Intel Atom

[Shawn Rutledge]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Jeffery Davis <heavensblade23 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there any possibility a future model could incorporate the Intel
> Atom?  They're launching dual-core
> models soon at around $43.  Battery life would probably be somewhat less
> than it would continuing with ARM, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_atom

They take from 0.65-4 W depending on which generation, and speed.  I
don't really see the point, why you'd want an x86 architecture on a
phone.  (It's basically the original Pentium, miniaturized and
incorporating their latest manufacturing process innovations to make
it low-power.)  Just that there are a lot of x86 binaries (and OSes)
you could run unmodified, but compiling for ARM isn't so bad, and ARM
has better performance-per-watt and lower-power sleep modes, right?  I
imagine if we see these in phones, they will be large, loaded with
"features" (like some of the larger Symbian models), either with lousy
battery life or giant batteries, and maybe the point will be to run a
PC-like version of Windows on them rather than just Windows Mobile.
(Traveling execs think they gotta have their Excel spreadsheets on the
go)  I would like to be pleasantly surprised though, of course.

A monopoly across most forms of computing would be really bad for the
market, so I wouldn't want to help Intel achieve that.  But maybe they
will spur the competition to take ARM to the next level.  (multi-core,
smaller, and faster)

$43 is not cheap either.  Probably several times what the Freerunner's
processor costs.