ROFL. A 28nm x86 chip won't take out the ARM 20nm armada that is already better even at 28nm. The only solution to the ARM problem is to OWN a VERY good ARM company (Nvidia is about the only option to buy) and pump out THEIR stuff on your best process. Intel doesn't seem to understand how to win or for some reason can't get this done. Either Jen won't sell or Intel just plain refuses to give him whatever it takes to get this over with. Either offer him a few billion outside the company buy price, or offer him the position he wants in Intel (CEO). OR face continuing 4B losses in mobile and even more as mobile becomes MORE than mobile. IE, I bet money you'll see denver etc desktops at some point on 20nm or 14nm with a PC like heatsink/PSU, discrete vid cards etc giving you a FULL PC experience power wise rather than nibbling at the notebook market with chromebooks in a ~10w envelope. Just like those stole 21% of the ENTIRE notebook market, these PC LIKE machines geared for 500w power supplies etc, will steal yet another 21% (or more) of the desktops also (and no doubt more notebooks stolen too) as they strap on PC like parts for real and 64bit ARM software takes hold giving even app devs a reason to run to the massive numbers of units on ARM's side. The ARM side can easily strap on more power in say a 50-85w SOC model @3.5-4ghz once the software is 64bit and these things start coming with 4GB-32GB of ram so you can run much more complicated apps. Devs won't just ignore a soon to be 2Billion+ per year unit market just to make Wintel happy on x86. They will move, just like the game devs have already.
http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/financial-statements?symbol=intc
Intel profits down from 12.94B, to 11B, now to 9.62B over the last 3 years. The trend will continue until they figure out how to buy Nvidia. Losing 4B a year on mobile means you should just offer Jen Hsun $4B in cash NOW (before you can't afford to buy them) to walk away + the price of the company. The guy is worth what like 300-450mil? I don't know many people who'd walk away from 10x their net worth in a day to go find something else to do with their time. Then again maybe his bean counters did the math and figure he'll be worth that in 10yrs anyway and gets revenge in the end on Intel (at least to a large degree as we already see in intel profits even before the desktop assault for years to come) for their chipset shenanigans. I'm not sure I'd walk myself seeing the current trend and the gpu ip money that will be coming NV's way for years now that mobile (and Arm's assault on desktops) will be doing the same things they've patented for over a decade for current x86 pc's.
NV could easily end up becoming Qcom or Intel in profits once the lawsuits are done and people are forced to pay up, cars go driverless (using even more SOCS etc to do this), GRID starts paying, and NV's gpus themselves start to take over the mobile game (instead of the modem being #1 in the last decade+ of mobile) year after year. You're either going to pay them or just simply use them instead of paying them, or you'll be out of the GAME game so to speak. Look at the app stores for google, amazon, apple, msft and you can see GAMES rule, and are expanding their revenue in these stores yearly.
As more people start to find out these things at 20nm or 14nm (or heck 10nm at about halfway through console lifespan) can do what a console can do and much more the picture just keeps getting worse for Wintel/x86/consoles. They are cheaper and can do most of the stuff the general public needs already, so amp that up and the Wintel/x86/console market just gets more ugly than Intel's profits, sony profits, nintendo, and microsoft gaming division already are showing (they all are sucking wind). Add some REAL apps at 64bit etc and it just gets worse as they start stealing WINTEL apps revenue also (and pc's sold for these jobs).
Of course as consumers we'd all probably be better off if Intel is never able to buy NV, and we just end up with a 50/50 ARM/x86 race at some point (having ARM vendors replacing AMD as a cpu competitor that is FAR more competent and profitable). If ARM takes 21% of desktops in the next two years do Intel profits end up at 6-7B from current 9.6B? If the current trend continues I don't see how they keep up with the fab race. At some point when profits can't pay for it, R&D comes down yearly just like at AMD and at some point it shows it's ugly face in your products just like AMD now. Tonga is not an answer to maxwell, it's better but not near good enough hence the pretty silent tonga launch. Whatever AMD launches next (their 20nm chips), NV will just answer with BIG maxwell or a similar 20nm version of today's chip amped up (we know they hit 1.5ghz on 28nm now with limited voltages, surely a 20nm shrink of maxwell could ship at these speeds if needed). We are seeing AMD's decreased R&D (3-4 years of shrinking R&D) now. Since it takes 3-5yrs to make a chip it makes sense you see the results of shrinking R&D 3-5yrs later like we see now and will continue to see unless AMD figures out how to raise profits & thus raise R&D again. Anything in their pipeline has had less and less R&D aimed at it over the last 3-4yrs (cpu and gpu, hence totally out of the cpu race, and barely hanging on in the gpu race).
We need AMD to get bought ASAP, before their gpu tech is so far behind (which I'd predict we'll see in 2-3yrs as that shrunk R&D hits yearly even more), even a company with billions behind it can't fix the problem for years if ever. I'm not sure their cpu tech is worth anything to anyone but AMD at this point as ARM/Intel will eventually just eat that lunch as they meet in the middle. Console profits will shrink for them after xmas pop from microsoft launching in all the other countries. As SOCS hit 20nm/14nm poor people will go to ARM devices and cheap games vs. an expensive console and $60 games for life. The sales from casual users will not develop for this gen of consoles in the back half of their lifespan like before as mobile begins to match them. You will only get the hardcore in the first 3yrs, then kaput. Microsoft/Sony could slow the process a bit if they lowered game pricing to $30-40 but you're still going to battle for sales even if ARM games end up being $10-20 across the board and I'm pretty sure there will always be $1-10 games in the android market to appease truly poor people who never buy consoles which will push devs even further into ARM's ecosystem.
Think about how many people own a mobile device even today (billions with 1.2B sold YEARLY again and climbing) vs. how many own ALL 3 CONSOLES from last gen COMBINED (about 300mil total over 7yrs of life). Game over man...LOL. In the next 7yrs they will probably sell a total of something like 10B+ units of ARM devices and over half of them will match or beat consoles in perf/graphics. Think 14nm/10nm M1 (maxwell or volta? so maybe at V1?), NVlink with TSV, 8ghz+ memory etc surrounding these socs to massively ratchet up perf for lower cost and more abilities vs a console which basically plays games/movies. How fast will a 14nm Volta based soc be after seeing 28nm kepler K1? Somewhere in 2016/2017 you'll be seeing 10nm versions of either V1 (volta) or whatever is after it and all it's competition. Where does AMD console profits go then? What product will get them back to 500mil profits? How do you do that as you have to slash prices immediately to be considered this and further forward vs. maxwell etc?
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/26/nvidia-corporations-gtx-970-and-980-put-amd-to-sha.aspx
This sums up AMD's problem pretty well and highlights the R&D problem discussed above. I'll say it again, we need them bought, but I don't know who would want them (NV would be bought first by MSFT/INTC/Samsung/Google). Intel surging in cpu vs. AMD also makes matters worse. I don't see how they recover without some market that AMD can get into that these others are NOT playing in already and I don't know where that will come from. AMD might have survived if they'd spent on GPU/Arm SOC/APU instead of consoles but that didn't happen.
I'll be the first to jump ship if they'd do that, I don't want ARM, all real work gets done on x86, all meaningful software runs there.
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