Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) [LWN.net]

Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 16:00 UTC (Fri) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166)
In reply to: Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia) by robert_s
Parent article: Intel talks Linux, netbooks and rivalry with ARM (ZDNet Asia)

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.

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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.