Published in Mobiles

Intel goes hard sell in Barcelona

by on27 February 2013



Our phones are the fastest

Fashion bag maker, Intel is talking itself up so much at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that most of its announcements have to be made from the base of the Columbus statue in Tibidabo. While Intel has barely got its foot in the door of the mobile chip business it is already claiming to be the biggest and the best.

Mike Bell, Intel's mobile chief has been telling anyone who will listen that comparing his company’s chips to anything ARM designs is like comparing a lightly greased leopard to a three-toed sloth. Intel’s cunning plan to become the leader in mobile, he said, was build the best chips.

If you suspect that Intel might not be the best, then Bell has shedloads of benchmarks that will prove it to you. Against the top-of-the-line ARM chips, Intel says its mobile processors win hands down.

He also adds that since Intel has its own fabs with the latest in manufacturing processes it can bring new technologies to market faster. ARM has to design the chip core and then hand it to its licensees who then have to play around with it and then take their designs to a fab for construction. Bell seems to be implying that ARM and by extension AMD is too slow and can be out-evolved by Intel.

According to CNN he said that to be successful in the industry, simply building chips is insufficient. Intel can write software that helps us get the most out of our hardware, he said. Intel can also make some nice fashion bags to go with your choice he didn’t add.

Even though Intel's mobile chips don't yet have multiple cores, while ARM has more than you can point a stick at, the speed tests aren't even that close. Bell claimed that it was like having a jet engine or two propellers. Clearly he has never tried to fly a plane with only one jet engine, if you don’t tip over you end up flying in circles. Mobile chip designs are getting smaller and smaller and will halve their size down to 14 nanometers and it is going to be difficult for many less-experienced companies using ARM's platform to manufacture something like that, Bell said. 

Bell is an import from Apple and one of his jobs is to make sure that hardware and software work well together. Jobs’ Mob chips may not be the best but they tend to work better with software than most things Andriodish. Bell that with Intel’s relationship with Google it can do a good a job optimising its systems as anyone, and Google has never told Intel 'no' when it asked to improve performance somewhere, he claimed.

Intel believes that its fortunes will change with the release of its new 22 nm mobile chip design this autumn, which will incorporate 4G-LTE capabilities.

 

Last modified on 27 February 2013
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