Thursday, 15 December 2011 07:33

Mobile, it’s the new Black

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motorola_droid_x1It looks like mobile is the way to go these days; well really it has been for some time. Back in 2009 or so nVidia saw that and turned their attention toward the mobile world by developing the Tegra SoC (System on Chip) at the time many people slammed them for dropping out of the chipset business and fans of their GPUs became annoyed that this new product was taking priority over development of faster and better products for their games. Now, after a rocky start and three generations into it (plus a design win that could put Tegra on the moon), no one is laughing at the tiny little chip any longer.

The mobile market is simply too lucrative to pass up even for the big guys out there. Let’s take a look at AMD. For years they were competing directly against Intel in the CPU and chipset market. This competition spanned desktops, laptops, servers and workstations. After AMD broke down financially the competition was not the same as the R&D money dried up, but they were still competing. Now under the leadership of Rory Read we are seeing all of the signs of something big happening. These signs all point to AMD moving toward designing and building a mobile CPU, perhaps even an x86 SoC to drop into mobile devices. They know now (like nVidia knew a long time ago) that they have to maximize the return on their R&D expenditures. A Mobile processor can do just that.

Now let’s take a quick hop over to Intel, they have just announced a reorganization that will create a new business unit from several existing ones. The new Mobile and Communications Group will consist of the Mobile Communications, Netbook and Tablet, Mobile Wireless, and Ultra Mobility groups. Led by Mike Bell and Hermann Eul the new team will focus on getting Intel in line with the mobile market and maximizing their presence there.

The two new team leaders have quite a bit of experience in the mobile market so this move could help Intel out as their mindset is not exactly mobile oriented (with the exception of Francois Piednoel’s Atomization of the world…). Mike Bell came over from Palm but also worked with Apple on their iPhone team. Hermann Eul came over when Intel bought out Infineon’s Wireless Technology group in 2010.

Yep, it seems like the mobile market is going to be a big push for everyone in the next few years, I just wonder if the big x86 companies can catch up to ARM after jumping in this late in the game.

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Read 2321 times Last modified on Thursday, 15 December 2011 07:41

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