back to article Wintel must welcome Androitel and Chromtel into cosy menage – Intel

Intel and Microsoft no longer dominate the personal computing industry as the once fearsome Wintel alliance, Intel has acknowledged. Now the chip giant has announced a broad push to get its silicon into devices running Windows' rival operating systems. Intel's PC chief Kirk Skaugen admitted the demise of the ages-old alliance …

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  1. robert_raw

    not sure if Antel of indroid has the same ring to it.

    1. returnmyjedi

      Inteloid?

      1. 20legend

        re: inteloid

        You can get cream to soothe that condition, try Boots.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "It plans to scale Android up to 64-bit x86 processors"

      Even if they get it running on Itanium it's probably still going to be laggy.....

    3. Euripides Pants

      "not sure if Antel of indroid has the same ring to it."

      But people would really get confused by "Lintel"...

      1. TheOtherHobbes

        Not a problem. Armux is more likely.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "people would really get confused by "Lintel"..."

        Lintel might work. Everybody knows big Windows needs Lintels otherwise stuff collapses.

  2. HollyHopDrive

    ooooouch

    Wow. Looks like Microsoft's best friend is making some new "cool" best friends instead. Surely this is a significant kick in the teeth for Microsoft. This has to be the writing on the wall for them.

    Go Intel....!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ooooouch

      "Surely this is a significant kick in the teeth for Microsoft"

      No - Microsoft already kicked Intel in the teeth by creating devices based on Arm like Windows Phone and Windows RT....

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: ooooouch

        Don't forget the AMD chip in the Xbone...

        1. returnmyjedi

          And the IBM Power PC one in the 360.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: ooooouch

          "Don't forget the AMD chip in the Xbone..."

          That is at least an x64 chip and not an Arm one....

      2. HollyHopDrive

        Re: ooooouch

        @ac - I think the fact that microsoft gave intel a cheekly slap with the tablets (partly because intel didn't have anything nearly good enough) is as you say a sign things aren't well between them. But this is a clear strategy from Intel to actively support other products and not use windows as their primary driver.

        This is good news for Linux as a whole as we will no doubt see much better support for processor features (and their graphics chipsets too). However, MS will no longer have influence to make their OS run better. Intel have made that clear by their statement. Intel want to compete by being the best of breed and a primary MS strategy isn't going to help them achieve that anymore especially when Windows is no longer flavour of the month.

        Looks like MS were [sort of] right "Linux is a cancer" - well it seems to *them* it is, but for the rest of us its quite the reverse - its the breath of fresh air that the IT industry needed, and actually, it looks like MS were the cancer that has been crippling the IT sector for a long while.

        My opinion of course and I'm sure all the MS lovers will downvote the post but its a sinking ship my friends, there are holes opening up all over and everybody is deserting it (consumers, hardware manufacturers and I'm sure corporates will follow eventually) - just got a feeling it could be a long and drawn out process of listing before it finally sinks below the waterline.

        1. Nigel 11

          Re: ooooouch

          Microsoft is destroying itself, by failing to understand and nurture its own business niche.

          It had a near-monopoly on the business desktop. That was its niche. Even after losing the server-protocol war with the EU, Office should still have been an all-but-unassailable advantage.

          So what does it do? Instead of listening to its business customers, it listens to the numerically larger number of home users who bought an MS system for lack of an alternative. then it redesigns all the interfaces to suit its idea of Joe Public (which appears to be even more drooling than Joe actually is). Office has suffered three interface redesigns in ten years, each reducing the productivity of a skilled user of office 2003. Now they've done the same to Windows.

          Joe is unimpressed. There's Apple, offering a superior consumer-orientated product range at a superior price. There's a host of companies selling Android pads into the fastest-growing non-keyboard sector. Joe never had a good reason to buy Microsoft, it's just that to start with there weren't any alternatives.

          What hasn't materialized yet is a really good Linux- (or Android- ) based business desktop solution set with a big corporation backing it. IBM? Apple? Oracle? Samsung? China inc.? The next young Nokia (who started off growing trees and making tractors before getting into cellphones almost by accident)? Even (long odds) a fully open community project? Whatever, when that business alternative arrives, Microsoft will be finished, because for the last decade it's given them every last reason and more to regret their dependence on Microsoft. A trickle of defections will become a flood.

          It's got nothing to do with which CPU goes inside at all.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: ooooouch

            "It had a near-monopoly on the business desktop."

            It still does.

            "then it redesigns all the interfaces to suit its idea of Joe Public"

            It redesigned them to suit tablets and mobile devices with touch and gesture controls - which are the future - Microsoft are ahead of the curve for once here....

            "Office has suffered three interface redesigns in ten years, each reducing the productivity of a skilled user of office 2003."

            But increasing the productivity of the majority of users that have moved on from Office 2003...

            "There's Apple, offering a superior consumer-orientated product range at a superior price"

            LOL - OS-X has over 2000 known vulnerabilities, is far more limited in capabilities and features. WTF - superior prices? Have you ever seen the prices of Apple products? They are vastly more expensive than equivalents that run Windows...

            "What hasn't materialized yet is a really good Linux- (or Android- ) based business desktop solution set with a big corporation backing it. IBM?"

            There are proven options in the Linux space - for instance Munich Council are migrating from a legacy desktop environment to Linux backed by IBM. However the project cost tens of millions, and they are still migrating after 10 years! And whilst the project has achieved some savings in operating costs (excluding the migration costs), those savings would have been even greater migrating to a modern Windows version! So there is zero reason for corporates to move - Windows works well, users are used to it, and the TCO is lower than the alternatives in most enterprise environments...

            As to Android?! I can't see that ever making it onto corporate desktops. Linux itself already has very high vulnerabilities counts, and Java as a UI is catastrophically unsafe! Just look at the Malware issues that it already has....

            1. Richard Plinston

              Re: ooooouch

              > And whilst the project has achieved some savings in operating costs (excluding the migration costs), those savings would have been even greater migrating to a modern Windows version!

