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"I think, AMD will start manufacturing ARM processors or otherwise they should come up with less than 22nm transitors to survive."
I wouldn't say that. They don't need to compete in that space, though it would likely be in their best interest.
Example: I have a microwave. The company that makes it has not made a portable hand held microwave and yet they are still surviving. (it's not a great direct comparison, as the market isn't heading towards "hand help microwaves" but still).
AMD will adapt, they always do 
Does not work. If your microwave make competitor make a microwave that cook faster every 2 week, you will replace your own with a faster one. Same goes for the power, you wont use you cooking oven to eat up popcorn. It's just too much for absolutely no benefits, not even power/cost.
AMD where the first to display a 22nm chip in 2008 and have already developed a similar 3D transistor tech called FinFET, they just haven't announced a product using these techs yet. With IBM working on similar stuff and MIPS making a comeback, it looks like ARM have to work hard to retain the embedded crown.
This s**t just got real :-)
ARM is not standing still.
1) ARM has already did 20nm test chip.
The company talked about their CP (Common Platform) 20nm SOC test chip based on a Coretex-M0. This core is .2mm x .2mm and contains 8K gates, 20K if you count the entire processor subsystem.
Not for production yet, of course.
2) ARM is a partner of AMD's Global foundries
3) 14nm ARMs is not so far
http://armdevices.net/2011/01/21/arm-and-ibm-develop-32nm-28nm-22nm...
I think I've read somewhere that the difference in power-performance ratio between Atom chips and ARM ones is no longer something like an order of magnitude, but more like a factor of two or three. If Intel have gone this far, they can easily go ahead and reach parity with ARM, which would be an amazing achievement considering the difference in complexity between the crowded x86 world and ARM's "cars with no standard steering wheel" approach.
But again, I'm not sure of my initial information...
Actually the news came yesterday that Intel would be manufacturing some ARM chips.
For Apple.
What if this technology is used only on Apple-designed ARM components ? I may not matter to Intel, which would evidently get its part of the benefits, and Apple products being limited to a portion of the market, the low-cost Android-based models may run as well on Intel as on standard ARM chips.
Atom has merit of compatibility while ARM would not run all the Windows applications compiled for x86. I thought that is why Atom was adopted into netbook market so widely in the first place. Developers might release applications in both x86 and ARM in the future but I doubt if all the major companies would do that.
Or they might just release them in a processor agnostic format that is compiled into a native format, just in time like, say Java/Android psuedo Java/dotNet.
or the os developers may device a format that contains both x86 and arm binaries in the same executable and change the popular development tools to automatically produce them. (Fat binaries, anyone?)
Its not as difficult as it seems.
What a shame. Imagine using this process to create ARM processors. Would be able to run 4 or 8 cores at higher clock speeds with same battery life.






Member since:
2007-04-05
This new innovation will give the Atom processor another birth. With Windows moving to ARM processors, I thought no one is going to make Atom processor netbook or small laptop ... seems like that is not the case now. Future tablet PCs (slate) will have choose for processors Intel or ARM.
I think, AMD will start manufacturing ARM processors or otherwise they should come up with less than 22nm transitors to survive.