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ARM founder claims that company will “obliterate” Intel

by Pete Mason on 23 November 2010, 14:30

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), ARM

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When it comes to processors, the real battle is fought between ARM and Intel. However, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, one of ARM's co-founders told reporters that he doesn't believe that the battle will rage on for much longer.

Dr Hermann Hauser - who no longer works at the company, but is still a shareholder - explained that "if you look at the history of computing there was mainframe, which was dominated by IBM, then came the mini computer dominated by DEC, then came the third wave with workstations dominated by Sun and Apollo, then the PC, and now it's the mobile architecture that is going to be the main computing platform at least on the terminal side".

He continued, "there is no case in the history of computing where a company that has dominated one wave has dominated the next wave and there is no case where a new wave did not kill the previous wave - as in obliterate them...the people that dominate the PC market are Intel and Microsoft".

These are certainly bold words, especially as shares in ARM continue to wobble and while Intel makes further steps into the low-power market with the purchase of Infineon. Just this week the chip-giant released a new Atom CPU for embedded solutions - as seen at IDF - that will specifically compete with some of the British company's designs.

However, Hauser doesn't believe that ARM's superior products are what will lead it to victory. "The reason why ARM is going to kill the microprocessor is not because Intel will not eventually produce an Atom that might be as good as an ARM, but because Intel has the wrong business model...If you sell microprocessors you have the wrong model".

According to the story, ARM-based chips are used in a quarter of all electronic devices. It also states that the value of the chips that the company collects royalties on has recently overtaken Intel's microprocessor revenue for the first time.



HEXUS Forums :: 12 Comments

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Eh? So not selling something is a bad business decision? ARM are pretty conceited in their own IP/royalty mentality. Intel does that, plus peddle silicon, that's why they're loaded and ARM is still a little nat in comparison, even after 2 decades.
I think he's missed the point, unless I have.

Intel own a group of fabs, and they manufacture silicon, but they also manufacture boards in desktop market.

Recently we've seen Intel focus on moving toward the “system on a chip” concept to great effect - look at the netbook market as an example. 5 years ago this market hardly existed. Now, this same technology will enable tablets and iPad copies to run on an X86 platform. Next is going to be the miniturisation process to get this into a cell phone.

With this in mind, how exactly does Arm's strategy differentiate them. They're all purveyers of silican. The mobile phone market has just been a market that has recently exploded, whereas the server and desktop markets are considerably more mature markets.

When we see a copy of Windows released on X86 and other platforms, THEN you can truly say that ARM has landed in the mainstream and can replace Intels products, but until then, you're limited to other OS's, the cloud and using MSTSC in order to run mainstream productivity software.
well in the mobile sector ARM already are ‘obliterating’ Intel

to see it still be that way in a 3 or 4 years should be a target for them
Intel or AMD will buy ARM and then that'll be that.
HW_90
well in the mobile sector ARM already are ‘obliterating’ Intel

to see it still be that way in a 3 or 4 years should be a target for them

And the first real way out of the phone market for ARM is the emerging tablet market - people won't accept anything other than windows for netbooks but tablets are a whole different ballgame. If tablets expand sufficiently you'll have to wonder how MS will cover that - with WP7 tablet edition? Maybe.