Monday, October 30th 2023
Intel CEO Doesn't See Arm-based Chips as Competition in the PC Sector
During the Q3 2023 earnings call, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was answering some questions from analysts regarding the company's future and its position on emerging competition. One of the most significant problems the company could face is the potential Arm-based chip development not coming from x86 vendors like Intel and AMD. Instead, there could be fierce competition in the near future with the recently announced Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X, possible NVIDIA Arm-based PC processor, and in the future, even more Arm CPU providers that Intel would have to compete against in the client segment. During the call, Pat Gelsinger noted that "Arm and Windows client alternatives, generally, they've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business. And we take all competition seriously. But I think history as our guide here, we don't see these potentially being all that significant overall. Our momentum is strong. We have a strong roadmap."
Additionally, the CEO noted: "When thinking about other alternative architectures like Arm, we also say, wow, what a great opportunity for our foundry business." If the adoption of Arm-based CPUs for Windows PCs becomes more present, Intel plans to compete with its next-generation x86 offerings like Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, and even Panther Lake in the future. As stated, the CEO expects the competition to manufacture its chips at Intel's foundries so that Intel can provide a platform for these companies to serve the PC ecosystem.
Source:
Q3 Earnings Transcript
Additionally, the CEO noted: "When thinking about other alternative architectures like Arm, we also say, wow, what a great opportunity for our foundry business." If the adoption of Arm-based CPUs for Windows PCs becomes more present, Intel plans to compete with its next-generation x86 offerings like Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, and even Panther Lake in the future. As stated, the CEO expects the competition to manufacture its chips at Intel's foundries so that Intel can provide a platform for these companies to serve the PC ecosystem.
56 Comments on Intel CEO Doesn't See Arm-based Chips as Competition in the PC Sector
It's possible he knows where the competition stands and there are no reasons for concerns right now, but Apple has clearly proven there can be a transition from x86 to ARM. And a pretty painless one at that. For Windows, device drivers that only come in x86 form with no source available might pose a threat to a similar transition, but other than that, I don't see a problem if the ARM chips ever get fast enough.
It's never a good idea to have a single point of entry to something, and we're at the point where we have multiple, that can all achieve similar results, for different form factors and use cases. There's a tool for every job.
With these kind of advantages you don't need to innovate.
I am not a CPU engineer, but from what I know is that ARM CPUs biggest advantage is the low power usage. This makes sense because ARM chips power all of our phones that are cooled by passive heatsinks.
One of the biggest drawbacks to laptops is battery life. It's the reason why they have to slow down CPU's, GPU's, etc. The excess power will make the battery life nonexistent. I cant help but see the application of using ARM based CPU's in laptops. Particularly the millions and millions of laptops companies have that employees only use for Microsoft office and web browsing.
Why Intel does not see this as a threat to their laptop computer dominance is beyond me. I'm sure they have a lot of smart people working their, but I'd be worried about Nvidia going after market share, particularly because Intel's fab process is not improving at the rates they expected.
I suspect Intel sees ARM on Windows as a threat, but publicly, they have to claim that they aren't concerned.
Closed ecosystem garbage needs to stay where it belongs, in the trashcan. Every time I listen to people brag about having to find loopholes and workarounds to get software working or non-apple compatible devices working, I just laugh internally at how much money they wasted to torture themselves when they want any non apple device/software to work.
More OT, nothing agaisnt ARM and it can most certainly be viable, but fragmenting software support seems like the perfect way to cause even more issues for device software compatibility.
It was more just an ironic comment on how apple wouldn't exist in the pc space had it not been for limping on intel x86 hardware and eventual success of the iPhone. As is, apple remains the compromised choice for no beneficial reason as far as PCs are concerned.
It even beats the supposedly magical Apple M2.
All that old x86 software running through binary translation is gonna suck though, and there is a lot of it. That alone is a reason not to make the jump.
or
We've got a new flavor of de-innovation @ Intel.
I'm not an ARM fan, but there's reason it's taken off.
TBQH, with WinARM quietly developing in the background (from consumer PoV), I could see hybrid uArch MCM SoCs running hybrid Windows.
Let the OS scheduler take care of assigning tasks between the uArchs, and basically all OS-functions taken care of on the ARM segment.
Seems like it could free-up resources, improve overall efficiency, and retain 100% backwards compatibility without ARM-x86 emulation.
Take something like music hardware and software things will absolutely evolve in various ways hell it wasn't that far back that we didn't have "smart phones" we had landline phones that operated like you're rewinding the vinyl on a turntable to dial the god damn numbers and took about half a minute to dial a number. They did have a "satisfying" tactile feel though if you're old enough to remember them.
Let me clarify. What was said is that ARM is not a competitor in the PC sector. The Personal Computer sector.
It is not the laptop market.
It is not the server market.
It is not the high performance computing market.
It is not the AI market.
With these words alone you can see what is actually being flagged here. He's saying that Intel has a lock on x86-64 for the PC market because it's not going to change over to new software. Think about all of your software having to either be interpreted or recompiled for a new architecture, with an entirely different instruction set. Oh boy, that sounds terrible.
What is more interesting is that because he chose to focus on a single sector it implies that there is significant concern in others. I'd guess that the huge amount of money that could be gained by even minor improvements in efficiency would be silly to ignore if you're coding databases and other professional systems....so the investment into rebuilding things there is entirely reasonable. That seems to spell trouble when Intel's efficiency cores are still more gimick than value add for most consumers.
I read this as Intel trying to put a spin on a market they've got locked, and thus trying to remove visibility from markets that they don't have. It's the classic attempt to hide bodies in plain sight...and not a particularly good one. I for one find that funny...because it's basically forcing recognition of this by their recent actions in attempting to purchase power players in other markets.
Don't get me wrong, Intel is safe for now, the road to displace them is long. But it's (much) shorter than it used to be.