Computex ARM Netbook Frenzy
- Thread starter Arun
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Yeah, TI, Qualcomm etc. are all behind ARM netbooks, but they don't sell them. Dell and HP do, and the latter have to sell atom based win7 netbooks as well.
To me, looks like both MS and intel are trying that. WinCE is going to have nowhere near the margins of Win7. Also, if ARM takes off, that automatically means they have some serious competition to worry about.
Google here seems to be the only player (from the sw side) that will push for ARM netbooks like crazy and actually has the power to do the heavy lifting.
Do you think nv wants to lose the zune hd 2 contract?
By then Atom platform might have improved a bit. Pineview/moorestowm/whatever (not keeping up with intel's codenames here) is supposed to come out at CES 2010 as well. So, the evil scheming might just be a ploy to slow down the introduction of competitors for now.
Do you think nv wants to lose the zune hd 2 contract?
No IHV would ever want to lose any contract, that's for sure. I don't see though what the above has to do with what he's proposing. And no I don't agree to it since it would cost the firms he suggests a large pile of resources. which I still consider as a bad investment unless of course any of them would want to play the role of the SoC and OEM manufacturer at the same time.
Deals can be lost for many unpredictable reasons and there are hardly any guarantees for anything.
I merely meant that MS might be pressurizing nv into delaying their netbook launch.
Anyway, it seems clear that there will be no ARM netbooks in 2009.
Really I don't see any reason (in fair market) for ARM Netbooks to not be a success.
Just look at typical netbooks, 80% of people only use it for more than cheap and/or portable internet/multimedia/Office.
That said ARM netbook will be better at all of this:
1- they are cheaper, also must Linux distrus use less resources than XP (specially in RAM, the Ubuntu one uses around 200MB running Open Office), and already take all the software you want, for free.
2- they are much more portable, they can last one day in full work.
3- better multimedia, without a big hit on performance and portability.
4- as good productivity it really can do almost anything must people want.
The big disadvantages are:
1- it is not windows, but if anyone used Moblin or Ubuntu netbook edition can easily think that it will be easy to overcome with the right marketing
2- no real pro software that people are used to, like ProTools, Photoshop, although most dont really use them on a netbook and there is free alternatives to all of them (but they still take some time to learn)
Anyway my point is more than 50% of netbook or even PC users could as easily use a ARM netbook with a good Linux distro without any worry and find it a lot better & cheaper (making it a lot of value).
Personally I think that (if the quad core 2Ghz=medium PC) they can even have a chance in the desktop market with small/cheaper/prettier office/internet/multimedia PCs, but it is a longer shot.
So it will all rely in good marketing and fair market.
Just look at typical netbooks, 80% of people only use it for more than cheap and/or portable internet/multimedia/Office.
That said ARM netbook will be better at all of this:
1- they are cheaper, also must Linux distrus use less resources than XP (specially in RAM, the Ubuntu one uses around 200MB running Open Office), and already take all the software you want, for free.
2- they are much more portable, they can last one day in full work.
3- better multimedia, without a big hit on performance and portability.
4- as good productivity it really can do almost anything must people want.
The big disadvantages are:
1- it is not windows, but if anyone used Moblin or Ubuntu netbook edition can easily think that it will be easy to overcome with the right marketing
2- no real pro software that people are used to, like ProTools, Photoshop, although most dont really use them on a netbook and there is free alternatives to all of them (but they still take some time to learn)
Anyway my point is more than 50% of netbook or even PC users could as easily use a ARM netbook with a good Linux distro without any worry and find it a lot better & cheaper (making it a lot of value).
Personally I think that (if the quad core 2Ghz=medium PC) they can even have a chance in the desktop market with small/cheaper/prettier office/internet/multimedia PCs, but it is a longer shot.
So it will all rely in good marketing and fair market.
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I dunno
, all these nice little things were out at computex. Marvell says they are good-to-go, just waiting for sticker stampers. In nv's case, Arun has been consistent that nv does a lot of heavy lifting for their customers, but tegra-books are still nowhere to be seen. Bottomline, they certainly look like having got delayed, no idea about what caused it.
I dunno
Bottomline, they certainly look like having got delayed, no idea about what caused it.
NVIDIA has most likely the advantage to be earlier ready with the SoCs than many of the large semiconductor manufacturers they're competing with. Whatever "heavy lifting" stands for in the given case it's obviously not speeding up OEM manufacturers' time to market.
Talking of Ubuntu, there's a presentation for NV that mentions that their OS support list for Tegra is now (in a random order, not the original one): Android/Windows Mobile/Windows CE/Chrome/Ubuntu. There were some other guys working on ARM Linux distributions but I'm not sure how they could compete at this point, TBH. As for NVIDIA's module approach (and SW work) not helping OEMs get to market faster - I'm not sure that's fair to say until we see actual products on the market so we can compare the timeframes.