              I don't know whether you are uninformed, lying, or merely confused:

              """By switching from Windows to LiMux, its own Linux distribution, the German city of Munich has saved over €11 million ($14.3 million) to date compared to the costs of a similar migration to a more modern Microsoft-based IT infrastructure."""

              http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/321474/switching-linux-saves-munich-over-11-million

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: ooooouch

                """"By switching from Windows to LiMux, its own Linux distribution, the German city of Munich has saved over €11 million ($14.3 million) to date compared to the costs of a similar migration to a more modern Microsoft-based IT infrastructure.""""

                That's simply not true. An Independent study by HP showed that it cost at least €30 million MORE to move to Linux - much of which was eaten by IBM - but still - and the claims on Windows TCO are also untrue - they still have to use Windows when they need to do real work like use a version of office that actually works - via Citrix - and those costs are also not counted in their 'gains'....The massaged numbers were released by the Linux focused team running this ten year shambles so go figure...

                1. Richard Plinston

                  Re: ooooouch

                  > That's simply not true. An Independent study by HP showed that it cost at least €30 million MORE to move to Linux

                  That 'study' was _NOT_ indepenent, it was funded by Microsoft.

                  http://www.itworld.com/open-source/337658/microsoft-wont-release-study-challenged-success-munichs-linux-migration

                  And Microsoft probably funded your lies too.

                  Given that Munich is aware of what it spends and what it would to have spent it knows the 'study' is wrong:

                  http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/City-of-Munich-disagrees-with-HP-s-Linux-migration-study-1797232.html

                  > - much of which was eaten by IBM -

                  Which is denied by IBM.

                  > but still - and the claims on Windows TCO are also untrue - they still have to use Windows when they need to do real work like use a version of office that actually works - via Citrix - and those costs are also not counted in their 'gains'....The massaged numbers were released by the Linux focused team running this ten year shambles so go figure...

                  No. Munich itself released the real numbers.

            2. Chemist

              Re: ooooouch

              "As to Android?! I can't see that ever making it onto corporate desktops. Linux itself already has very high vulnerabilities counts, and Java as a UI is catastrophically unsafe! Just look at the Malware issues that it already has...."

              Funny, Windows managed to get onto corporate desktops and look at the vast ocean of malware for that

          2. Jim 59

            Re: ooooouch

            Bang on Nigel 11. The business desktop tends to get overlooked. By Microsoft. But Redmond has no competition on that market, whereas in the domestic market, they have.

            "... based business desktop solution set with a big corporation backing it. IBM? Apple? Oracle? Samsung? China inc.?"

            That would be an opportunity for Red Hat surely.

      3. BillG
        Mushroom

        Re: ooooouch

        The endgame is this: Intel licenses the entire ARM product line. They can do to competing ARM licensees what they did to their x86 rivals in the 1990's - use their superior technology to create leading-edge, low-power ARM devices and destroy all other ARM rivals. Use their Celeron strategy by selling low-end ARMs at a razor-thin margins while selling ultra-high end ARMs at big fat margins.

        Once Intel is the only ARM vendor in town, they hike up the price of all their ARM devices. Eventually Intel buys ARM. Game over.

        1. asdf

          Re: ooooouch

          >Once Intel is the only ARM vendor in town, they hike up the price of all their ARM devices. Eventually Intel buys ARM. Game over.

          Few problems with your theory. Texas Instruments has been making ICs longer than Intel. They know much better than Intel how to compete on the low end high volume thin margin range as well as some of their competitors. Intel's big advantage has always been being a generation ahead in fab technology which is great for the latest greatest but not such an advantage cost wise for high volume stuff (have to make up R&D costs after all). As for Intel buying ARM. Antitrust authorities would have a say on that.

          1. Roo

            Re: ooooouch

            "Texas Instruments has been making ICs longer than Intel. They know much better than Intel how to compete on the low end high volume thin margin range as well as some of their competitors."

            Not sure where you are going with TI, but last I heard they had shitcanned the OMAP roadmap - they didn't do very well at low end or high end on that front. Releasing fatally wounded silicon late might have had something to do with it, or perhaps they weren't able to adapt to the shift of manufacturing from the West+Japan -> Korea/China.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: ooooouch

          It may have worked once but this time as its a different ballgame

          The number of x86 licenses are controlled by Intel themselves (although admittedly they were forced in the early period to give out some and there have been some competing compatible designs). This meant they nearly always had the upper hand.

          ARM however is a totally different proposition. Anybody can build an ARM chip providing they are willing to fork out couple of million (?) or so for a license (peanuts really). It would be like whack a mole time. The only real way Intel is going to beat ARM is through simply a far better x86 product and beating them at their own game.

          I also suspect there would be some regulatory hurdles for Intel to take over ARM

        3. Dave Lawton
          Meh

          Re: ooooouch

          @BillG

          But Intel HAD an ARM licence. They inherited it from DEC, along with DEC's StrongARM, but Intel didn't like advertising a competitors' product, so they called their fabbed version X-scale.

          Unfortunately for Intel, the first few iterations were much worse performance than DEC's, so there was a drift away of users (not end users) to other ARM licensees, and Intel eventually sold off the division.

          I think it's called Marvel now, BICBW.

          The story is much more complex than that, but I think I've covered the essential bits.

          I doubt that ARM would sell out to Intel, not in their shareholders' best interests.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: ooooouch

            "I think it's called Marvel now, BICBW."

            Close. Add another L: Marvell. I'd not heard about the performance drop but the rest sounds accurate.

          2. Charles Manning

            Intel always dumpt their non-x86 business

            Intel has had a long list of dabblings with other business units, processors etc. So far they have ended up dumping everything that isn't x86.

            8080, 8051, 80251, 960: All "killer" architectures in their time. But what does Intel do? They cut these off at the knees meaning that the companies that built product on these were left high and dry (except for the 8051 where other suppliers were licensed).

            They had a great StrongARM/PXA line in ARM. They were king of the ARM pile.... and sold it to Marvell who stopped further development.

            Same pretty much for their flash, ARM and other tech.

            Unsuprisingly, designers are hestitant to design in Intel. Many would consider it gross negligence to leave a company exposed to Intel changing its mind and abandoning a CPU.

            They only design in Intel to be able to run PC-like software. If Intel came up with a new wonder chip for embedded, it would have to have some very compelling features or nobody would touch it.

