Intel Really Wants to Get Inside Tablets

Chip giant Intel is reportedly posed to get Apple’s attention with its future chips.

TSMC’s recent demonstration of a 3.1 GHz ARM Cortex A9 dual core chip is certainly more impressive than the empty statements of Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini : “Our job is to ensure our silicon is so compelling, in terms off running the Mac better or being a better iPad device, that as they make those decisions they can’t ignore us.”

We believe that for the next year, Apple will indeed not ignore Intel’s chips, but on the contrary, it will pay attention and steer away from the power hog that Intel’s Clover Field will be. Sure Apple has a certain preference for big and powerful GPUs in low power chips and Clover Field will certainly come with such a powerful GPU as it is not Intel made, but an Imagination design. The thing is that Clover Field will most certainly consume more power than Medfield while not being too impressive on the performance side.

Moving Clover Field on 22 nm manufacturing will most certainly help, but by that time, ARM’s A15 cores on 22 nm tech or 20 nm tech will most likely repeat the pounding with Intel’s future design. When compared with dual core ARM Cortex A9 chips, Medfield is able to hang out with the old players. Once quad core ARM Cortex A9 designs like Samsung’s Exynos 4412 and dual core Cortex A15 processors like Qualcomm’s SnapDragon S4 step into the ring, Medfield can only run for the hills.

As Intel’s Clover Field doesn’t seem like it will improve Intel’s standing in the low power field, Mr. Otellini’s statements seem closer to the company’s delirium from last week where they were publicly talking about brain chips and a future world resembling Star Trek’s Borg and The Matrix. Sure you need such a speech to set investors and stock owners in the right mood, but we believe that these, coming so soon after the Medfield fiasco, are not able to hold the line.

There is a chance for Intel and that will be getting to the 14 nm process before everybody else in 2014 and hoping that ARM won’t shell out a new design in the meantime that will again mop the floor with Intel’s Atom.

Posted in: Hardware, News, Tablet