ARM vs Intel...Performance? Power? OS support? Or ubiquity?

By SemiWiki

March 24, 2011

All of these, but we feel the most important is ARM technological ubiquity to win on the long term!

In the ARM vs Intel war (even with no declaration), we frequently hear arguments about performance, power and OS support, all of them are relevant, and we will see what is the real status here. Another argument is very important: ARM processor core is everywhere in our real life. ARM is present in the wireless segment, Handset and smartphone, that’s clear, but also in Consumer (DVD, BlueRay, Digital TV, Set-Top-Box, Digital Still Camera…), Industrial (metering, smart cards IC and readers…), PC peripherals (more than 90% of printers, Solid State Drives (SSD)…) and now in the Netbook and Media Tablets. If tomorrow Intel processor would disappear, only the PC segment would be impacted… and Intel processor replaced by AMD. But imagine that ARM IP core could not be licensed anymore… The reason for ARM ubiquity is because ARM IP (Processor and Libraries) are widely available, to IDM or fabless through Silicon foundries, on most of the technology nodes.

To read the full article, click here