          3. BillG
            Holmes

            Re: ooooouch

            > But Intel HAD an ARM licence. They inherited it from DEC, along with

            > DEC's StrongARM, but Intel didn't like advertising a competitors' product,

            > so they called their fabbed version X-scale.

            That was flubbed marketing. Intel spent $35M trying to sell the XScale the same way they sell their PC processors, and you can't sell to Embedded that way. Plus, Intel has dramatically exited the embedded space only a few years earlier, hiking up prices for x196 and x386 embedded chips as they left, making lots of people angry.

            With multi-core Cortex-M4 chips, ARM licensees are now into markets that Intel knows how to compete in.

            All things being equal, in semiconductors superior process technology always wins out in the long run.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: ooooouch

              "With multi-core Cortex-M4 chips, ARM licensees are now into markets that Intel knows how to compete in."

              Really? Intel knows how to keep Dell happy (and maybe SuperMicro). HP are already off the nothing-but-x86-matters message with project Moonshot which allegedly will have product next year.

              "in semiconductors superior process technology always wins out in the long run."

              Only works if you can fill the fabs at a profit.

              How are Intel going to fill the x86-optimised fabs, let alone run them profitably, once x86 is no longer a mass market product?

              They probably won't be able to do contract work, they'll be too expensive compared with others already in that market.

              They might even struggle to afford another 2 generations of fab (they've plenty of cash for now, but...)

              I know it could happen, it already happened to Alpha at DEC - lovely chip, co-designed between software, hardware and process teams, but they couldn't get the volume, it never got beyond niche (despite being quite nice technically).

              Same is about to happen with Intel themselves, with IA64 (not that it was technically elegant).

              There are now more places to get an Alpha system emulator (to run under Windows or Linux) than there were ever places to buy a real Alpha chip to build into a system. Because some people want to keep their existing systems alive, and The Chip Inside is far from their first priority.

              Not enough volume => chips too expensive => no money for next generation investment => RIP. Sure as night follows day (unless you're IBM).

        4. Richard Plinston

          Re: ooooouch

          > selling low-end ARMs at a razor-thin margins while selling ultra-high end ARMs at big fat margins.

          What you may not know is that the really low-end ARM processors have been selling at around 50 cents in several thousand lots for many years. High end ARMs are cheaper than Celerons.

          1. BillG
            Alert

            Re: ooooouch

            > What you may not know is that the really low-end ARM processors have been

            > selling at around 50 cents in several thousand lots for many years.

            You're going to have to show me a part number for that ARM. I know there are plenty of 8-bitters in that price range, even an ST7 that sells for 40 cents. But whatever it is it's a good bet that Intel can make it for cheaper because like Microchip their process technology is paid for many times over.

            > High end ARMs are cheaper than Celerons.

            What's your point, Captain Obvious?

      4. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: ooooouch

        Given the last uptake rate I saw for the Surface, I think it's the relative market share, not MS perfidy, that got Intel thinking about Windows alternatives in the tablet category.

    2. Jim 59

      Re: ooooouch

      Skaugen is probably right, but the Wintel partnership should not be underestimated. True, it lost the mobile war but seems pretty impregnable on the desktop, even in 2013. Content will always need to be generated and generation happens on the desktop, not the phablet. More phablets will demand more content which will require more desktops IMO.

      1. Joe Montana

        Re: ooooouch

        When it comes to content creation, Apple are a big player... Wintel is mostly relegated to boring business desktops and gamers.

        A big shake up will happen sooner or later, the idea of an extremely complicated system like windows being used by average users is ridiculous... Why should users be expected to manage updates for a myriad of different applications, maintain antivirus and firewall rules etc. Non technical users are better off with walled garden devices like ipads or chromeos devices.

        Even business desktops will eventually ditch windows, once there are a large enough set of users running non-ms tools then interoperability becomes essential, at which point the only real advantage ms ever had is gone... If they're no longer locked in, very few businesses will choose expensive, insecure, unreliable windows, and will go for something else install - probably linux.

      2. Roo

        Re: ooooouch

        Skaugen is probably right, but the Wintel partnership should not be underestimated. True, it lost the mobile war but seems pretty impregnable on the desktop, even in 2013.

        "Content will always need to be generated and generation happens on the desktop, not the phablet. More phablets will demand more content which will require more desktops IMO."

        Your opinion is drawn from incomplete data. While you may well be correct that more desktops will be needed to make more content, currently the vast majority of Desktop PCs are used to consume content - and it's this vast majority that is getting shit-canned.

        Some people at Microsoft had the right idea with Win Mobile & the tablet PC efforts - but the execution was intentionally bolloxed - probably so it didn't eat into the desktop margins. Whatever else you say about Jobs he wasn't afraid of the new gear shredding the legacy box shifting effort, and that is why Apple are sitting on a huge pile of cash.

        Meanwhile Microsoft flounder around as their ever loyal Excel fanbois yell about how they are too stupid to learn how to use alternative tools. The world is passing them all by, even in finance high frequency trading is now responsible for the majority of trades made, people slotting Excel into the critical path would lose a lot of money.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thats because its armdroid... I don't think Intel are fairing any better in this than Microsoft....

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Take a look at these:

    http://www.mc.co.th/products/view/2108/egreat-android-tv-box-quad-core-gpu-1-6ghz

    It's a quad core, 2GB ram, flash card (+8GB built in), Android computer, that drives a TV or screen at 1080p.

    I plugged a Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo in and it behaves like a PC, with cursor and all, 3D games, all the software you use normally. Only its tiny, and quiet, and dirt cheap, and simple to use, and comes with a remote.

    This is where the market is heading.

    1. Philip Lewis

      @ Anonymous Coward, 22nd November 2013 09:46 GMT

      http://www.mc.co.th/products/view/2108/egreat-android-tv-box-quad-core-gpu-1-6ghz

      I think an AppleTV sells for 3300 at MBK in Bangkok, so the price is not "cheap", but I admit that it might be fun to have, except that domestic internet in Thailand is very possibly worse than it is in Australia (a hard act, I know).

      Support for USB keyboard/mouse and USB harddisk make this an alternative to a similar setup based on RasberyPi. I might pick one up and have a play with it. Run XBMC and I should be good to go.

      The RasberyPi route might be cheaper/better though. I am still investigating.

