? (0xe2.0x9a.0x9b@gmail.com) on 1/16/11 wrote:
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>Well, I have been thinking about this for a little while and my conclusion is the
>same as it was before: I would expect Intel to have a non-trivial market share in
>tablets and phones 5+ years from now. I am *not* saying that ARM will *not* grab
>a non-trivial portion of the netbook+notebook market, perhaps even of the desktop
>and server market. But I don't see how could ARM be a threat to the current dominance of x86.
>
>I do not consider the reasoning behind the idea that "in fire years things will
>be WORSE for Intel in the ARM-vs-Intel battle" to be sound. It may very well turn
>out to be the other way: "in 5+ years" things will be worse for ARM. Intel/AMD/etc
>are not standing still. I don't see how you can be so sure to assign a higher probability
>to the 1st possibility. The reasons for ARM dominance people presented in this forum
>thread do not seem sufficient to me.

Well it doesn't *really* matter for Intel. Intel are a manufacturing company primarily -- that is where their dominance is. So "ARM dominance" does not equal "Intel not dominance".

If Intel cannot get market with their x86 cores, and if a really significant amount of high end silicon is going to these low end devices, there is nothing stopping Intel from getting back into making ARMs.

Getting an x86 stronghold is obviously important (they are still a design company secondarily), but not at all critical.

I expect xscale mfg demands were not significant enough and did not overlap enough with where Intel wanted to go with its processes, making it a headache.

The emergence of the power wall, multi core, and high volume relatively high powered consumer devices since then might be changing things a bit. It makes a lot of sense for them to try to attack with x86 however, because energy efficiency is now critically important to all their x86 lineup (unlike in the xscale days).

But that doesn't mean Intel are completely stuck with x86, or that ARM dominance will kill them (not even in the chance that ARM takes over in the desktop and server markets).