The Atom was the reason why Intel had to sell the XScale division. Unfortunately the XScale CPU wasn't all it should have been, lacking debug capability or the performance leap promised by its StrongARM heritage. While Intel sold a few chips to people for WinCE PDAs, and even a few Motorola cellphones, the market was small compared to that available to TI and the like. Free from its ownership of a competing architecture, one which has wiped the floor with Intel, its execs obviously feel comfortable letting rip at ARM. Intel is no-doubt hugely frustrated at its inability to compete in the fast-growing cellphone market, and the Apple iPhone is just another sign of ARM's dominance in this sector. So here is the I'm referring to:

Kedia didn't just stop at the iPhone, claiming ARM was a malaise afflicting smartphones in general. "The smartphone of today is not very smart," he said. "The problem they have today is they use ARM." Wall believed the situation was unlikely to change anytime soon, saying Intel was two years ahead of the rival company. He didn't believe fast, full internet would receive a début with ARM-based devices in the near future. "Even if they do have full capability, the performance will be so poor," he said.

Of course this guy is just venting, during a trip to Taiwan. Perhaps he met with a number of potential customers there who all told him they were using ARM and very happy with it.

But also, it simply isn't true. Tom's Hardware shows Atom's power consumption (for CPU alone) of about 2.5W, with 5W including the required companion chip. We should point out, though, that the two chipsets to be used with the Atom N200s are power users: the Atom 230s use an i945GC that consumes 22W (4W for the CPU) and the Atom N270s ship with an i945GSE that burns 5.5W (2.4W for the CPU).

This is for a 1.6GHz CPU. By comparison the OMAP3530, a dual core 600MHz CPU with integrated video DSP, 3D graphics, NEON SIMD machine, DDR interface (i.e. Atom + support chip) consumes under 2W total (and that's the maximum from the datasheet and the - with power management OFF!). It is a mystery why Intel chips consume so much power. Some say it is the Byzantine x86 instruction set. Others say that Intel aims for speed rather than power. Who knows... So in terms of power consumption, Intel isn't even able to play the game yet. It is perhaps 3-5 years behind ARM on this one. The claim that the Internet isn't usable on an ARM CPU is also bogus. From what little I have seen of the iPhone it seems usable enough. My Nokia E90 certainly runs ok on the web, although I agree it could do with more speed (it is an ARM11 design). I think Intel will be shocked at the capability of the Cortex-A8 devices when they come out in the new year. Of course Intel needs to attack ARM - ARM owns the lower power market space and it is the only way that Intel can make inroads into it. But Intel needs to get its products in order first. Perhaps Intel should swallow its pride, take an ARM architectural license and put its A team on the project. The C team didn't do a great job, but everyone knows Intel has great chip engineers - just look at the Pentium range. Take away the x86 baggage and who knows what might be achieved?