Computing
Intel Shows Off Its Smart Phone and Tablet for 2012
Prototype devices show Intel chips running devices that could challenge the iPhone and iPad early next year.
- Wednesday, December 21, 2011
- By Tom Simonite
Intel inside: This “reference design” running Google’s Android operating system is meant to help persuade manufacturers to build their handsets around Intel’s new mobile chips.
Credit: Intel
The era of the personal computer dawned thanks in no small part to the chip maker Intel. But the company has been only a spectator to the rise of smart phones and tablets in recent years. These mobile devices use chips based on designs licensed by the U.K. company ARM, which deliver the power efficiency the powerful, compact gadgets require.
Intel is about to fight back.
Last week, Technology Review tried out prototype smart phones and tablets equipped with Intel's latest mobile chip, dubbed Medfield, and running the Android mobile operating system created by Google. "We expect products based on these to be announced in the first half of 2012," says Stephen Smith, vice president of Intel's architecture group.
Known as "reference designs," the devices are sent out to inspire and instruct manufacturers interested in building products around Intel's latest technology. "They can use as much or as little of the reference design as they like," says Smith, who hinted that the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in January could bring news of gadgets in which Intel's chips will appear.
Intel's Medfield is the latest in its "Atom" line of mobile chips. So far none of them have seriously threatened the dominance of ARM-based chips in mobile devices, in part because they are more power-hungry. However, the new chip represents a significant technological step toward lower power consumption.
Previous Atom designs spread the work of a processor across two or three chips, a relatively power-intensive scheme that originated many years ago in Intel's PC chips. But now Intel has finally combined the core functions of its processor designs into one chunk of silicon. "This is our first offering that's truly a single chip," says Smith. The all-in-one design, known as a system on-a-chip, is a standard feature of the ARM chips so dominant in smart phones today.
The phone prototype seen by Technology Review was similar in dimensions to the iPhone 4 but noticeably lighter, probably because the case was made with more plastic and less glass and metal. It was running the version of Google's operating system shipping with most Android phones today, known as Gingerbread; a newer version, Ice Cream Sandwich, was released by Google only about a month ago.
The phone was powerful and pleasing to use, on a par with the latest iPhone and Android handsets. It could play Blu-Ray-quality video and stream it to a TV if desired; Web browsing was smooth and fast. Smith says Intel has built circuits into the Medfield chip specifically to speed up Android apps and Web browsing.
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josefski
8 Comments
- 514 Days Ago
- 12/21/2011
As a resident of the silicon forest where Intel employs most of its workers, I hope they figure this one out. If they don't, my rainy little paradise is going to be an uninhabited rainy little paradise.
lasertekk
146 Comments
- 509 Days Ago
- 12/26/2011
The simple question is 'why?'
Almost three years late to the tablet market, where the players are successfully entrenched. Remember the newcomer, the HP tablet? Out of production just over 30 days from release. The cellphone market is even more crowded. Stick to IC's.
fidgewinkle
1 Comment
- 507 Days Ago
- 12/28/2011
Intel has created a reference design to demonstrate that their chips can do the job. Some will just manufacture that. Some will do their own thing.
As far as being late in, that is true. Intel screwed around for years thinking this was just a cheap chip market, relegating it to their older manufacturing processes. They take the market seriously now and are moving to correct that mistake. They sold their ARM safety blanket to Marvell and are playing like their company is staked on this.
They also struggled to move toward low power, and have had to learn many lessons to get there. However, the mobile computing of the future is where the high performance of today has already been. And there are lessons that need to be learned to achieve high performance, which the ARM guys haven't learned yet. These are not lessons you can learn by importing a few guys and waving your magic wand. They require fundamental shifts in architecture.
These shifts are in the data path, branch prediction and SIMD/MIMD, the kinds of shifts AMD has been struggling with since Athlon. I wouldn't bet against the only company to produce both high performance and low power CPUs in that race, especially when they have legacy of x86 code that isn't going to just magically be transported to ARM. ARM may have a multitude of crappy apps out there, but the churn on those ridiculous little things makes the legacy nearly valueless.
Finally, what exactly is the lifespan of the form factors that are emerging just now? The problem with the portable form factors is that they will be replaced by something new and more convenient, and most likely in the not too distant future. How long before wearable computing that is interfaced with kinect like technology? It isn't far off and the legacy of the iPhone/iPad will mean nothing.
This is the push for x86 in mobile computing, and the world favors one architecture. There is downside to x86, but ARM still isn't a performance architecture. It isn't going to instantaneously scale up to a robust multiprocessing data path and achieve high instructions per clock. This takes time, and they are behind if all they have is some start-up trying to make micro-servers that will need specialized software when there will be a comparably energy efficient x86 processor that will operate similarly to what sys admins are already used to now. ARM may have a pth to dominance, but I just don't see it. They are just the challenger that currently has an upward trajectory that humans seem inclined to believe will persist forever regardless of evidence.
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rlindsl
30 Comments
Welcome Intel
So cloud apps and mobile chips seem like a good combination for a semiconductor manufacturer to dominate... Maybe I am missing something- or not.
It is about time that Intel acts like it owns both sides of the app, whee doggies long wait. Don't miss.
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