  5. Khaptain Silver badge

    Intel - Smintel

    Intel have been the 5000lb Gorilla for such a long time that it can only be healthy for the market in general that they lose some of their position.

    Intel were/are worse the MS for imposing their manner of doing things......They have been far to dominating..

    MS are also feeling the same pinch, good , it was long overdue.

    Intel and MS both have some excellent products but they are both in dire need of eating some more humble pie.

    Google and Apple also need to take into account the same scenario because it appears that they are heading down the same path.

    1. Mikel

      Re: Intel - Smintel

      It's going to be OK. Intel is still in "Windows first" mode and Microsoft still has the glacial pace of the prior era when they could hold back progress by fiat. As long as those two things remain true there is no chance that Intel will be able to iterate fast enough to compete in the new mobile-first era.

  6. Martin Galster
    Happy

    Hey EU, are you listening?

    I want an OS choice button on my desktop, and I want it now!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hey EU, are you listening?

      On your desktop? And on which operating system desktop would that be on?

      1. Mephistro

        Re: Hey EU, are you listening? (@Ishtiaq)

        And on which operating system desktop would that be on?

        Either on an EFI menu or in a icon on each OS available, for restarting the machine in the desired OS. It could be also on some kind of hypervisor.

    2. M Gale

      Re: Hey EU, are you listening?

      I already have one. It's called Grub.

      Doesn't make any of the software work outside of Windows though.

    3. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: Hey EU, are you listening?

      The one and only time that I will suggest an Oracle solution

      Oracle VirtualBox ( icons instead of buttons and it works )

  7. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    In many ways Intel have only themselves to blame. The x86 instruction set is horrible to use, overall quite inefficient and has a large overhead compared to instruction sets that were designed rather more recently or have retained a cleaner implementation. IMHO it's the backwards compatibility of the x86 instruction set that while being an amazing strength for desktop computing has prohibited the use in leaner and more efficient devices.

    I'm still sadistic enough to occasionally step through code at the instruction set level...

    1. Captain Hogwash
      Headmaster

      Re: sadistic

      Masochistic surely?

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: sadistic

        Depends on whether you are reading it in private or are walking the 'programmers' through the ASM generated by their high-level languages...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: sadistic

        He may be suffering schizophrenia?

      3. oldcoder

        Re: sadistic

        Sadistic when he forces others to do it as well...

      4. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. thosrtanner

      They lost the plot when they didn't push itanium properly. A hairy beast designed for compiler writers, but that's not a bad thing. amd64 is yech and spit and horrible.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: lost the plot

        "They lost the plot when they didn't push itanium properly. "

        They pushed IA64 as hard as they could, technologically and commercially.

        Still only a tiny subset of the market was interested.

        Sensible people buy systems to run software on. People largely bought Integrity servers *despite* IA64, not *because of* IA64. They wanted to stick with the OS they knew and loved. Unfortunately although HP ported the OS, they didn't persuade many application or infrastructure vendors to follow (just look at the HP vs Oracle fuss, where HP have now been shown to be, well let's be honest, LYING about IA64 EOL).

        Ditto the Tandem NonStop folk. They want to run their NonStop stuff and the underlying hardware is of little interest as long as it's Good Enough. They got rid of their need for special chip features many years ago. Fortunately for them, they've had a last minute reprieve, their software will be ported onto "yech and spit and horrible amd64" (the one which has, unlike IA64, become "industry standard 64").

        Are there specific things about AMD64 you don't like? Or is it just that it showed Intel and HP execs up to be a bunch of incompetent liars and charlatans? How many times did we hear Intel say "an x86-64 is technically impossible, you need IA64" and then out came AMD64 and suddenly Intel had one too.

        1. Nigel 11

          Re: lost the plot

          Intel lost the plot when they acquired Alpha from the wreckage that once was Digital, and buried it as "not invented here". AMD picked up a bunch of talented engineers with lots of Alpha know-how in their heads, produced the AMD64 architecture, forced Intel to follow instead of lead, and almost knocked Intel off its perch. If it hadn't been for an Intel "skunkworks" project that was keeping the original Pentium-3 alive, when the Pentium-4 architecture hit the speed barrier Intel would have been finished.

          This battle, which AMD ultimately lost, is probably why Intel didn't spot the threat that ARM and handheld devices posed until it was too late. (I think AMD did spot the threat, but didn't have the corporate strength to respond sufficiently). In another universe, Alpha could have been stripped back to its origins, producing a low-power chip more than the equal of ARM, and with Intel's process technology behind it ....

          I still dream of a world where the dominant 64-bit architecture is Intel Alpha, and where x86-32 is ancient history. Intel took one of those wrong turns on which empires totter and fall. I still have the Alpha Architecture handbook to remind me how a really good CPU might have been.

        2. Joe Montana

          Re: lost the plot

          IA64 was killed by closed source software... If you were running all open source code they actually ran quite well, i had a couple of them running linux and all the typical stuff compiled and ran on them just fine.

          If Intel were to introduce a new architecture aimed at Android, ChromeOS or Linux it would have a much better chance of succeeding as not only could Intel port these systems themselves instead of relying on someone else, but most of the existing applications would run with little more than a recompile anyway.

          Arguably Intel should come out with a new architecture, the legacy baggage of x86 is a millstone around their neck such that even being a step ahead on fabrication tech they are still having trouble competing with arm. If they were to come up with a new architecture designed specifically for power efficient applications they could easily get themselves ahead of arm.

          1. Christian Berger

            Re: lost the plot

            "Arguably Intel should come out with a new architecture, the legacy baggage of x86 is a millstone around their neck such that even being a step ahead on fabrication tech they are still having trouble competing with arm"

            Well the question is, can they do this? There is one big advantage of the x86 architecture which kept it alive till now, and that's the PC architecture. It was designed to eliminate porting. You have the BIOS a sorta "minimal operating system" designed to give you a life line to the operating system, so it can go from disk to fully running without having to be ported.

        3. Roo

          Re: lost the plot

          "Are there specific things about AMD64 you don't like? Or is it just that it showed Intel and HP execs up to be a bunch of incompetent liars and charlatans? How many times did we hear Intel say "an x86-64 is technically impossible, you need IA64" and then out came AMD64 and suddenly Intel had one too."

