I agree. What good is exclusive profits on x86, when the rest of the world has moved on to ARM?
They were foolish for not licensing out x86 to more companies and in the end that's going to be their downfall.
Yes but back then we didn't have a world filled with ARM tablets and smartphones. If you can produce a product that ports between console/tablet/desktop easily, that should be appealing to developers and gamers. Look at the current console designs, they're specialized PC parts and console ports are available on the PC at the same time now with very little changes needed. I don't see why that couldn't happen with ARM designs in the future. It's pretty evident that ARM is the future in the consumer market and x86's days are numbered. I don't see Intel overcoming this challenge despite how much money it has. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to see Intel producing ARM CPUs in house at some point in the future.
FYI, the Samsung profit number is operating income not net profit; the comparable number for Intel here is $4.2 billion.
Much of Samsung's profit comes from the sale of memory and mobile devices; very little of that profit comes from selling logic semiconductors.
Also, NVIDIA is basically out of the race against Intel in its core MPU business (Tegra is 100% automotive now)
Qualcomm is laying people off because it needs to bring its expenses into check (since the profitability of its mobile chip business has plunged into the abyss), and AMD is on its deathbed with people getting excited by a measly $370M cash infusion from selling off yet more assets.
Intel is in a very strong financial position and it can deliver these kinds of profits while at the same time investing at a multiple to what these other companies do in semiconductor logic-related R&D.
Intel isn't invincible but the notion that it's just going to roll over and die because a lot of people are trying to compete with it doesn't seem that well thought out IMO.
You haven't really followed this industry for long, have you? Back in the heyday of the PC (when PCs were booming like phones are now), everybody had an x86 license: TI, IDT, Cyrix, VIA, AMD, IBM, etc.
One by one these players exited the market because it just wasn't economically viable; there's only so much x86 MPU revenue to go around and if you don't capture a large enough part of it, it makes no sense to continue to try to invest to build products.
FWIW, it seems very counterintuitive that "licensing x86 to more companies" thereby increasing competition and diluting the value of the x86 compatibility advantage that Intel has would be anything but a bad thing.
Intel could have licensed it's atom design to counter ARM but it would rather keep that to itself for high margins. Problem is they're the underdog now and they still have that mentality of "margins margins margins". Tell me, how will Intel overcome all this competition from ARM vendors as convergence takes place between tablet/phone/desktop with ARM being the dominant processor? Also, it's a matter of time before Apple switches it's notebooks over to their in-house ARM SoC and that's going to be a large hit for Intel's bottom line.
Intel has had ARM licenses for many years and though they likely don't have an ARMv7/8-A architecture license, they probably inherited an M or R architecture license from Infineon. They are also used to fab ARM IP (as an example Altera latest 14nm chips use ARM Cortex-A53).Is it possible that Intel is already internally working with other architectures? Sounds like it would be prudent, but I don't know the insider thinking. F.e., if that were to become publicly known, maybe it would have negative effect on their stock?
Intel could have licensed it's atom design to counter ARM
In return, Rockchip becomes the first company to be able to more or less license Intel x86 CPU IP for use in this combined, Intel-branded SoC.
Under the terms of the agreement, Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. will jointly create and sell a family of Intel Architecture-based system-on-chips (SoCs). Initial products will be available beginning in the second half of next year and will be Intel Architecture-based SoCs sold by both companies.
"The adoption of Intel's architecture technology will enable us to accelerate the development of mobile SoCs that expand the breadth of our portfolio, benefiting handset makers addressing both China and the global market," said Dr. Leo Li, Chairman and CEO of Spreadtrum. "We are pleased to embark on collaboration with Intel around these new product offerings."
I think that Microsoft/Apple/Google are concentrating on higher-level languages/libraries, and that the bulk of "Apps" (as seen by consumers at large) have transitioned from projects where much of the complexity lies in low-level things (i.e. printer drivers, extended memory management), to projects where the complexity lies in network behaviour ("cloud" etc). This means that the local client can run some software abstraction that allows a pretty and smooth-rendered GUI enabled by relatively high-performance hardware.If you had to place a bet on which will dominate the consumer market in, say, 10 years, what would you say?
I guess it's tied with Windows closely, and what will the fate of windows be.
I know it's all wild speculation, and I am a noob when it comes to all of this, but I am curios as to how will the computer, software and SOC landscape look like in the future.
Are there any relevant trends to look at to try and predict?
Will we all be rocking iphones and android phones with amazing performance that have continuum-like capabilities? Or will windows remain on x86 and people would still be buying laptops?
There is the Intel-Rockchip agreement:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8061/...gic-agreement-with-chinese-soc-maker-rockchip
And Spreadtrum:
http://newsroom.intel.com/community...nt-and-adoption-of-intel-based-mobile-devices
I agree. What good is exclusive profits on x86, when the rest of the world has moved on to ARM?
Indeed, and when something is that profitable, it remains so forever :biggrin:Yeah, what good is exclusive profits on x86 indeed. It's only the most profitable semiconductor franchise on the planet. Intel's server chip group makes more in operating profit than the top two merchant mobile AP vendors take in. :biggrin:
Indeed, and when something is that profitable, it remains so forever :biggrin:
When something is that profitable, it gives the company profiting a lot of room to invest in future products/technologies
People only see ARM as a growth segment still with its prime money coming from Smartphones. But the smartphone segment is very likely to contract next year. And then ARM companies is in the same position with shrinking consumer revenue.