I'll be curious to see how aggressively TI pushes OMAP4 for this market - in theory it's well suited for it, in practice given the large amount of competition at this point it's not clear whether they will or even should bother. We'll see.
I'll be curious to see how aggressively TI pushes OMAP4 for this market - in theory it's well suited for it, in practice given the large amount of competition at this point it's not clear whether they will or even should bother. We'll see.
but why did Nokia go with Intel again? I mean, Booklet 3G looks nice and all, but it's not that different from other netbooks on the market? Other than trying to imitate Apple's style and battery life.
If they'd gone with ARM I'd been really interested, provided battery time would have been significantly better to (e.g. 18+ hours vs. 12 hours claimed for booklet 3G).
I can hardly imagine it's just because of the OS that they've gone with Intel, as it would be a nice incentive to scale Maemo up a bit too.
Oh well, I suppose Apple will be the first large player on the ARM side with their upcoming tablet. Hopefully it'll feature an IPS or AMOLED screen
the difference between apple and nokia is that apple are in possession of a complete software ecosystem; nokia are usually struggling with their consumer-targeted software, and as such _need_ a flashy 3rd party's (read: ms') consumer-oriented software stack. and an android smartbook alternative does not stand before nokia, as apparently they consider the latter the devil, i.e. they'd rather release a wintel device than one powered by android.but why did Nokia go with Intel again? I mean, Booklet 3G looks nice and all, but it's not that different from other netbooks on the market? Other than trying to imitate Apple's style and battery life.
If they'd gone with ARM I'd been really interested, provided battery time would have been significantly better to (e.g. 18+ hours vs. 12 hours claimed for booklet 3G).
I can hardly imagine it's just because of the OS that they've gone with Intel, as it would be a nice incentive to scale Maemo up a bit too.
Oh well, I suppose Apple will be the first large player on the ARM side with their upcoming tablet. Hopefully it'll feature an IPS or AMOLED screen
The diagrams I've seen of OMAP4 lack something that I think is important for netbooks: SATA.
Hmm, I'll admit to still be confused about what exactly a mobile chip needs to support to be able to handle some kind of HDD; it seems CE-ATA (used in 1.8" drives ala iPod Classic) is physically and electrically compatible with MMC, which is also used for SD cards (so you'd just need a separate controller). However I'm far from convinced my understanding of that is correct...
Either way most of these ARM netbooks will use flash, just like nearly all of the lower-priced netbooks. The latter often use 'SDDs', i.e. over a PATA interface, but if you've got a native flash interface I fail to see why you'd want to use anything else. Well, except in Tegra's case where they've got a separate NAND controller chip on the Zune HD; I still have no idea what's up with that either, although I suspect MS wanted to be able to use 3-bit/cell NAND for cost reasons and Tegra didn't support that natively. I haven't seen any of the teardowns give any information about the NAND chips except the brands/densities, so I can't be certain.
wrt Nokia going with Intel: remember Intel also bought 3G modem IP from Nokia to integrate into their modems and it looks like they're going to use Moorestown to some extent. BTW, I believe that modem IP deal proves only that Intel's management is governed by buzzwords and fails utterly at understanding the deeper dynamics of the industry. Not that different from Nokia, then...
While we're talking about Nokia, I like how nobody realized they were the first handset manufacturer using 45nm chips by a long shot - it's as if nobody could make a connection between their 600MHz/10.2Mbps chip and the TI chip described in this article: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206102066 - that's about the only positive thing I can say about Nokia right now though. BTW, TI is pretty much out of every Nokia socket in the mid-term except Maemo, where OMAP3/OMAP4 will probably have completely exclusivity for quite a while. Which brings up the question of what baseband chip they're going to use in future designs - and I know the answer, but I'd have to kill you
Good point. That would seem to exclude TI from the list of arm netbook soc's though.
On second thoughts, I doubt tegra has sata either. They'll prolly use a bridge chip aor something like that. Or may be they'll just use the in built flash controller to interface with a bunch of flash IC's onboard. Capacity of the flash you can support his way could be a problem though.
On second thoughts, I doubt tegra has sata either. They'll prolly use a bridge chip aor something like that. Or may be they'll just use the in built flash controller to interface with a bunch of flash IC's onboard. Capacity of the flash you can support his way could be a problem though.
Tegra has IDE support, afaik through CE-ATA (see my earlier post on my lack of understanding on the real cost of CE-ATA). As for capacity with on-board NAND - I'm not sure why. The iPod Touch goes up to 64GB now for example; do you really expect anyone to integrate significantly more than that in a cheap netbook?
I didn't know about the on-chip capacity. 64GB is pretty much the limit though.
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