Mobile: Intel Will Overtake Qualcomm In Three Years

[Guest]

We know Intel hasn't shipped any phones, while Qualcomm had over $4 billion in revenue last quarter. But when you're done reading, you'll agree with us. To do this, we'll perform a magic trick with all three acts, The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige.

Mobile: Intel Will Overtake Qualcomm In Three Years : Read more

 

[DjEaZy]

Intel Will Overtake Qualcomm In Three Years, If Qualcomm sits on hiz balls and do noothing.

 

[Tamz_msc]

Three years ago, Internet Explorer was the industry’s dominant Web browser. Today, Google Chrome is in the lead.

Really?
Putting this sentence aside, its an interesting article.

 

[kjm15213]

There seems to be a lot of speculation in the article and some assumptions that people apparently only buy what is to be considered the best technology? For one, if intel has the stigma of not having the ability to manage the power threshold, how hard are they going to have to fight to change that for consumers to buy their product? How well is windows phone doing to fight their stigmas? Secondly, the markets where the phones are sold are important and I have seen other articles break them down more regionally. I have read, and may be wrong, that the initial medfield phones are motorola and lenovo designs for Chinese consumers. If this is the limited market for adoption, they may sell volume, but it might not be a global volume. Another thing is how low is intel to go for return on their price for chips verses, will it be more cost effective for them to really ramp up on the cloud/platform support side for all of these new devices to come online. This may provide more ROI and atoms might not be worth the cost and marketing effort. I honestly think they have a problem as hardware becomes good enough for a decent experience and software needing less processing power, intels X86 processes are less useful for the everyday user and the added cost to a chip. I don't think that it is due to their inability to create a great product, but the need for them to be there if the margins are small and there is no significant performance/experience advantages (I could see them benefit in tablets, but not as much as phones...but that could be my bias...), they might not pay a premium if they expect that. I think as devices become more convergent, there is a desire for any large company to enter into that field and hope to get a piece, but it really may be an ill fit for the company at large.

Finally, I would say I did not like these global claims that intel has never failed in fab as I think they have been delayed for a bit on their last process or always demonstrated great platforms (since the original atoms I would not consider great to use for running windows...). I like intel and own their stock so I hope they do well, but I think they face more of an uphill battle that you see. I don't think that people did not think they would come into the market at a somewhat competitive place in analysis, but I really feel they are a disconnected fit (and this could just be me...) to this market. I have read money market people say that they will have a harder time entering into the smartphone market with ARMS market share expanding greatly in the next 3 years. I like the idea of the pairing with motorola for their chips because I think that will a) tie them to android (as I think meego is dead...) b) may let them offer solution akin to what the Atrix ideal could have been. Overall, an interesting article about future challenges with FAB/Design

 

[Guest]

this article suggest that intel is holding back in its mobile design, b/c it views the competition to be insignificant. Thus if intel can make a SOC designed from the simplest archeticture, in-order pentium, they can spit out yearly updates of newer pentiums up to the current sandy bridge-like mobile cpu without much worry. they basically have half a decade in design spec'ed out. and if any of the competitors happen to hit all marks and make a good chip, intel can skip a generation to leap frog them.

 

[Guest]

You don't look at the economic aspect at all (Intel can't afford to sell cheap,low margins chips) and you just assume the traditional CPU core ,GPU (GPU wise,anyone can license PowerVR,Intel has no advantage and other major players can always block Intel from buying Imagination) and wireless are the parts that will matter most.
You look at just Intel and Qualcomm,ignoring players that are more than capable to compete.
You also assume that performance is the most important aspect when in the end the reality is that CPUs are getting cheaper,a lot cheaper and those cheap chips will keep gaining market share while Intel can't match those prices without getting crippled. Servers and a growing market will help Intel for a while but at some point the funds available for R&D and fabs will start to shrink.(BTW my post,unlike this article,is not sponsored by anyone.)

 

[Guest]

What other parts of ARM ecosystem will do during those 3 years? They are already competing with Qualcomm quite heavily. And besides Qualcomm there is another ARM architecture license player: Marvell.

