none (none@none.com) on 1/14/11 wrote:
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>? (0xe2.0x9a.0x9b@gmail.com) on 1/14/11 wrote:
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>[...]
>>One course of action for Intel to get x86 into the tablets and phones would be:
>>continue improving the manufacturing technology, design an architecture that can
>>be "easily" scaled from 32 cores down to 2 cores, and completely scrap the current Atom architecture.
>>
>>If a CPU with 32 cores has a power consumption of 100W, then the 2-core variant
>>will have power consumption 100W/20=5W or something. By using a lower CPU clock
>>and power-optimized manufacturing process, Intel will possibly bring it down to
>>1W. And that might possibly include a DX11 capable GPU with hardware video decoding.
>
>Intel process has been tuned for performance. They would
>have to develop some new process to improve power.

You mean like its SoC processes with low leakage transistors?

> The
>question is: can they invest that much money in order to
>target a market where the price of a CPU is a very important
>factor and would require them to lower their margins?

Intel has developed 45 and 32 nm SoC processes and
has said it will deliver a 22 nm SoC process at the same
time as its high perfomance 22 nm process. Despite the
extra investment in these SoC processes with admittedly
next to no sales revenue to date Intel has just posted Q4
results with record revenue, profits, and margins.

It is unlikely Intel will have to lower its percentage gross
margin to compete with ARM. The problem would be
smaller absolute gross margin ($) per chip if two figure
chips started replacing sales of three figure Intel chips
in large quantities. But if that is going to happen it will
happen whether Intel wants it to or not. All it can do is
make sure that it is Intel two figure chips that are doing
the replacing.