IT manager world: arm against Intel

The rivalry between arm and Intel is essentially a struggle between two industrial models, by means of power and performance. Author: Zhang Chengdong, chief executive of the British Microchip design Enterprise arm Group, Warren East.　　Because of the low power consumption, now arm's chip design in the mobile terminal market more popular September 14, two well-known chip makers in the United States, San Francisco, a street staged a play. When the Intel Information Technology Summit (IDF) was in full swing, arm rented a site next to its main venue, releasing a dual-core chip based on ARM's A9 architecture with partners from China's Guangdong new Bank computer system chip company. This is the first time that a chip from TSMC, which uses 40 nm technology, has been upgraded to 2.0G, which is said to be used not only for mobile phones and tablets, but also for notebook products.　　This is no doubt officially announced that ARM has officially entered Intel's long-term operating PC market. In the face of these "provocations", Intel's latest shot is powerful. At the IDF summit, the first new architecture to integrate the processor (CPU) and the graphics core (GPU) on a single chip continued to improve computing performance and market influence on PC devices and demonstrated Intel's determination to improve on its chip production model.　　Prior to this, Intel continued to enhance key technology accumulation in the area of PC and mobile Internet with the acquisition of 7.68 billion US dollars of McAfee, and the acquisition of Infineon's Wireless Solutions Division (WLS) in cash at $1.4 billion. Obviously, when ARM is expanding in the breadth of the product area, this ecological model, which is Fabless by IP authorization, chip designer (and Foundry) and so on, seems to be breaking out more and more powerful industrial effect.　　On the Intel side, the transformation of the IDM (integrated device manufacturing) business model will have to be accelerated to cope with the advent of the mobile internet era.　　Both Intel and arm of the pendulum have long been successful in their respective areas of expertise. In the PC World, Intel's long nurturing voice is still unbreakable. In the mobile Internet arena, arm is also popular everywhere. With a broad mandate for Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Samsung, and Swiss chip plants, the arm-architecture processor is said to have sold 20 billion units worldwide. Apple CEO Steve Jobs used iPhone4 mobile phone for arm to do a strong endorsement, Nokia, Motorola, HTC and other brands are also shadow from.　　In China, the use of arm+android structure of mobile phones, mid and other handheld terminals are emerging. The division between Intel and arm today in the two areas is probably the embodiment of the chip manufacturing industry in the performance and power of the two major technical focus of the pursuit. Intel has alwaysPay attention to performance, from the frequency to the number of cores, all of the PC equipment running all kinds of applications and access to the Internet and provide strong support.　　The advantage of ARM is that the unique architecture of RISC (streamlined instruction system) can lead to low power consumption, coupled with the development of system-level chip (SOC) design technology, which caters to the special demand of power and design sensitive to terminals such as mobile phones. However, there is clearly no clear line in the broad space between PCs and handsets, and the gradual advance of technology and markets has blurred the boundaries between notebooks, smart books, netbooks and tablets, and has added many variables. In this case, it is clear that Intel and arm will not choose a Pianan corner on performance and power. The former develops a pendulum pattern (tock) from Moore's law, indicating a balanced development in terms of performance and power consumption. And arm also on the basis of low power consumption, quickly improve performance.　　The practice is not the same as Intel's original approach, still aiming at the frequency and the number of cores, direct attack on Intel's strategic hinterland. Although today's iphone and other mainstream products such as smartphones and tablets are used in the ARM architecture chip is 1GHz, but in fact as early as September 2009, ARM company has announced based on TSMC's 40 nano manufacturing process developed two A9 dual-core processor design, corresponding to high performance and low energy consumption, which high-performance version will be the ARM processor frequency limit up to more than 2GHz. Since then, NVIDIA has pioneered the Tegra 2 dual-core chip based on the architecture. The latest news is that arm with the 28nm manufacturing process of the A9 dual-core processor will be further upgraded to 2.8GHz, Samsung and the domestic new shore line, such as chip factories have announced the relevant A9 dual-core processor products.　　In addition, such as Toshiba, LG and other terminals have been or will be released based on Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processors of tablets and smart this product. At home, the new face of the processor chip industry Guangdong new Shore Line computer System Chip Co., Ltd. although also adopted the ARM architecture, the current launch of the processor can be 2GHz. "The performance of this configuration has been equivalent to Intel Core 2, 1.6G performance." "New Shore line general manager Zhou said."　　Their main market is for carriers and domestic PC makers, with news that Lenovo is already considering introducing a IdeaPad notebook that uses the new onshore chip +android operating system. "From a performance point of view, this product for the tablet market is a high-end chip, the PC market is equivalent to a low-end chip", but the bigger key is that the original use of mobile phone in the field of system-level chip (SOC) technology will significantly change the product process and cost structure of PC products. The idea of the new shore line is also clear, is to be in the tablet computer and other domestic shanzhai manufacturers flocked to the emerging markets, through cooperation with brand terminals, make full use of the previous netbook productionProduct fire reconnaissance found market vacancies, complete the netbook failed to complete the task.　　