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News Intel hides mobile losses behind PC Client Group

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 18 Nov 2014.

  1. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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  2. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Not necessarily to hide losses, they're still looking to keep the mobile and desktop figures separate for financial reporting.
    More likely, the new Core architectures are increasingly dropping in power consumption and eating Silvermont's lunch at perf/watt (i.e. anyone who buys a high-end Atom over a low-end Core is bonkers). It makes sense to drop the current Atom and focus that effort on making Core scale lower than have two different architectures in development at the same time.
     
  3. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

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    I said it before and I'll say it again - x86 should not be a one-size-fits-all architecture, and intel just keeps insisting that it can be. Meanwhile, AMD realizes this and that is probably one of the reasons they invested into ARM.
     
  4. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Amd and maybe even Intel will never be more than bit part players in mobile. It's a 2 company world in mobile nobody else sells enough to afford Intel chips. AMD could get in the low end phones but not sure how that helps them, another low margin high volume product.

    It will take Samsung to fail for android high end market to stop buying there products. Apple has enough loyal customers that no matter it's market share it's still selling 40mil per quarter give or take and taking home the bulk of all profits in the sector.

    Look at nvidias struggles with its mobile products and they have produced a decent product. Nobody wants it who is selling major volume at high prices.

    Intel and AMD would need to make chips that are not only price competitive but good on battery and performance.
     
  5. Harlequin

    Harlequin Modder

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    merge 2 divisions and keep reports separate? not gonna happen
     
  6. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

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    That may be true, but AMD getting into the mobile market would help them. Part of AMD's problem is they're a name that nobody is familiar with. If they made a competitive high-volume product, their name would spread everywhere and catch people's attention. Very rarely do products make success because of how good they are, it's all about popularity.

    Nvidia doesn't do well in in phones for the same reason intel doesn't - they're too expensive and they're way too focused on having the best performance regardless of battery life or heat dissipation.

    With AMD's current CPU architecture, I don't expect them to make anything that will be good enough in terms of performance per watt.
     
  7. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    This is not bourne out by testing. And even Intel's old Clover Trail atoms were competitive with contemporary A9 cores.

    The whole 'x86 is only for big chips and can't scale down' myth is persistent, but not reflected in testing of modern chips.
     
  8. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

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    Nvidia's Shield is a tablet, not a phone. I already knew Tegras made great tablet processors and tend to have a lead there. Their graphics performance isn't really necessary in phones, and their GPUs are where they really drain power.

    Also, while it is admittedly impressive to see the intel take such a lead, that test wasn't the most fair comparison. First of all, the systems overall were different enough that the screen alone could have been the reason the Atom did better, but there are of course other parts in the motherboard that could drain power. Second, the cortex A9 is a relatively crappy architecture compared to A7 or A15. In terms of performance per watt, either of those might put up more of a fight toward the Atom. And lastly, Windows was a horrible choice to test. It is not optimized well for ARM and for all we know, they could have been using 64 bit for the Atom. The extra performance of x86-64 could get the processor to complete tasks in less time and therefore use less power. Though, I will admit I don't know enough about how CPUs work on the transistor level to know if 64 bit has a significant effect on power consumption. Anyway, an OS like linux or android would have been much better, since android basically was designed with ARM in mind and linux has had full ARM support for decades.

    Anyway, this doesn't change the fact that intel is definitely making good progress. I have felt for years that they were perfectly fine for tablets, but I wonder if their processors are power efficient enough for phones.
     
  9. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    The power draw measurements were made directly from individual components (the SoC in particular) ruling out variables like display power draw.
    True, but Clover Trail is also pretty crappy compared to Bay Trail.
    The old Medfield platform was power competitive (though nothing standout) with ARM SoCs of the time. Medfield then vanished into a black hole, and Intel seem to be focussing on small tablets as the lowest Atom line (I think Asus have a phone running on an Atom though). Goldmont might change that, but who knows?
     

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