Intel Corp (INTC)

[DavidA2]

David, if your argument is that Core M isn't well suited for competing in iPad sized designs,

Really? Now you are putting the same argument about why Bay Trail sucks against A7 chips but replaced with Core.

like A8X - but it's up to OEM's to make that trade off.

I believe Denver performs very well too. And its on 28nm. Don't need no "apple-specific optimizations" or "tri-gate 14nm".

Inevitably, some OEM's will decide to push the envelope on thinness. I'm not sure how much it matters, since the difference between 8mm and 7mm is subtle to most people. Some of those OEM's will set a design target for 3.5W, meaning they will have to trade off performance.

So what you are saying is that Core M is a niche and makes no sense in most markets anyway.

Want thin and light? Performance sucks. Want performance? U chips are better. Want affordability? ARM chips and Atoms are for you.

As far as I can tell, Intel achieved a >2x performance per watt improvement with Core M over Haswell-Y,

Highly doubt the figure.

http://www.chip.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/intel-core-m-cpu-malaysia-launch-5.png

4.5W Core M performs same as 6W Core i7 4610Y. Heck its not even 50% advantage perf/watt. Either (a) 14nm is worse than Intel is claiming (b) Charlie is right about Intel crippling Broadwell to get it out in time

additional architectural level improvements with Skylake,

How much do you expect? 10%? 20%? That's going to be easily eclipsed by ARM SoCs at 16nm. I highly doubt Skylake is the "next big thing" when they are putting Broadwell-K and Skylake-S at the same time.

It's been quite a while when Intel moved from underpromising to overdelivering to the opposite - overpromising and underdelivering. I think the last hoopla before Core M was the OCability and heat generation for the 4790K. Oh wait, its actually the illusion that Core M devices will end up overall cheaper, with claims of high-end devices like the Asus Chi starting at $799.