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Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia)Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia)Posted Oct 9, 2009 11:58 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)Parent article: Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia)
"What do you mean? Are you saying that Web is designed for the x86 platform?
Fundamentally, that's true. ..."
I'm left more than a little bit speechless at this bit of nonsense.
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Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) Posted Oct 9, 2009 13:12 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
The main thing is flash.
Html, video codecs, silverlight , java, javascript, etc etc. That is all
Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) Posted Oct 9, 2009 13:21 UTC (Fri) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
The Nokia N8x0/N900 all have flash, and iirc Adobe/Apple just announced they'd have it RSN too. So what gives?
Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) Posted Oct 9, 2009 15:28 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
??
It thought it was a big thing in the tech news lately that Apple is refusing
But the Flash Lite stuff only supports Flash 8 features as far I can tell.
Poor argument for x86 Posted Oct 9, 2009 21:56 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I don't know about Apple (after all they are using x86 nowadays), but the Nokia N770 (Linux on ARM) runs Flash very decently. If Flash does not support more platforms it's because Adobe doesn't want it to, and Gnash or swfdec aren't there yet. Not for any fundamental reason AFAIK.
Poor argument for x86 Posted Oct 12, 2009 2:52 UTC (Mon) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]
Note that Adobe seems intent on being the only provider for complete implementations of Flash. Just take a look at their handling of RTMP.
When they finally released specifications for the protocol, it omitted a description of the RTMPE encryption protocol. Furthermore, the license on the specification forbids people from using the specification to reverse engineer the encryption protocol.
And when the protocol was reverse engineered (which happened before the spec release), they used a bogus DMCA take down notice to get the code deleted from SourceForge.
What do you think they are going to do with Gnash or Swfdec gets to the point where they can play RTMPE streams?
Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) Posted Oct 15, 2009 4:34 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]
S'enough for Youtube (I'm still running Flash 8 - this P3/500 becomes sullen and uncooperative with anything newer), and that probably covers at least 95% of the use cases for Flash...
Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) Posted Oct 9, 2009 16:00 UTC (Fri) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link]
Yeah, that's a bit of a tenuous assertion. They seem to be pushing the angle that they can run standard plugins but at the same time the best platform for running standard plugins is surely Windows! They're talking up what they see as a strength of their product but as others have noted, Flash is (becoming? already?) available for ARM these days (and various movements towards AJAX, HTML5, etc seem to be going against Flash anyhow). So I'm not sure it's the best thing to emphasize, in terms of community relations, factual accuracy or future-proof strategy.
I suspect that as their mobile processors get more efficient we'll see less of these status quo arguments and more in terms of technical benefits - but it seems like Intel has a long way to go before they get down to the power draw of the ARM platform.
Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) Posted Oct 10, 2009 17:51 UTC (Sat) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"So I'm not sure it's the best thing to emphasize, in terms of community relations, factual accuracy or future-proof strategy."
I don't think Intel care. Their strategy as of late seems to be 'x86 everywhere at any cost'. Most of their community projects could be seen as a way of shoehorning x86 somewhere. They have realized that x86 is their core piece of real estate and their means of survival will be to encourage the view of x86 as the 'only compatible choice'. Even when that makes no real sense.
And as a result all of us lot are going to end up programming everywhere for a horrible ISA with chips that spend half their power decoding instructions.
Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) Posted Oct 11, 2009 1:24 UTC (Sun) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link]
In the interests of fairness, I should probably declare a bias in favour of Intel due to dealings I've had with them. But I'll try to be fair and balanced anyhow...
They do seem very focused on getting x86 everywhere at the moment - graphics cards, phones ... I'm a little divided on this. On the one hand I'd certainly want to see as competitive a market as possible, so if Intel dominate every niche then that would be bad for the industry as a whole. On the other hand I can see many benefits if there were a "universal ISA". That said, x86 would hardly be my first choice for the one ISA to rule them all; it's probably not the ugliest ISA in history but it's hardly pleasant. And I wouldn't want to see a world in which new architecture approaches were locked out simply because everything is x86 (more than is the case already).
As far as I'm concerned their community work is positive whatever their motivations, in that the code is not all Intel-specific (e.g. some of the enhancements to bootup they made for Moblin). It does seem slightly bizarre that they're focusing so hard on "x86 everywhere" though - the Xscale, their StrongARM variant, was pretty awesome as far as I know. It seems quite strange to get rid of that, even given the existence of Atom. I wonder if it's a decision that will pay off... will they actually save themselves design and manufacturing effort this way, or are they simply hoping that software compatibility will win the day. An interesting gamble; I'm a little doubtful that we won't have Adobe Flash on ARM phones before we have a good selection of popular x86 phones on the market.
I do think it's fairly impressive that Intel has (mostly) taken the relatively enlightened view that they're not (mostly) a software company and certainly not a driver-selling company. Open Source work is something they seem to have embraced in order to sell more hardware and improve the market they're operating in. Although things are better than they were, certain other device companies could still learn a thing or two from this.
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