          I got the impression from Andy Glew's (working for Intel at the time) posts to comp.arch that he felt that Intel were missing the boat by refusing to extend x86 to 64bits and that he seemed fairly certain it was possible. A few folks tried to draw him on whether he knew of a 64bit x86 skunkworks project in Oregon at the time. Looking back on it, given how quickly Intel shipped a 64bit x86 in the end, there must have been a germ of truth to the skunkworks idea. Itanic generations seemed to take an age to tape out by comparison. :)

    3. JimmyPage Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      +1

      when I was at Uni, in the 80s, I thought the x86 architecture was damaged in the name of backwards compatibility (remember the Extended/Expanded memory fiasco ?).

      Now the 68xxxx from Motorola. THERE was a processor. Incredibly logical instruction and addressing modes.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: +1

        "Now the 68xxxx from Motorola. THERE was a processor. Incredibly logical instruction and addressing modes."

        You probably wouldn't say that about the 68k if you'd ever seen the NatSemi 32032 family. Don't know if they ever got out in the wild in volume, nothing whatsoever against the 68K family, but the concepts here. Just wow.

        1. tom dial Silver badge

          Re: +1

          Both the Motorola and National Semiconductor devices were far better than the rubbishy x86, hobbled as it was by register scarcity and backward compatibility to calculator chips. What a loss that they were too late for IBM to pick one of them for the PC.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: +1

          OT but yes.

          I remember running a 68k system running a Motorola OS up against a Nat Semi 16032, both 16 bit bus, same clock, memory etc. and seeing a 2.5 times performance gain for the 16032 system on our code (which included fixed point arithmetic). Instant sale. But for some reason it never caught on.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

      3. Robert Sneddon

        Re: +1

        IBM had a choice between the 8086 and the MC68000 for their desktop system, the Personal Computer. They went with the 8086, well actually the 8-bit bus version, the 8088 for a whole lot of very good reasons. One was that while Intel were delivering the 8086 and 8088 in commercial quantities, Motorola were demoing nearly-functional versions of the MC68000 running at half the rated speed. Another factor was that the 8086 was bus-compatible with 8080 family support chips like the 8271 serial port, the 8259 interrupt controller and the like whereas the 68k chip was going to need a new family of support chips which were still paper exercises at the time. The third, and critical factor was the backwards compatibility in registers and addressing modes to the 8080 which made rewriting existing 8080 code for the new devices a piece of piss. Sure the 68k was a dream to write code for but translating 6800 or 6502 code to 68k was a pain in the arse. Intel delivered code conversion tools along with the new 16-bit chips and the rest is history.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: +1

          If by "nearly functional" you mean "accidentally run this opcode and soon after the IC will split down the middle with a smell of burning epoxy" - yes, I've seen the remains. I forget the opcode but, as I recall, it turned on one set of gates on the internal bus low, and another set high, and then stuck.

    4. Joe Montana

      x86 is only beneficial for users who are stuck with a lot of legacy closed-source code...

      Linux and other open source is architecture agnostic, we used to run linux on alpha when it was the fastest available, and we run linux on arm or mips now for low power systems.

      It was closed source code above all else that killed itanium... Linux runs quite well on it, but windows as a joke - the core os would run but you had virtually no apps and 99% of windows apps dont come with source so you cant recompile them yourself.

  8. Zola
    Trollface

    Wot, no Tizen?

    See Title.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well well

    For a good while now I've been (anonymously) saying that Intel are only relevant where there's a Windows connection.

    I've taken mild flak for it from the Wintel fanbois (and I've been happy to do so).

    The surprise here is that Intel are finally admitting the inevitable.

    IA64 retired and Windows sidelined (by Intel), both in the same year.

    Whatever next? Intel as a licenced ARM design partner again?

  10. John Sager

    Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

    The domination of the Wintel desktop is the only thing that's keeping x86 alive. It was a crap architecture from the off, and all the hoops Intel have jumped through to try to improve it would have been better spent by junking it early and coming up with something new. The problem with that was - they came up with Itanium...

    That could have been an interesting idea but the execution was terrible.

    IMHO it was very sad that DEC came up with one of the best CPU architectures ever (Alpha) just at the point when they were going bust for other reasons. Intel should have bought the IP and the designers from DEC and run with that but by that time they were far too heavily invested in x86 both financially and intellectually.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

      "Intel should have bought the IP and the designers from DEC and run with that but by that time they were far too heavily invested in x86 both financially and intellectually."

      Not to mention that Intel were trying to convince the world that IA64 would become "industry standard 64bit".

      DEC's designers knew better, and here's some of what they managed to say about Alpha vs IA64 before they were silenced is in this slightly odd looking (but genuine afaik) 30page white paper [1]. Obviously Intel had deeper pockets, and therefore stood more chance of winning in the marketplace and in the courts.

      Some of DEC's chip design folk ended up with AMD, some briefly at Intel working on ARM before Intel decided ARM wasn't their thing (tee hee).

      Some of DEC's compiler folk ended up with Intel.

      RIP Alpha. Except... there are now more vendors of Alpha emulators than there were of Alpha chips back in the day. HP hasn't quite worked out (or didn't want to acknowledge) that it's that way because some commercially interesting number of people still want to run their VMS setups, despite HP's long term efforts (and Compaq's before them) to ignore VMS.

      [1] http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse548/05wi/files/Alpha-IA64-Comparison.pdf

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

      "The domination of the Wintel desktop is the only thing that's keeping x86 alive"

      Don't forget the ~75% (and increasing) market share that they have in the server space too...

      1. Salts

        Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

        Where did you pluck that figure from? Most reports I see are ~35% windows on servers

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

          So Linux & *BSD don't run on x86?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

            "So Linux & *BSD don't run on x86?"

            Perhaps this needs simplifying for you.

            Linux does not need x86 and nor do *BSD. Without x86 they survive quite nicely.

            x86 needs Windows. Without Windows, x86 would initially survive for a while, but it would become a niche product rather than the mass market product it has been.

            Microsoft's Windows products are distancing themselves from x86. As are HP. Only Dell is still largely Intel-exclusive.

            Simple enough for you now?

