14 DAY TRIAL // The next-generation of computing devices, as the latest tendencies show, is meant to provide users with better performance at far lower costs - including cut down prices for the products and more power efficiency. Ultra mobile PC devices made their way on the market stressing on these two aspects, and they began to gain popularity among users, so more and more companies are getting involved in the field.
Since the entire computing industry is in a continuous war, each generation of devices is meant to outplace the previous to make its way to the top. The interesting part is that each new generation also brings new companies in front, while leaving others behind. And now, we have a battle on the fit-in-your-pocket device and ultralight computer market segment, one that involves Intel, PC industry's commanding chip maker, and Qualcomm, a chip-developer for cellphones.
Both companies struggle to show customers that their products, namely Intel's Atom and Moorestown processors, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon, are the best choice on the market. Although placed first at the moment, Intel might have something to fear about, as an engineer at Qualcomm's gleaming corporate campus demonstrated high-definition video being displayed by a palm-sized circuit board. The most important part of the demonstration was not the performance capabilities of the device, others can do it too, but the fact that it used only half the power an Intel similar chip would require. And it's been announced as having a lower price, too.
As've said before, the tendency points towards smaller PC devices, especially in the mobile world, and that brings them closer to multifunction cell phones. Today, we have smartphones and portable Internet devices that are both cellphones and computers and do not need speed as much as they need power efficiency, especially when relying on a small battery.
Intel does well on the speed part, its X86 products have been dominating the industry for over three decades now, yet the company ignored until about four years ago the power efficiency part. That would make its entrance on the mobile world quite a challenge, for there are others which focused on it much more. The best example would be the Santa Clara based graphics chip maker Nvidia which put on display - at Computex 2008 - a small mobile computer capable of working on a battery five times longer than similar devices featuring Intel's most recent low-power chip.
Power efficiency is an important factor when relying on a small battery
Both Nvidia and Qualcomm share a chip design licensed from a rather small British chip firm, ARM Holdings. ARM's chips are widely spread around the cellphone industry, and they cost significantly less than Intel's X86 chips. Besides, their number is also impressive, as cellphones outsell PCs by about five to one. "This battle is being fought in ARM's backyard, not Intel's," said Michael Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia's mobile group. We should also notice that more than 200 licensees of the ARM processor design are out there on the cellphone field, as well as on the consumer electronics like G.P.S. navigators and set-top TV boxes markets.
The cellphone market in only on one aspect targeted by the X86 and ARM camps. Another promising segment in the consumer electronics industry is the emerging M.I.D.'s, or mobile Internet devices. Netbooks, personal G.P.S. navigators and handheld game systems, as well as an expanding array of idiosyncratic gadgets that connect wirelessly to the Internet for every conceivable purpose are some of the devices that have begun spreading around lately.
According to Anand Chandrasekhar, vice president and manager of Intel's mobile platforms group, portable computers will soon become more like bicycles. They will be specialized for different applications - like road bikes and mountain bikes - and they will outgrow people. "As a child, I had a bike for my size, and as I grew, my bike changed," he said.
Intel announced that it began to work on the power efficiency issue and that good progress has already been made. The first netbook to feature an Atom processor began shipments this month, and Intel says that the processor will be used on more than 30 products. Intel's Atom is the first to register a significant power reduction in the entire X86 chip family. The design of the chip has been entirely reconsidered to achieve energy saving, and individual work patterns have been developed for transistors.
The Atom processor features a new circuit, the so-called drowsy transistor, capable of throttling the amount of power it consumes between each tick of the processor's clock. Entire areas of the processor are put to sleep when it is not computing, and they are given just the energy they need to remember the ones and zeros for the current process.
Intel is also confident that it has some advantages over its ARM competitors, mainly in the quality of the Web experience provided by its chips. "By definition, these devices have to run the Internet as it has been developed," said Chandrasekhar. "That happens today on X86," he explained, adding that seamless access to the Internet "won't happen on ARM." Intel's executives also say that the ARM makers lack a single standard, and that they force computer software developers to make changes for each product they design, and that will certainly slow them down.
According to ARM manufacturers, the Web experience they are able to provide will rival Intel's and will also bring longer battery life. Intel might overstate the importance of the X86 compatibility, and the satisfying mobile Web experience they would provide. This is sustained by the fact that Apple, one of its closest allies, suggested that it would design its own versions of ARM microprocessor for future handheld consumer products.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said that the next generation Apple iPods and iPhones would be designed with the help of a small Silicon Valley chip design company, PA Semi, which it has acquired. Apple's iPhone is an ARM chip-based, and the industry states that the iPhone currently provides users with the best Web surfing experience on a handheld device.
Intel or ARM?
Opinions on how threatening ARM will be to Intel are divided between analysts and industry executives. Some of Intel's allies are unlikely to desert the company, and Dell is one of them. "We're impressed with their road map," Michael Dell, chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message. It "gets interesting for smaller devices with Moorestown," he said when referring to Intel's next generation low-power chips, due for 2010. Major PC makers, like Dell and HP, are on their way to roll out their own mobile Internet devices.
Others believe that Intel will only be competitive with ARM processors on power efficiency only when it delivers Moorestown. On the other hand, ARM allies say they will move on, too.
"You're still going to have a higher-power solution with Intel's Atom that doesn't have the same small footprint of the ARM chip," said Jim McGregor, research director at In-Stat, a semiconductor market research firm. "It won't be a great solution for mobile devices, and ARM will."
The bottom line is that, while Intel's Atom processors need two watts to work, Qualcomm's Snapdragon only needs 0.5. Besides, the long experience the company has on the cellphone market enabled it to create its own processor on the ARM v7 instruction set, and to integrates almost everything in it, including GPS, ATI graphics core, multimedia (digital signal processor), and 3G modem, all on one 15mm X 15mm piece of silicon. Intel's Moorestown is expected to be highly integrated, too. It will be an SOC (system-on-a-chip) and will feature integration of components like the memory controller and graphics, boosting communication speeds between these crucial devices. It will support all popular PC applications, just like Atom.
The future will certainly show us a winner, but we'll have to wait a little until then, as products featuring Snapdragon will begin shipping in the first quarter of 2009, while Moorestown silicon, the closest thing Intel has to Snapdragon, is expected in 2009 or 2010.