Model reform in front of the arm faction, the biggest problem for Intel is that the industry is questioning not only its specific corporate strategy, but also the IDM business model it has always adhered to. For the past more than 20 years, the IdM vendors, represented by Intel, have achieved leadership in such areas as PCs by using the "design of their own chips, their own production and complete their own chip testing and encapsulation" approach. In the global semiconductor market, IDM industry has a market share of nearly 70%. But after entering the new century, IdM's development has been repeatedly declining. Intel chief Executive Otellini. To be able to develop better in the mobile internet age, Intel will continue to build on key technologies in the PC and mobile Internet sectors by acquiring 7.68 billion US dollars of McAfee, and then purchasing Infineon's Wireless Solutions (WLS) with $1.4 billion in cash, Because of the rapid increase in the cost of construction and design costs, the IDM vendors ' profit margins are hard to secure. From 1995 to 2010, the average cost of the plant has risen from $1 billion trillion to nearly 4 billion dollars, according to the Taiwan Institute of Industrial Technology.　　In design costs, the previous 180 nm average design costs of 5 million U.S. dollars, but to 32 nm has been pulled up to about 75 million U.S. dollars, an increase of up to 15 times times. In the case of Intel, fine-tuning of the original mode has been ongoing.　　In March 2009, Intel also signed a memorandum of cooperation with TSMC, once wanted to take the atom product and TSMC, to borrow the latter's production technology to obtain a breakthrough in the power consumption, but because of fear of the original market impact and chip pricing, such as factors, the cooperation finally ended. Unlike the Wintel (Windows+intel) alliance, where the two giants can basically set the tone, the mobile internet is still in the "pre-standardization" period (if the PC industry is considered a post-standardization period), a lot of segments and more diverse needs. For the product itself, whether the chip hardware or operating system level, most of the present such a feature, namely: in the basic hardware and software architecture, chip design vendors and the overall solution provider has a greater play space.　　This application environment must require the corresponding chip industry chain has a high degree of flexibility, of course, the future of Intel's transformation of the direction of a problem. The power of consolidation so, what if Intel is going to Guyan the PC market and hack into the mobile internet, based on the existing IDM model? The answer is: in the overall IDM model, targeted integration for some links may be a realistic and effective way.　　In other words, it's important to segment the industry chain, but it's also important to be effective in integrating the links on the chain. RecentOver the years the development of mobile Internet has shown us at least three levels of integration strength. A technology integration design for chip hardware level, which is typically embodied as system-level chip (SOC) technology. Unlike Intel, which separates processor chips from modules such as graphics cards and memory controls, almost all chip designers based on the arm architecture have been successful in the handheld device sector through this approach. The second is the integration of hardware plus software business model, which is typical of MediaTek's "turnkey" approach. The sales package, which covers the motherboard, chip hardware, and software documentation, has sharply lowered the threshold for downstream terminal operators and has rapidly achieved MediaTek's position in the chip industry. The third integration is a complete industry vertical integration that includes hardware, software, and industrial design, typically in Apple's approach to products such as iphones and ipads. Apple's strong integration from basic chips to operating systems, production processes and software partitioning has lifted mobile phone performance and business models to a new stage. A netbook with a built-in Intel Atom chip, Intel will be able to consolidate both the baseband chip and the processor chip as it completes its takeover of Infineon. As a veteran wireless chip manufacturer, Infineon has expertise in WCDMA and other unimpressed communication baseband chip technology, SOC technology and Low-power technology. Apple's IPhone 4 and the ipad, as well as BlackBerry, LG, Samsung and other companies have a variety of mobile phones are using Infineon chips.　　Intel will use Infineon's assets to enter several major areas, from WiFi to 3G, to WiMAX and LTE. With MediaTek, the exhibition and arm, NVIDIA and other chips are mostly only in the communications baseband chip or processor chip in a single domain of integration compared to the Intel is no doubt once again demonstrated the strength of the industry king. Coupled with the integration of hardware + software, Intel continues to add more technology to its sales package by acquiring McAfee, and Nokia's Meego open source operating system.　　With the arm camp attacking PCs from the mobile Internet, Intel's multiple consolidation at multiple levels will provide a powerful weapon for its counter-offensive to enter the mobile Internet arena. One of the big features of mobile Internet in relation to the PC World is that even if the device uses the same underlying technology architecture, there may be a very different application experience because of the differences in later integration scenarios. For example, compared to Apple's iphone and ipad, many Android operating systems such as HTC, or mobile internet devices, use the ARM architecture chip, but the gap between the duration of the standby time is very large. The reason is that Apple, from the outset, has spent a lot of time strengthening the support of software such as its own operating system for chip hardware.　　And many manufacturers, like the latter, are under pressure to go on the market and do not spend time and manpower to do this part of the optimization. If the apple-strong integrator is left behind,Only analysis of Intel and arm two can be found, arm through a wide range of authorized to win a large number of users, but from another point of view, arm mainly rely on the technical advantages to drive other partners, although the global ARM architecture chip shipments are huge, but in the amount of revenue is only a few one-tenth of Intel,　　It is difficult to actively integrate other links; By contrast, Intel's strong market power, in addition to its chip design and manufacturing process, will leave a lot to be guessed by its next initiative. With an industry-driven arm and Intel with strong integration capabilities, who will have a bigger win in the future of the chip wars, the answer can only be found in the market development.