    3. Roo

      Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

      "IMHO it was very sad that DEC came up with one of the best CPU architectures ever (Alpha) just at the point when they were going bust for other reasons. Intel should have bought the IP and the designers from DEC and run with that but by that time they were far too heavily invested in x86 both financially and intellectually."

      Well Intel *did* buy the IP & designers from DEC as part of a settlement of an IP infringement lawsuit, however their aim was to shut up the lawyers and bury one of the other 64bit architectures (Alpha) while they hacked away at IA64 (aka Itanic). At the time Intel planned to keep x86 32bit and relegate it to legacy/low-end stuff while everyone else was migrated to IA64. Thankfully the world was spared from a monopoly shoving an under performing freak-show ISA down it's throat by 'AMD64' and the Opteron. Thank you AMD.

      A shortish while ago the Reg published an article claiming that a Chinese uni had built an Alpha ISA chip that yielded some very respectable FLOPS/W figures - I have had a hunt for more info - but I have struggled to find much beyond the initial press release. I think I'll have to learn Mandarin to find out more. :P

    4. TheOtherHobbes

      Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

      Intel did buy the designers and the IP from DEC in 2001. The DEC engineers - who were brilliant - contributed to the last few iterations of the Pentium.

      One of my favourite computing stories is the moment when the DEC board realise that their chip guys have taken their top-line seven-figure ECL Monster-VAX and chipped it into something that costs a couple of hundred dollars and runs faster.

      Alpha would have been excellent with Intel's fab skills. But that's not what we got.

      Still - Intel doing ARM is Not Going To Happen. Not successfully, anyway.

      Intel has nothing interesting to offer the ARM community. I suspect too much corporate sclerosis to allow Intel to allow ARM space to use its latest monster multicores - although multicore+optimised OS is probably the only thing that might save a niche for the desktop PC.

      1. Nigel 11

        Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

        Intel has nothing interesting to offer the ARM community.

        Not true. Intel's process technology is second to none. If they process-shrank and fabbed ARM chips, they would be the best ARM chips on the planet anywhere in the power - performance envelope.

        How else do you think is is that Intel can just about compete in the handheld market with that horrible warty i86 architecture? But I don't think Intel can hold the fort for much longer. Soon, they will be fabbing ARM designs.

        1. Paul 135

          Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

          Intel have been fabbing ARM designs for some time via what was Infineon's Mobile SoC business.

        2. druck Silver badge

          Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

          Nigel11 wrote:

          Intel has nothing interesting to offer the ARM community.

          Not true. Intel's process technology is second to none. If they process-shrank and fabbed ARM chips, they would be the best ARM chips on the planet anywhere in the power - performance envelope.

          But not anywhere in the price/power/performance envelope, that state of the art fab process doesn't come cheap. Having a processor costing thousands of dollars rather than tens of dollars isn't going go down well, even in a top of the range phone or tablet.

          If Intel has to reduce margins down to be comparable to other ARM licensees, their lead in fabs wont last long, as they wont be able to fund the next generation.

    5. BlinkenLights

      Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

      You seem to be remarkably ignorant of the x86 world outside of Wintel. There are quite a large number of x86 systems running Linux on the desktop and in the server room, not to mention all the Apple Macs.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

        "There are quite a large number of x86 systems running Linux on the desktop and in the server room, not to mention all the Apple Macs"

        Well obviously. PowerEdge and Proliant benefit from being able to offer Windows as well as Linux and BSD and occasionally even (say) QNX. On the other hand, HPQ have been making much noise about ARM kit in the server room. Dell are Intel's poodle; they're going nowhere except down, unless they end their Wintel dependence ASAP. Even their investors know this (and that takes some doing),

        Now look at any computer-based kit (ie not just IT department stuff) that never ever has a need to run Windows Mac users like to run Windows sometimes so they don't qualify

        Look around you. Is there any Intel kit out there *outside* the Windows market? If there is, I don't see it, from smart TVs to routers to (whatever). Plus a negligible quantity of smartphones.

        If it doesn't need Windows, it doesn't need Intel.

        Mostly these days it doesn't need Windows.

        Times are changing. It's what happens.

        1. Robert Sneddon

          Blinkers

          "Look around you. Is there any Intel kit out there *outside* the Windows market? If there is, I don't see it, from smart TVs to routers to (whatever). "

          Ummm, there's this computer company called Apple, they sell a lot of laptops and desktops and they all have Intel chips inside and they don't run Windows (unless the user wants to). In fact it was a big thing a few years back when Apple gave up on the vastly superior PowerPC architecture and switched to braindead Intel x86 chips for some crazy reason; they swallowed the Megahertz Myth koolaid, after all PowerPC had Altivec, win win! That crazy Steve Jobs guy, what was he thinking!

        2. Nigel 11

          Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

          If it doesn't need Windows, it doesn't need Intel.

          Hmmm. How else can I buy a really fast server for crunching numbers or big data using Linux? Say 4 CPUs, 32 Cores, and half a Terabyte(*) of RAM? Sun's gone. HP IA64 systems don't make financial sense unless you want to run VMS. Much the same for IBM Power-based systems. AMD have sadly fallen behind again, their Opteron glory days are behind them. GPGPU computing has its place, but so far, it's a fairly restricted subset of scientific programming for which a GPGPU is the answer. Don't think I've missed anyone.

          (*) There's such a machine crunching away a hundred yards or so from where I'm sitting. It's attacking large sparse matrix problems. If you know what that means you'll know why it needs that much RAM.

          1. Chemist

            Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

            "How else can I buy a really fast server for crunching numbers or big data using Linux?"

            Sadly I agree, We moved from SG workstations to Xeon workstations, gained performance, future proofing and all our specialist scientific software could be readily obtained for Linux, further we then assembled 512, then 1024 then 2048 node commodity-based Linux X86-64 clusters. This all saved a fortune and still allowed us to mix in IBM fileservers & compute servers.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

            "If it doesn't need Windows, it doesn't need Intel."

            With hindsight I should have prefaced with "In the volume market,". HPTC, while fascinating, and clearly important to a variety of folks, isn't really volume market.

            "How else can I buy a really fast server for crunching numbers or big data using Linux? [snip] It's attacking large sparse matrix problems. "

            Do all roads lead to x86-64 Proliant and SuperMicro etc at the moment? I've lost touch with that kind of hardware.

