Despite mobile announcements that are impressive on paper, Intel is still struggling with winning confidence from manufacturers.
Intel kicked off Mobile World Congress in Barcelona by announcing a new addition to its Atom family, teasing with hints of another, and revealing its new LTE modem.
On stage at Barcelona, Intel’s Renee James launched the Z3480 — the 64-bit SoC formerly known under the codename of Merrifield. Produced using the 22nm process node and based on Intel’s Silvermont microarchitecture, the SoC is clocked at 2.13 GHz.
Intel said that it had “anticipated design wins” with many device makers, but didn’t elaborate further.
Next up Intel revealed more information on Moorefield. Moorefield is the followup to Merrifield, as is expected to launch in the second half of the year. Moorefield is clocked slightly faster than Merrifield at 2.3GHz, and adds two cores bringing the core count to four.
As both of these chips are 64-bit, they will support a maximum of 4GB of RAM from the previous ceiling of 2GB. Both chips will also include Imagination’s Power VR Series 6 GPU with quad-cluster 3D graphics.
In press materials, Intel says that the Z3480 will edge out the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and Apple A7 in benchmarking. But as discussed before on VR-Zone , WebXPRT 2013 and the benchmarking methodology used by Intel is problematic and shouldn’t be considered entirely objective.
Intel also launched a new LTE chipset during the keynote. Intel’s XMM 7260 LTE chipset is considered a category 6 device and is compatible with most of the world’s LTE networks: LTE FDD/TDD, WCDMA/HSPA+, and TD-SCDMA/TD-HSPA/EDGE are all supported. It can push data at peak speeds of up to 300Mbps downlink and 50Mbps upload.
On stage, Thomas Linder, Intel’s senior director of its Mobile and Communications Group didn’t name any definite hardware wins only stating that “[Intel] expects this platform to get several announcements of design wins in spring 2014.”
Intel said that it had “anticipated design wins” with many device makers, but didn’t elaborate further.
Next up Intel revealed more information on Moorefield. Moorefield is the followup to Merrifield, as is expected to launch in the second half of the year. Moorefield is clocked slightly faster than Merrifield at 2.3GHz, and adds two cores bringing the core count to four.
As both of these chips are 64-bit, they will support a maximum of 4GB of RAM from the previous ceiling of 2GB. Both chips will also include Imagination’s Power VR Series 6 GPU with quad-cluster 3D graphics.
In press materials, Intel says that the Z3480 will edge out the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and Apple A7 in benchmarking. But as discussed before on VR-Zone , WebXPRT 2013 and the benchmarking methodology used by Intel is problematic and shouldn’t be considered entirely objective.
Intel also launched a new LTE chipset during the keynote. Intel’s XMM 7260 LTE chipset is considered a category 6 device and is compatible with most of the world’s LTE networks: LTE FDD/TDD, WCDMA/HSPA+, and TD-SCDMA/TD-HSPA/EDGE are all supported. It can push data at peak speeds of up to 300Mbps downlink and 50Mbps upload.
On stage, Thomas Linder, Intel’s senior director of its Mobile and Communications Group didn’t name any definite hardware wins only stating that “[Intel] expects this platform to get several announcements of design wins in spring 2014.”
Hope doesn’t run a company
If Intel’s keynote in Barcelona shows one thing, it’s that Intel is still struggling with lining up manufacturer partners for its mobile ambitions. The closest Intel could come to naming a hardware partner is saying it had signed agreements with Lenovo, Asus, Dell and Foxconn to develop mobile devices that will use Intel’s mobile chips. The exact terms of these deals were not made public, but in all likelihood this is a “contra revenue” style deal where Intel is paying these OEMs to take these chips and develop a device around it with a clause that if the OEM can’t come up with anything it feels confident in it doesn’t have to commit to using the SoC (see: ARM’s Ian Ferguson’s comments on the topic of contra revenue).
Even if these named partners are able to develop devices based around Intel’s SoCs that they feel confident in, three of the four aren’t real players in the mobile space. Asus has the most ambitious plan to gain mobile marketshare as it announced at CES, but they will still likely fall short in the shadow of Samsung.
Hoping — anticipating — that OEMs will organically gain interest in Atom is not a viable solution for Intel. Presenting an SoC that can compete against the best offerings from Qualcomm and MediaTek is what Intel needs to focus on, but it looks as if this won’t be happening in 2014. Hope alone can’t run a company, nor can marketing buzzwords like the “Internet of Things.”
Even if these named partners are able to develop devices based around Intel’s SoCs that they feel confident in, three of the four aren’t real players in the mobile space. Asus has the most ambitious plan to gain mobile marketshare as it announced at CES, but they will still likely fall short in the shadow of Samsung.
Hoping — anticipating — that OEMs will organically gain interest in Atom is not a viable solution for Intel. Presenting an SoC that can compete against the best offerings from Qualcomm and MediaTek is what Intel needs to focus on, but it looks as if this won’t be happening in 2014. Hope alone can’t run a company, nor can marketing buzzwords like the “Internet of Things.”
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