With Intel’s recent announcement of the Medfield chip and the company’s desire to be a part of Apple’s iOS success, ARM CEO Warren East told Reuters in Las Vegas at CES:
“It’s inevitable Intel will get a few smartphone design wins. Are they ever going to be the leaders in power efficiency? No, of course not. But they have a lot more to offer.”
The British chip design company ARM licenses their designs to 275 processor manufacturers and East says that their Cortex A7 design holds the same performance of chips of a few years ago but accomplishes that on only 20% of the power consumption.
The brush off might be a result of ARM feeling protective of their recent inclusion in the upcoming Windows 8 line of tablets and smartphones. Microsoft had previously had a long-standing partnership with Intel.
It’s interesting to note that in the late 80’s when John Sculley was CEO, Apple actually had a part in founding ARM during the creation of the Newton Message Pad PDA which utilized the ARM 610 RISC processor.
Who would you like to see providing processors to the iPhone? Intel, ARM or leave things the way they are with Apple processors?