            Anyway it's a very fair question, and yes I did once understand what you mean. It was me whinging the other day about Kuck + Associates Preprocessor (the source to source optimiser for C) having dropped off the market since Intel bought them (if that means anything).

            I also remember DXML on Alpha, (again if that means anything - [1] has the details, nothing to do with XML).

            It'll be interesting to see where that market goes once ARM starts eating into the volume x86 market. It may damage some of the chip and system level benefits which high end x86 has historically enjoyed from x86 being the volume market leader too. Good job you're on Linux.

            "I still have the Alpha Architecture handbook to remind me how a really good CPU might have been."

            I assume you mean the relatively lightweight (maybe half inch thick, A5ish) one which was also freely downloadable ages ago ?

            The Alpha Architecture Reference Manual is the serious geek's version of the Handbook. The Reference Manual was (is?) a commercially published book, but if you're interested, the 4th edition seems to be freely downloadable online [2], marvellous if that's your thing (published 2002, almost 1000 pages, 8MB scanned+OCR'd PDF).

            Enjoy. And have a lot of fun.

            [1] http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/dtj/vol6num3/vol6num3art4.pdf

            [2] https://archive.org/details/dec-alpha_arch_ref

            1. Chemist

              Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

              "With hindsight I should have prefaced with "In the volume market,"."

              To be fair, now retired, I still can use all the cpu I can get. Processing 1080p/50 video takes huge amounts for example.

    6. JEDIDIAH
      Linux

      Re: Wintel irrelevance == x86 irrelevance

      WinDOS legacy software allowed x86 to outlast all of it's other rivals. While it sucks when compared to Alpha or PPC, it really isn't that bad when compared to SPARC and that was the leader of the alternatives. Sun was like the Microsoft of the Unix world. They were the big player but they were mediocre themselves.

      Now we're down to ARM vs x86 and ARM just doesn't have the horspower. It's nice for low power appliances but still kind of sucks for computation.

      I'd much rather see a revial of SPARC then people try to shoehorn ARM into a compute bound server role.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "ARM just doesn't have the horspower."

        "ARM just doesn't have the horspower."

        Have you actually looked at what's in the latest ARM architectures and chips? It may not be what you expect.

        There's a similar relationship between today's/tomorrow's high end ARM and yesterday's ARM as there is between an AMD64 and an early 8086. In other words, not that much in common, but a certain amount of familiarity if you feel you need it.

        The latest ARM incarnation has a new operating mode (think AMD64 mode vs legacy x86 mode) which doubles the number of registers (often good for performance), drops predicated instructions (good for performance in a system where code density isn't critical) and so on.

        Have a read. You might be pleasantly surprised.

  11. HMB

    Cheap as Chips?

    Intel don't sell their latest chips cheap. If the Nexus 5 had an Intel chip, it might have been £395. Look at how much they nobbled the atom platform (Netbooks limited to 2GB RAM) just because they were afraid of their low price experiment cutting into the desktop share.

    1. P. Lee

      Re: Cheap as Chips?

      > Look at how much they nobbled the atom platform (Netbooks limited to 2GB RAM) just because they were afraid of their low price experiment cutting into the desktop share.

      This will continue to be their problem. The question is whether ARM will nobble them or whether they will nobble themselves. The two big phone makers are vertically integrated. Why would they want to hand intel a slice of profit? It's as much a commercial issue as a technical one - even if Intel became better, they will not accept the miniscule margins ARM holdings run on, so they will be more expensive.

    2. dajames
      Windows

      Re: Cheap as Chips?

      ... Look at how much they nobbled the atom platform (Netbooks limited to 2GB RAM)

      No, it was Microsoft who nobbled the netbook platform by not allowing Windows 7 Starter Edition (the cheap netbook version) to be licenced for machines capable of supporting more RAM (or having a larger display than 1024x600, etc). Manufacturers wanted the cheap licence for the cheap machines , so they nobbled the support hardware to qualify.

      It's true that Atom chips, although they do support a full 4GB of address space, are limited by having rather rudementary memory controllers; Intel had to do that to keep the transistor count and so the power consumption low. I wouldn't call that "nobbling" because there's a technical reason for it (albeit one that could have been avoided in a better-designed chip).

  12. Schultz
    Happy

    Took a long time...

    It is quite normal that nimble young companies innovate and big old companies follow. But in computers, Wintel managed to lock the market down for decades and destroyed the competition before they could get a foothold. Somehow they missed the threat from really small computers (call them smartphones if you wish) and now there are quite some competitors in software and hardware. Even better, it became obvious that a manageable investment is sufficient to enter the strongly commoditized market.

    Expect the new normal with several healthy competitors on the hardware and software side and many small companies trying to get a foothold (witness all those Chinese hardware manufacturers and the flavors of linux-based OSs).

    1. Jim O'Reilly
      Pint

      Re: Took a long time...

      There's now room for US hardware manufacturing as well as design companies. On-shoring, especially in niche markets, makes a lot of sense for smaller startups.

  13. MrWibble

    "He picked out Linux distribution Ubuntu for praise as well."

    Except when it comes to Mir...

  14. kmac499

    The New Normal

    Classic ecological succession...

    The small company grew big, then enormous filling it's ecosystem, and making it a habitat specialist with dominance trouncing flexibility. This gives it a huge tail of inertia hanging of it's arse end in the form of legacy hardware,software, customers and business model.

    A form of climate\habitat change ocurred in the users world with technical developments allowing practical, useful small devices to be manufactured and wham a whole new user habitat\niche appears.

    Genuine marketing guys (rather than salesmen) would see this as an unfulfilled consumer desire to be met by manufacturers. This desire might even be invisible to the customer, Alan Kays DynaBook is 40 yo but it took Apple to make it cool and by selling iPads in bulk kickstart the tablet business.

    The Big guy often doesn't have the tech to invade this new niche without making a complete break with it's past and leaving their customer base behind (Windows 8 anyone). So initially they ignore it after all in it's early stages, it's very small and not very useful. Moores law kicks in and wham again, the new habitat becomes the new normal bye bye big guys.

    Just like bio-evolution changing habitats means you have to start pretty much from scratch plus you're competing with the new locals in their new normal..

