From DailyTech: With mobile fast-becoming the most-important type of computing in most casual consumers' lives, Intel Corp. (INTC) looked only slightly less lost last year than it had the previous several years in the mobile market.
At mid-year last year, Intel chips were found in only 0.2 percent of smartphones sold worldwide, and only 6 percent of tablets sold, according to research by Strategy Analytics. Intel is desperate to change that.
In Q3 it launched a new series of 22 nm tablet chips (core: Silvermont; SoC: ValleyView; chipset: Bay Trail) which it referred to generally as "the Bay Trail platform" or "Bay Trail-M". At the time, it teased at Bay Trail-T's upcoming Silvermont-based smartphone companion. Early this morning at the 2014 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain Intel announced the availability of those third generation mobile chips, dubbed Merrifield.
The first Merrifield 22 nanometer system-on-a-chip (SoC) is branded as the Intel Atom Z3480. It is designed to pair with an Intel XMM 7160 that handles the digital to analog conversion of signals coming into and off of device antennas. Announced last October, that cellular modem supports downlink speeds of up to 150 Mbps (Megabits-per-second).
The processor has one major thing in common with its rivals, who base their chips on ARM Holdings plc's (LON:ARM) architecture -- the onboard GPU.
Both Intel and the ARM chipmakers make heavy use of UK-based Imagination Technology Group Ltd.'s (LON:IMG) PowerVR chips. While Intel may eventually look to move to its own in-house graphics solution (e.g. Iris) which it uses on its personal computer chips, for Merrifield it opted for PowerVR 6 ("Rogue") Series GPUs.
The PowerVR 6 series GPUs are expected to power many of the high-end smartphones this year, plus they're already found in the A7 SoC used in the Apple, Inc. (AAPL) iPhone 5S.
While Intel's GPU may be the same as the ARM chipmakers', it will likely sip less power as it will be built on a 22 nm die, versus the 28 nm node size most ARM chipmakers are currently using.
The new chip was rumored to be available in quad-core configurations, but it will actually be dual-core exclusive. It does add brand new out-of-order instruction execution capabilities for reduced power consumption. LPDDR3 is also supported at speeds up to 533 MHz. The total amount of supported memory is bumped from 2 GB to 4 GB. The chip also is Intel's first to feature on-die sensor input (from touchscreens). It also upgrades the image signal processing (ISP) coprocessor, supporting slightly higher front-facing camera resolutions and 60 frames per second video @ 1080p.
You'll be able to recognize Merrifield chips as they're expected to all be branded as Z34xx chips.
Along with the new chips Intel announced commitments from four new partners:
Lenovo Group, Ltd. (HKG: 0992)
ASUSTek Computer Inc. (TPE:2357)
Dell Inc. (private)
Acer, Inc. (TPE:2353)
All of these OEMs previously toyed with Intel-based smartphones, but this is their first commitment to volume contracts. The Dell one is particularly interesting, given that last fall Michael Dell said he "wasn't interested" in selling smartphones.
The proof, however, is in the sales. Acer had previously committed to use the Z2420 smartphone chip, but only released handsets with it in a handful of developing markets. Motorola had previously committed to produce Android smartphones with Intel chips and even released a major handset (the Motorola i), but Intel's 0.2 percent market share last year showed Motorola sold very few of the Intel-equipped smartphones. Still, this is a development to watch as previously only Motorola and a handful of foreign OEMs had launched Intel-equipped designs.
Android is currently the only platform to support Intel chips, but Windows Phone 8.1 is rumored to add support for Intel chips, and Firefox OS is also rumored to be working to add Intel compatibility.
View: Article @ Source Site
