Isn't Intel going after ARM A15 with Atom and ARM A7 with Quark?
Perhaps there are low-power/low-cost applications where x86 offers superior debugging/optimization/application support? (I don't claim to know)
If I was putting a low-power cpu in something like ballistic missiles or pacemakers, I would worry more about mapping designer intent into tested code into cpu execution than cost.
What is the number of developers capable of writing decent C# in Visual Studio compared to the number of people capable of writing decent code using C and exotic tools?
In the embedded world, ARM offer far better tools than Intel, simply because they are actually used in far more devices and by far more developers.
Add to that the fact that the ARM ISA is much simpler than x86, I don't really see any advantage for Intel in this field.
For exactly the same reason, ARM is clearly better positioned than Intel.
For ballistic missile, I am not sure the low power is really a problem anyway, neither is cost, and afaik Intel may be a solution (but not Quark) because it actually needs a lot of processing power.
So you think C# in Visual Studio is more exotic than GCC for C/C++?
In the embedded world, C# is the most exotic thing you can find, and I would not let someone that prefers C# to C code for my pacemaker :whiste:
I don't really see what Intel could bring to this field at the moment, they might do but that would take a loooooooong time, probably even longer than what it would take to ARM to get to the server market.
The design cycle for these product are really long, most of them have just started to use ARM cores few years ago.
If the wearable computing thing takes off as fast as the smartphone market did, they might have a chance as this has more commonalities with the consumer side of things (short design cycles, performance is more a factor, ...).
But on the really embedded world (aka pacemaker or washing machines), the market is very different and I don't see what Intel could bring to it.
Absurd ammounts of chips to sell at near cost prices due to the retarded cost of keeping fabs up in this day fo age.
I would expect quark to have been designed with margins around 10% or there of.
Intel is clearly understanding that the profit can be made from the "cloud servers" while the grunt R&D cost can be recouped on the topline from ultra lower power chips.
"If Intel gets big into fully synthesizable circuits then they will do for synthesis tools what they did for computational lithography, and everyone will benefit from Intel's push for solid and reliable software design tools"
could u pls explain this in english. thanks
In embedded, each new project requires to develop a lot of HW dependant code, mostly bare-metal, so you better have a simple, easy to program chip and good cheap tools and support.
That cost money and time to design, plus time to convince everyone that your solution is better than someone else's.
So each Quark x1000 processor core would be 1.12 mm2 if built on Intel's 32nm if I am reading this correctly.
So it's bloated compared to the 0.45mm2 ARM Cortex-A7 that has been around for years...
Did Intel even say 1/5th the size of Silvermont? EE Times says Quark is on 32nm right now. HotHardware says "1/5th the size of current Atom processors" which could mean Saltwell since Silvermont is not actually in a shipping product yet.
Update: Intel has sent over a quick clarification on size; the size comparisons are meant to be core-to-core rather than SoC-to-SoC. Specifically compared to the 22nm Silvermont core.
Any bets on what the architecture is like? I'm going to call "tweaked Pentium".
that's the (still) current atom architecture. though i suppose if you cut the pipeline stages back down to 5 from 16 you might be able to save some transistors.
While Saltwell is dual-issue and in-order like the original Pentium the similarities end there. It's a very different design with no common ancestry.
Quark does sound Pentium derived due to the mention of the ISA being "Pentium-compatible." There were instructions added to Pentium Pro (P6) like cmov, why else would they draw the line at Pentium ISA if there was no design relationship?
I'm kind of wondering if it's a variant of the pentium derived core used in the Xeon Phi.
Wrong conclusion. Its 1/5th of 22nm Silvermont.
Did you miss the part in keynote where Intel said they did exactly this?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319447&
Last week, HVAC giant Daikin got one industrial reference board using a Quark chip and including WiFi and 3G support. Kevin Facinelli, executive vice president for operations at the company, dialed into the board from the IDF event here to show it is working.
Is Quark the Claremont chip which Intel demoed a while back? http://semiaccurate.com/2012/12/20/intel-explains-claremont-the-near-threshold-solar-pentium/