  15. clean_state
    Devil

    Intel used to be an ARM manufacturer - so why not go back

    Remeber Xscale ? Palm and pocketPC devices were running on them back in 2002 - 2004. ARM architecture, Intel design and manufacturing:

    http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale

    Hell froze over in 2002 already, why not again ?

  16. gerryg

    El Reg proposed this strategy in the mists of time

    I'm failing to find the article in your archive but several (many?) years ago El Reg mooted that Intel unleash its massive software expertise and deliver itself from the Wintel partnership. Certainly earlier than this 2009 article on Intel and Chrome

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just sod off Intel. You don't play fair and abuse your dominant position just like Microsoft did.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Just sod off Intel. You don't play fair and abuse your dominant position just like Microsoft did."

      Intel and Microsoft -- they deserve each other

  18. Bladeforce

    Yet another company that

    Sided with the evil side and has seen the light, well done Intel. Microsoft arent going anywhere you need to diverse. Although taking sides with the evil witch never won you any fans anyway

  19. Steven Jones

    Commercial reality, not technical capability

    The primary reasons that Intel are so uncompetitive in the mobile space isn't because they lack the technological capability. It's essentially a commercial issue. Intel is simply far too big to be sustained by a mobile market which has grown on the back of the incredibly cost-effective ARM eco-system. ARM has a small fraction of the market capitalisation and cost-base of Intel by charging relatively small royalities for use of its technology, and this has driven massive growth. Quite simply, even if Intel did manage to duplicate the ARM eco-system, with all its third party support and flexibility, it would only garner a fraction of the income it derives from the x86 market.

    There is a certain irony here. Intel managed to do much the same thing to other processor architectures by offering a more cost-effective option and leaving any survivors with what are niche markets. Intel itself may come to be dependent on just such a niche, albeit lucrative market. The mass market for processors embedded into virtually everything is structurally incapable of supporting a market with the sort of margins that Intel became used to.

    The lesson is, once you lock in a high cost-structure company, you are always vulnerable to those that are not. It's no doubt something that the folk at ARM are well aware of.

  20. Jim O'Reilly
    Pint

    This is a big plus for Intel, even if very belated. They are finally moving from their view that Wintel is the center of the universe to a much more sensible position. Despite the jokes about Chrometel and the rest, their direction is coming together, but they have a lot of ground to make up in some areas.

    This will help enliven a computer industry that was rapidly becoming white box and commoditized. In the end, the losers are the proprietary CPU chip makers, and Microsoft.

  21. Mr. Peterson

    vPro Technology

    Remote and local monitoring...of PCs and workstations

    terrific! just can't get enuff of remote monitoring in today's busy & complex world

  22. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    WTF?

    WTF is that cluetard Skaugen smoking?

    Intel have been cosy with Linux for years, this "100% Microsoft" revisionism is just too unreal for words. Did someone not tell him the term Lintel has been around for over a decade? Has he ever even heard of the Linux Foundation or the large amount of code Intel has donated to the FOSS community? Yes, Intel have put a lot into work with Microsoft, but to pretend they have completely ignored Linux is just bizarre. Intel should be proudly talking about their driver programs for Linux, their work with Linux disties like Red Hat, not pretending it didn't happen just because the marketing bods are worried about ARM penetration of the tablet/mobile market. Android is only around now because Linux was born on Intel's 80386 platform.

  23. phil dude
    Linux

    to phi or not to phi....

    Well here in Denver I saw and spoke to the groups using the new Phi. I must say I am quite please there is a GPU for computing alternative in the market.

    And to add to this discussion, this "phi" comes in all flavours and boots a normal (i686?) linux kernel, and has 240 cores.

    I have bought AMD for years, but this is the first time I am thinking of getting an Intel product that looks generally interesting.

    Ultimately computers are all interchangeable, it is the cost of the conversion that is decides what code runs on what.

    Intel clearly have some excellent engineers....

    P.

  24. All names Taken

    First of all, Intel does catch-up very easily and surpasses even swifter but that makes it all the more playful to:

    IHemorroid - new Android competing OS that really is a pain in the a**e?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Intel does catch-up very easily and surpasses even swifter "

      They do as long as it's Intel's x86 products you're talking about.

      Not with anything else though. IA64 (pre-announced as 64bit winner, now even Intel+HP admit is a 64bit loser) vs AMD64 (copied by Intel who did indeed catch up and then overtook) is just the best known example, many others exist.

  25. Alan Denman

    Antitrust is lip service. Anything can happen.

    The AMD Intel things was lip service by the whole WinTel alliance.

    Anti-trust, it surely will revert back to 'let's all pretend there is some competition'.

  26. All names Taken
    Paris Hilton

    You r awl rong

    You are all wrong and exhibit classic tendencies that cling on to the old order.

    The old order mish-mashed together Intel, Microsoft and IBM.

    The new order mish-mashes together ARM and whoever, Android and whoever, insert name of your favourite assembler here and chip set.

    While aeons ago some hardware and software combinations were described as means of democratising something (desktop publishing, web publishing, image editing, video editing and animation creation, ... ) welcome to the new world, the new era in which hardware, software and firmware have just been democratized.

    And know what?

    For some it hurts.

    It really, really hurts.

    And then, of course, there are China, Brazil, India and Russia.

    What might they bring to this market of much reducing Wintel influence (assuming that there is some form of independence therein)?

  27. Christian Berger

    Microsoft got to bad...

    ...they never managed to build a system which was easy enough to keep running yet powerful enough to do anything with it except for very undemanding tasks. Windows, for example, didn't have a proper shell for most of its time and now it's to late since nobody ports their work to it.

    That's why on the serious end of things Linux has taken over. Modern Linux distributions are easier to run (think of updates and software distribution) and are proper operating systems.

    On the side of less demanding tasks the market gets gobbled up by mobile devices.

    If Intel continues to hold on to Microsoft they will sink with that sinking ship. Actually even the attempts from Microsoft to appease Intel (like not supporting win32 on ARM) are hurting Microsoft. And even the attempts from Intel to thank Microsoft do the same for Intel (like skipping Linux support on one generation of Atom).

    Wintel is hurting both Microsoft and Intel. It's in the best interest for both companies to end it soon.

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