I think people forget the economic situation. US for example so far this year got deflation. Eurozone close to as well. QE programs got no effect. There is no growth. The only inflation there is, is stock prices and housing prices. Making sure company sale volumes will keep declining.
Smartphone sales is already declining in China. And the ASP for smartphones is going down fast.
ARM will shrink just as much as x86. The reason x86 began is that its a higher segment.
Look at China, negative smartphone growth ALL YEAR.
That 25$(more likely much more) Apple chip is around the same as a 20$ Intel chip. Now spot the missing part.
Where does Intel fit into any of this? Doesn't seem like it does but ARM will keep growing everywhere globally.
So basically you're saying that once a company has grown enough to generate enough money, it won't fall down or fail? You know it's not how things workWhen something is that profitable, it gives the company profiting a lot of room to invest in future products/technologies
People only see ARM as a growth segment still with its prime money coming from Smartphones. But the smartphone segment is very likely to contract next year. And then ARM companies is in the same position with shrinking consumer revenue.
Yes the ASP is increasing: royalty revenues were up 37% YoY while the number of units "only" increased by 20% in mobile and enterprise, and 30% in microcontrollers.The ASP for ARM is probably increasing as well with the move to ARMv8 and more complex SoCs as well.
Looking at ARM's results: http://www.design-reuse.com/news/38504/arm-q3-2015-financial-results.html it does not seem that obvious: Cortex-A only accounts for 17% of the unit shipment, obviously it has a much higher ASP, but it is still a balanced product portfolio, there are many places that are growing faster than the smartphone market is slowing down.
The ASP for ARM is probably increasing as well with the move to ARMv8 and more complex SoCs as well.
To be more on topic, maybe the question you should ask is: what will the consumer devices will look like in 5-10 years?
Microsoft is doing Continuum, and you are getting more and more web based and streaming based devices (20M chromecast sold, that is not insignificant), so there is a good chance the "thin client" model will finally be used.
Basically the client and the network are now (or will be in 5 years) good enough to provide the user experience people expect, and anything that requires more computing power can be done somewhere else more efficiently.
Will these "thin clients" be laptops, tablets, smartphones, TVs, HDMI dongles, something else... probably a mixture of everything, but the need for big CPUs in these machine is decreasing and will continue.
The only exception to that is gaming, but from the reviews it seems NVIDIA Grid is not too far off already, I can easily imagine that in 5 years this will be a solved issue as well.
I guess the big moment will come with the next gen of consoles:
If they stay on x86, there will be no reason to push all the SW to ARM as there will always be a significant gap in the offering, hence no incentive for anyone to move to ARM.
If they move to ARM, a big chunk of the most demanding SW will have moved to ARM already, getting the few major professional apps (Photoshop and friends) moved over is not such a big hurdle, especially because it would also open the tablet/smartphone to them.
Whether or not you would loose a bit of performance by doing it is not that important, for the users that are performance limited, a cloud based solution powered big a BIG cpu will almost always win.
If you go one step further, you can now have CPUs tailored for hosting specific apps with accelerators tightly coupled (FPGA or ASICs) which will give a massive win, something that is not possible with a consumer grade solution.
Once you get to that point, being x86 or ARM is mostly irrelevant, it will be slightly easier with x86 but you will have to recompile to use these accelerators anyway.
Maybe this will not happen because it is too complex, because consumers are always going to stick to the same "install my apps and run locally" model, but this seems to be where the industry is heading, Intel included (they would not have paid that much for Altera if they only wanted to fill their fabs).
FPGAs are much more expensive and difficult to develop for than traditional software. They're a tool that makes a great deal of sense in certain niches, they're not a general purpose device which is going to obsolete high performance CPUs.
As for interactive apps moving to thin client for everyone... I am highly skeptical. Not everyone has a good enough internet connection, and lives close enough to a major hub to get good latency. All it takes is a couple of random latency spikes at a critical moment getting you killed, and your experience is ruined.
As for interactive apps moving to thin client for everyone... I am highly skeptical. Not everyone has a good enough internet connection, and lives close enough to a major hub to get good latency. All it takes is a couple of random latency spikes at a critical moment getting you killed, and your experience is ruined.
You are using present tense, this is not the topic!
Same thing, we are talking of the future. In particular the bandwidth is currently good enough to drive a 1080p@30fps in many cases, the focus of ISP should be to reduce the latency and improve reliability.
This is the the main barrier but does not seem bigger than the drive for bandwidth which has killed(*) the CD, then the DVD...
For now I don't see a huge push for that, ISPs still advertise mostly the DL speed, but I will be surprised if this does not change soon, mostly because the rationale to sell 100Mbps bandwidth is actually pretty bad, who would be streaming 2 (or even 3) 4K videos regularly, whereas latency is an easy sell to gamers first, then to the general public.
You are using present tense, this is not the topic!
Same thing, we are talking of the future. In particular the bandwidth is currently good enough to drive a 1080p@30fps in many cases, the focus of ISP should be to reduce the latency and improve reliability.
This is the the main barrier but does not seem bigger than the drive for bandwidth which has killed(*) the CD, then the DVD...
For now I don't see a huge push for that, ISPs still advertise mostly the DL speed, but I will be surprised if this does not change soon, mostly because the rationale to sell 100Mbps bandwidth is actually pretty bad, who would be streaming 2 (or even 3) 4K videos regularly, whereas latency is an easy sell to gamers first, then to the general public.
(*) of course there are still people using CDs, DVDs, for many reasons, but I think everyone agrees this is not what the future will look like.