Intel ULP SoCs

ToTTenTranz said:
Intel already has a deal with Rockchip. This doesn't make much sense.
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If it would be possible it would make sense under the perspective that Rockchip reigns supreme only for tablet SoCs, while MediaTek's core business is rather in the smartphone direction. No idea if MTK has come close to reaching its goals for this fiscal year but their projection was for 300Mio smartphone SoCs and 40Mio tablet SoCs I think? No idea about the latter but the first will be definitely way over 200Mio from what I'm hearing. And that would sizeable for Intel; tablets aren't where the real volume and money is. We all know that.
 
Mediatek is getting highly popular and the MT6595, if it works as predicted, will make the company very, very successful.
It's not an interesting target for acquisition. Intel would have to pay tens of billions of dollars for it and what for? To make ARM SoCs that would threaten/cannibalize on their x86 architecture?

IIRC, the deal with Rockchip is to assist Intel with integration and help them with market relations. Would it make sense to just buy Mediatek for the same reason?
 
ToTTenTranz said:
Mediatek is getting highly popular and the MT6595, if it works as predicted, will make the company very, very successful.
It's not an interesting target for acquisition. Intel would have to pay tens of billions of dollars for it and what for? To make ARM SoCs that would threaten/cannibalize on their x86 architecture?
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It's not the first time the specific analyst has suggested it; I just posted it for the usual entertainment ;) Apart from that it could make sense (again if possible blah blah blah) but MediaTek would have to continue as an independent entity with the same strategy as so far.

Read the BSN writeup; instead of pouring several billions into the ULP market per year Intel could spend those billions in partial downpayments for Mediatek.

IIRC, the deal with Rockchip is to assist Intel with integration and help them with market relations. Would it make sense to just buy Mediatek for the same reason?
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I'm not even sure that the Rockchip deal will bring anything worth mentioning.
 
I wonder how much of that is coming from those really cheap BayTrail tablets.
 
Alexko said:
:LOL:

They really weren't kidding about that "contra-revenue" thing.
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Yup.
In the last nine months, they spent $3billion to achieve a revenue of $0.2billion.
That's....pretty remarkable.
Talk about buying market share. And still they are failing.
 
Nexus Player announced. It's kind of a FireTV and there's even a gamepad from Asus.
It seems to bring a BayTrail:
http://www.google.com/nexus/player/


I like how they give up a 2x2 MIMO 802.11ac connectivity as a highlight. This is definitely a streaming device above all.



EDIT: Androidpolice claims that the SoC has a PowerVR Series 6 GPU.
hmmm....
Moorefield? What would be the point in getting a Moorefield for the Nexus Player? Gaming performance?
 
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xpea said:
it must be really disgusting for other players watching this. Basically Intel is paying the IHVs to use their products. Better than for free !
I wonder if this kind of anti-competitive behavior is legal, at least according to EU laws where you can't sell below cost...
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They either have figured out a way of doing this, that abides by the rule of law, if not its spirit or as with AMD, they're willing to pay a future fine, as long as they can cripple a major rival. Doesn't seem to be working as well vs ARM, as against its old x86 foes.

Having played with a Z3735D (Bay Trail) tablet, running stockish 4.4.2, I can't say I'm overly impressed by its performance vs past-gen T4 Tegra Note, let alone a Tegra 5 device. As to battery life, I can't comment, but you'd hope it's competitive given Intel's fab advantage!
 
In the last nine months, they spent $3billion to achieve a revenue of $0.2billion.
That's....pretty remarkable.
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not as bad as their last 3 months
$1 billion spent for $1 million revenue :)
 
xpea said:
it must be really disgusting for other players watching this. Basically Intel is paying the IHVs to use their products. Better than for free !
I wonder if this kind of anti-competitive behavior is legal, at least according to EU laws where you can't sell below cost...
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I doubt subsidies are illegal; another way of looking at it would be that Intel actually owes manufacturers and is paying via subsidies their depth back.
 
Ailuros said:
I doubt subsidies are illegal; another way of looking at it would be that Intel actually owes manufacturers and is paying via subsidies their depth back.
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subsidies aren't illegal until they bring the price under the production cost. And that's obviously the case here...
 
xpea said:
subsidies aren't illegal until they bring the price under the production cost. And that's obviously the case here...
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If that should be the case someone eventually will react. The only thing I'm personally interested in at this stage is ok fine Intel managed to gain N market share with that one; how are they planning exactly to sustain it in the future?
 
Turbotab said:
Having played with a Z3735D (Bay Trail) tablet, running stockish 4.4.2, I can't say I'm overly impressed by its performance vs past-gen T4 Tegra Note, let alone a Tegra 5 device. As to battery life, I can't comment, but you'd hope it's competitive given Intel's fab advantage!
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From comments I've seen on some of the threads about chinatabs on various forums, it appears that the current Android 4.4 releases for Baytrail aren't very well optimised at all.

Specifically, some tablets can accept installations of both Android and Windows 8.1 and, at present, the tablets run more smoothly with Win8.1 installed when compared to Android! When you consider the different amount of resources required by each OS, this would tend to indicate that there is plenty of work to be done on the Android OS code!

The question, as always, is whether the chinese manufacturers (or Intel) are willing to put the legwork in to produce a properly optimised Android KitKat release, or whether they will go the whole hog and create a Lollipop release. If Intel are really looking to buy a chunk of the market, it would be in their interests to put some resources into their Android development. This would have the benefit of making their future mobile chip releases more attractive to a number of device manufacturers, not just the chinese budget market.

Of course, the alternative is that they just hack together a rough and poorly-optimised ROM (which is apparently the stage we are currently at) and don't bother to improve the software further than that. :cry:
 
Intel will have core m (broadwell ) in the same TDP products as baytrail is currently in . Next braswell which replaces baytrail should be even lower TDP.

Couple that with Windows 10 and it will be the best chance that Intel has to break into the low end tablet market
 
Ailuros said:
If that should be the case someone eventually will react. The only thing I'm personally interested in at this stage is ok fine Intel managed to gain N market share with that one; how are they planning exactly to sustain it in the future?
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They aren't, of course. They aim to hamstring their competitors by denying them revenue and thus capital for investment, and generally make the SoC market less attractive for anyone else to compete in.
 
Isn't it the case with subsidies that it only starts to become a problem if you don't treat all your customers equally? i.e. Don't provide subsidies in exchange for exclusivity. Right? If all your customers get the same pricing, then it shouldn't be a problem I think. Of course, whether that's fair is a different problem, but then you're talking about ethics and not laws.
 
Intel's mobile unit is forecasted to lose $4 billion this year:

http://news.investors.com/111314-72...tinuing.htm?ven=yahoocp&src=aurlled&ven=yahoo

So they must have been selling below cost to get their products in those cheap tablets? But what would be the point? Those cheap device makers will always expect cut rate prices. Otherwise, they could switch back to cheap ARM SOCs.

Unless Windows tablets took off, device makers don't need x86 compatibility because they could make cheap Android devices using low priced ARM -- Mediatek and others.

It would have made more economic sense to use their leading edge fabs to make SOCs for Apple or Qualcomm. They'd be writing off their own mobile designs but if those designs are just causing billions in losses, what's the point of making them?

They're not going to be able to command the kind of margins they're used to getting. Their best hope was that Win 8 tablets turned the market around, locking out the ARM SOCs.
 
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