperately. Now there's AMD, and there's ARM, and we as the consumers are getting more and better options.