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To: w0z who wrote (405)	7/22/2016 6:11:01 PM
From: PaulAquino	Respond to of 954

How Intel lost the mobile market: the rise and neglect of Atom By Joel Hruska on May 4, 2016 at 1:05 pm Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.) spent more than $10 billion to enter the communications business over the years, but the microprocessor giant lost its shirt — if not millions of dollars in the arena. The reported communications-chip sale is said to be part of Intel’s plan to overhaul the company. Intel is also set to include the layoff or redeployment of 16,000 employees, according to speculation from one Web site. Change “communications” to mobile, adjust the number of fired employees, and that paragraph could’ve been written today. Intel’s problems in mobile aren’t new; Santa Clara has been struggling to enter new markets for nearly 20 years. Other articles from 2006 emphasize that XScale sales had been fairly low, as had revenue from Intel’s networking and communications division. From Intel’s perspective, selling XScale made sense. Building a mobile processor business around ARM cores would have limited Intel’s ability to leverage its own IP and expertise in x86 manufacturing, while simultaneously cutting into its profits (Intel would have owed significant royalties to ARM if such a design ever became popular). Atom was already well into development in 2006 and Intel decided to bet on its own hardware expertise and software development skills. Intel’s post-launch attitude towards Atom is best summarized as benign neglect. While the chip went through several revisions to integrate components and reduce costs, Intel refused to commit the resources that would have made Atom a best-in-class player in the mobile market. From 2008 to 2013, Intel launched a cost-reduced version of its Nehalem architecture, the Westmere 32nm die shrink, a new architecture with integrated graphics (Sandy Bridge), a high-end enthusiast platform (Sandy Bridge-E), a new 22nm CPU with FinFET technology (Ivy Bridge), another architectural refresh (Haswell), and a second-generation enthusiast platform (Ivy Bridge-E). That’s two full tick-tock cadences for Intel’s big-core business, while Atom didn’t even make the jump to 32nm until 2012. Its single architectural refresh to date arrived in 2013, just after the launch of Ivy Bridge-E. Despite being initially starved for resources, 32nm Atom chips were competitive in the midrange mobile market. With Medfield, Intel seemed to have turned a corner, but the company’s designs generally failed to find much traction in the market. Only Intel’s contra-revenue strategy won the company significant tablet market share, and those gains were only sustained through heavy financial losses. extremetech.com extremetech.com