Also (and more importantly) will the software help Intel in the same way as during the Wintel dominance? Microsoft itself has planned Windows 8 for less resource requirements than Windows 7 has now. Will there any need be for "above the ARM level" of performance in the coming years?

Also (and even more importantly) how Intel will cope with the mounting pressure on its chip prices? If Intel will not be able to held those prices high enough it could fast loose the revenue it is getting now.

In other words: during those three years Intel's ware may become a commodity where only price or Price/performance what is counting. Even now, as noted in today's news by Digitimes:
"TSMC seeing 3G chip orders boom, sources say
...
Qualcomm, MediaTek and Broadcom have all introduced their more integrated single-chip solutions targeted at the market for low-priced 3G smartphones in China. Each of the new chips - manufactured using 40nm and below node technologies - accounts for less than US$10 of total component cost a model would carry, the sources pointed out."

How Intel will compete with that, not in 3 years, but in 2012? Than in 2013? And finally in 2014?

So, given all that above I could subscribe to your prophecy at all!

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Has anyone taken a look at the early performance previews of Medfield? It looks very promising, and contrary to popular belief power consumption seems to be in line with modern SOC's based on dual-core Cortex A9's.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones

 

[RazorBurn]

I am more interested with the BitBoys guys and its new start-ups with Siru and Vire Labs.. During the 90's, I was amazed of how this 4k and 64k demos do such things with such low file-size.. These guys are such Geniuses..

 

[de5_Roy]

interesting article. very enjoyable read, especially the bitboys history.
though at the end of the article, christian bale didn't have a twin.

 

[Tomtompiper]

"To that end, the future of MSoCs will depend on, first, SoC architecture, second, fabrication skill, and third, graphics technology."

The most important piece of the Jigsaw is missing, power consumption. But you would expect thaf from somebody fixated on performance. Intel will struggle to make X86 work in anything other than tablets and High end handsets, it will have a tiny niche in three years, if it is lucky. And with MS opening up Windows they will lose share in thin clients and laptops.

 

[frostmachine]

interesting read. still this is just a prediction from a technological perspective. The economy n marketing aspect will also play their role in time. 3 years is not a short time. These companies will make other counter moves too. Acquisition, buyout or just patent trolling will throw a wrench into things.

 

[Guest]

Hmm... I am not sure I agree, it boils down to price in the MSoC market, and that is one place Intel have never been good at doing, selling chips for cut-throat prices!

 

[GravityJunkie]

Quote: (PowerVR) "it saw some financial success by powering digital poker machines in casinos, where the magic of deferred rendering was immediate."
LOL
no one got away with seeing the underside of the cards on the table

 

[rpgplayer]

[citation][nom]realjjj[/nom]You don't look at the economic aspect at all (Intel can't afford to sell cheap,low margins chips) and you just assume the traditional CPU core ,GPU (GPU wise,anyone can license PowerVR,Intel has no advantage and other major players can always block Intel from buying Imagination) and wireless are the parts that will matter most. You look at just Intel and Qualcomm,ignoring players that are more than capable to compete.You also assume that performance is the most important aspect when in the end the reality is that CPUs are getting cheaper,a lot cheaper and those cheap chips will keep gaining market share while Intel can't match those prices without getting crippled. Servers and a growing market will help Intel for a while but at some point the funds available for R&D and fabs will start to shrink.(BTW my post,unlike this article,is not sponsored by anyone.)[/citation]


The problem of course is that because Intel can use a much more advanced node it can make the chips extremely cheaper than what ARM chips can be made. Medfield is somewhere around 65mm^2 while the Tegra 3 is somewhere in the neighborhood of 90mm^2. After Intel's SoC moves to a 22nm node the die size should shrink to around 45mm^2. Which means Intel will be able to push these things out for pocket change.

 

[cknobman]

Author mentions how qualcomm is making a full out of order design but practically considers its benefits trivial and basically writes them off all the while hyping up intels fab process and how their out of order atom coming in the next 1-2 years will just be amazing.

