ARM: Intel Is Finally Good Enough for Smartphones, but ARM Is Better

From X-bit Labs: Chief executive officer of ARM Holdings, a leading developer of mobile microprocessor technologies, said that Intel Corp.’s latest Medfield system-on-chip is “good enough” for smartphones and the company considers Intel a “serious competitor”. But ARM claims that Intel will never be a leader of the mobile chip market since power consumption of its chips is just too high.

“It is inevitable Intel will get a few smartphone design wins – we regard Intel as a serious competitor. Are they ever going to be the leaders in power efficiency? No, of course not. But they have a lot more to offer,” said Warren East, chief executive officer of ARM, in an interview with Reuters.

ARM continues to offer both energy-efficient and cost-efficient designs for a broad amount of mobile devices, from simplistic feature phones to powerful media tablets. At present ARM architecture is licensed by 275 chipmakers. Intel’s one Medfield chip will not change the trend, moreover, since it still consumes more power than ARM-based system-on-chips, it will not find broad adoption due to battery life constraints it brings.

"They (Intel) have taken some designs that were never meant for mobile phones and they have literally wrenched those designs and put them into a power-performance space which is roughly good enough for mobile phones. […] People want to do more things with their phones, but battery size remains constant. It is like having a car with a fixed-size fuel tank and you want to drive 100 more miles. You've got to make the engine more efficient. That is what we do for a living,” added Mr. East.

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