ARM and Intel cross turfs - A new processor war?
By Renjith VP, SiliconIndia   |   Wednesday, 15 December 2010, 13:55 IST   |    10 Comments
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ARM and Intel cross turfs - A new processor war?
Bangalore: It has been a fabulous journey for processors from Intel's 4004 in the early 1970's to the 64 bit designs which targeted the PC market. And for quite some time we have been entertained by the processor wars between Intel and AMD which also yielded some of the most admirable piece of chips accessible to man. Markets for tech products never sleep and surely things are full of zip with the cool dude from the Smartphone chip market, ARM announcing its entry into server market directly identifying Intel as its immediate competitor. Both Intel and ARM has been doyens in their own niche areas and has made individual statements in the respective markets. While Intel holds 90 percent of market share in the server market, ARM shares have more than doubled in value this year, spurred by the explosion of Smartphones using its technology. Intel's x86-based Atom chip was ruling the netbook market, the one bright spot in the global personal computer industry last year. But as Smartphones, tablets and electronic readers began to rise; its growth was somehow downsized. And ARM was right on top in the Smartphone market which Intel is yet to explore scrupulously. While not as powerful as Atom, ARM chips can provide enough performance to do task such as web surf and stream video. And with hours of battery life, they are perfect for the next generation of hyperconnected, ultramobile devices that seek to fill the gap between Smartphones and laptops. Much advancement has been happening in chip miniaturization and raw speeds lately with Smartphones posing the most daunting task of combining performance with the lowest power consumption possible. It has been ARM's ball game so far as it licenses its designs to most all makers of cell phone processors. One of its licensees, Infineon's wireless unit, which Intel signaled to buy for $1.4 billion, pushed ARM's U.S. shares up 6 percent just because Intel has promised to support Infineon's existing wireless chips, based on ARM designs. That's the kind of perceptive competition covering the processor market and Intel has lot of homework to do on this regard especially areas like performance, power consumption, smaller size and heat generation. At present both the brands have announced 3 processors viz. Intel's Atom processor Z6xx Series Family, ARM Cortext - A9 and ARM Cortex - A115 Multicore processor. Now we were talking about ARM's entry into server market and what about that? As I said earlier Intel has been leader in shares which AMD is hardly able to capture. But AMD stands unique in the fact that it is the gamers' favorite chip. Gamers look for power which AMD provides splendidly. For years, major new designs of processor from both AMD and Intel were often accompanied by a reduction in the chip's core size and operating voltage, such that it could operate at lower temperatures and, ultimately, be persuaded to run at faster clock speeds. As of late, AMD and Intel decided to stop adding more cores and instead to battle over which chips have the most useful specialized computing features. AMD is breaking grounds on desktop and laptop market too. One thing people hate in a computer is the overheat which is more of a problem caused by the processor than helped by the fans. AMD has had this problem in the past and they have worked on it greatly. Microprocessor shipments went up by 31.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter in 2008, with AMD gaining nearly 20 percent market share in the desktop and laptop processor space. And now to this complex arena comes ARM but it has decided to play it slowly, with plans set as far as 2014 to run a full stretch server processor market. According to Warren East, CEO of ARM, Server manufacturers are already looking at chips based on ARM's technology. Now with both brands deciding to play on each other's turf, we will do nothing but wait to judge the winner.

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