Great spin but waaaaaaaaaaay too much Intel bias in here to really be objective. Dont just assume Intel is the only one in the market that will advance in the future and everyone else will try to peddle by on what they already have.

 

[AlanDang]

Interesting article. I did some searching on LinkedIn for these engineers and and what's crazy is that no other journalist picked on the fact that these Qualcomm Finland guys left almost a year ago. Stuff like that makes me want to start writing again!

I don't think Intel 2015 will beat Qualcomm 2015 *and* Qualcomm 2012 proportionally. Intel 2015 will beat Qualcomm 2015 also because NVIDIA 2015, TI 2015, Samsung 2015, Marvell 2015, and Apple 2015 will be eating away at Qualcomm.

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]DjEaZy[/nom]Intel Will Overtake Qualcomm In Three Years, If Qualcomm sits on hiz balls and do noothing.[/citation]
intel has a lot more money and experience....it could happen...btw nice phone, where can i get one

 

[blackened144]

Everything starts back in 1991. In the early 90s, Finland was home to the demo scene, which is where programmers (many of whom were just high school kids) would get together and write software able to push computer hardware to its limit.

I remember when the demo scene started and downloading them from local BBSs in South Florida.. The scene went from dedicated groups pushing the limits, to every pirating group releasing their own demos and including them in all of their releases along with ANSI graphics and/or ASCII file_id.diz's..

Anyway, back on topic.. As dragonsqrrl already mentioned, Intel already has Medfield and it seems to be very competitive already.. If Intel wants into this market, nothing can stop them.. They have the fabs, engineers, and more importantly the capital to invest to such a point that they could someday dominate this market as they do the desktop CPU market..

 

[rantoc]

No one can accurately predict what will happen now when so many pieces of the puzzle are in motion,Intel manages to get the atom down to the required power budget for smart phones, Arm gets support in Win8 ect.

My bet is on Intel + MS, why? The x86 windows platform. If MS puts all the basic api's ect in the phone OS i look forward to be able to run the same software ect both on the phone and the computer. Windows is also the standard in desktop OS with a huge software library and they are trusted by most corps and that should give WP the push it needs. My guess of a possible future but new things surface the whole time so it could change tomorrow - I love progress!

 

[Guest]

fine article.. enjoyed it very much. Well written. Thanks.

Don't "Follow the money". Follow the People.

 

[face-plants]

Now this is the kind of well written article that got me following Tom's all those years ago. Very interesting prediction of things to come. I hope that Intel doesn't just shoot to the top of yet another market, dominating the rest of the competition. Instead, hopefully they light a fire under the other mobile SoC players behinds and catalyze some good old healthy competition and innovation. The big companies slugging it out for our consumer dollars will only make the mobile phone/tablet/pc boundaries blur ever further as the performance of phones approaches that of modest PC's from only a few years earlier.

 

[greenrider02]

Before I even read the article I want to applaud the bolded introduction. It's been a while since an article convinced me I needed to read it based on an intro and not my own interest in the content.

 

[greenrider02]

Aaaaaand the article was pretty darn good. I liked the intro the most, but the author's style appeals to me. For those that are interested, there are still demo scene competitions every year, and they're wild. If you like trippy videos with awesome music, I would highly recommend.

On the subject of the article, I'd have to agree that Intel has a significant advantage in IP, engineering, and manufacturing experience and technology, but it remains to be seen whether or not they have a team that will take all of the above-mentioned technologies and thoroughly implement them in a new mobile SoC.

 

[psupanova]

The Author is dreaming, if Intel were to utilise their ARM License than maybe.
1. Intel is fighting in a Ecosystem were ARM instruction set dominates. Adding another layer of incompatibilty will have consumers returning phones, when they can't play their favourite game.
2. Intel historicaly only plays the high volume low margin markets when it can cripple some features.
3. Medfield is only competitive with last years shipping product's & even some of them are better when run in the same environment.
4. SmartPhone's are already very powerful Qualcomm will not need to compete on raw power.
5. the same argument's could have been leveled at the discreet graphics market "Larrabee" look how that turned out.