Replies to post #131034 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

Doesn't show anything much really but I thought this bit of upstaging by an ARM processor was quite amusing and well done

I don't see any chance how Intel is going to gain significant market share in this highly specific and ultra low power/area processor space. It's not that Intel hasn't given up on the microcontroller market many years ago and IoT isn't much different from a small controller with a wireless interface.

There is no way an x86 processor can beat an ARM M0 in area or power metrics (not even talking about ecosystem, which is huge for Cortex M). The ARM RISC instruction set makes so much sense for these little ultra low power controllers. This, paired with a decent compiler and the most powerful 3rd party tools in the industry make it impossible for Intel to beat ARM in that domain.

The M0 takes about 12,000 gates. I suppose an x86 decode stage already needs more than that.

Having said that, since mobile processors ressemble more and more full blown PC processors, Intel has a good chance to gain market share there. x86 is irrelevant for power and area regarding how big these cores are due to their complex architecture (despite the instruction set).

ARM is coming from the controller space (I know, originally, a very long time ago, it was a computer processor) whereas Intel is coming from the PC space. It's the mobile APU world where they overlap. Intel won't gain significant share in the controller space and ARM won't gain such in the PC or server space.

[mas]

Quark is in a different performance class to Cortex-M especially as it's going dual-core at 22nm. The point is will it be sufficiently lower power and cheaper than a small Cortex-A to be relevant, that is the big question mark about it.

The Kinetis KL03 will be sampling to Freescale partners in March for testing with the FRDM-KL03Z Freescale Freedom development board with assorted developer tools. The MCU will be made available at volume for $0.75 per unit in 100,000-unit quantities beginning in June, the company said.

The KL03's 48MHz ARM Cortex-MO+ has a bit manipulation engine for "faster, more code-efficient handling of peripheral registers," according to Freescale. The tiny MCU has 32KB of flash memory, 2KB of RAM, and 8K of ROM with an on-chip boot loader, with high-speed 12-bit ADC and a high-speed analog comparator. It operates on a 1.71-3.6-volt charge and utilizes low-power wake up and other low-power modes for different tasks.