Intel – Steve Blum's Blog

Apple’s rumored move to ARM-based Macs aims for a world of continuous connectivity

28 February 2020 by Steve Blum
Apple, ARM, broadband, geek stuff, Intel

Technological tipping points are easy see in the rearview mirror – do you remember what the world was like before the iPhone? – but hard to spot in advance. One might be on the way. A well respected analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, who works for TF Securities, predicts that Apple will start using ARM-based chips it designs and makes itself in Macintosh computers.

According to a story on Apple Insider by Malcom Owen…

Kuo forecasts that Apple will be using a 5-nanometer process at the core of its new products 12 to 18 months’ time.

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5G hype gets a reality check in 2020

19 April 2019 by Steve Blum
5G, Apple, Intel, mobile broadband, qualcomm

It looks like 2020 will be the year that genuine 5G smartphones will finally be in the hands of consumers. Two developments this week cleared away significant uncertainty about who will be offering 5G phones, when it will happen and whose technology they’ll use.

The two companies settled a long running legal dispute over intellectual property rights to core 5G technology, including a deal for Apple to buy modem chips, which do the heavy processing work of wrangling radio waves into data streams at one end and reading them at the other.… More

Huawei to Intel: so long, and thanks for all the fish

8 January 2019 by Steve Blum
ARM, CES2019, huawei, Intel, zte

The two big Chinese players – Huawei and ZTE – have a low profile in Las Vegas. The troubles that the two companies have had this past year took a toll. ZTE was shutdown for a time by the U.S. government and a very senior Huawei executive was jailed in Canada, pending extradition to the U.S. Both companies have been accused of being too cosy with the Chinese government. Neither company held their usual media extravaganzas at CES this year.… More

Intel CEO pitches product hits, misses making a point

7 January 2015 by Steve Blum
CES2019, Intel, samsung

Krzanich drones on.

I didn’t give Samsung CEO BK Yoon enough credit for his keynote address at CES on Monday. Big ideas and industry leadership were front and center; product plugs were sparse and unnoticeable. You might disagree with his ideas and be unimpressed with his leadership, and dismiss it all as self serving, although I wouldn’t. But he filled the true role of a keynote speaker by showing his audience his vision of the future.… More

Wearable, wireless and aware are Intel's 2015 themes

6 January 2015 by Steve Blum
CES2019, Intel

Intel is pushing three concepts, says CEO Brian Krzanich: computing unleashed, intelligence everywhere and the wearable revolution. That’s the top line from his keynote speech at CES this evening. I’m not entirely clear on Intel’s role: other than a tiny sensor, processing and communications module for wearables, dubbed *Curie*, there wasn’t much talk about Intel silicon. Just lots of product demos in the *powered by* vein.

He ended with a promise to hire more women and minorities, and saluted founder Gordon Moore – 2015 marks the 50th year of industry loyalty to his law.

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ARM is a growing server-side threat to Intel

1 February 2014 by Steve Blum
ARM, broadcom, CES2019, geek stuff, Intel, pepcom, qualcomm

Low profile, high potential.

2014 will be the year that specialised ARM-based chips gather momentum in the server market. That was not good news for Intel as it scrambled at CES to maintain relevance in the mobile device market. The last thing it needs – but the next thing it’s going to get – is competitive pressure on server processors, an increasingly rare example of a growth market that it dominates.

ARM maintained a relatively low profile at CES, leaving center stage to companies, like Qualcomm, that license its microprocessor architecture and make the chips that rule the smart phone and tablet space.… More

Intel CEO's vision for a post-Windows world

7 January 2014 by Steve Blum
Android, CES2019, consumer electronics, innovation, Intel, linux, mobile, qualcomm

Time for Linux and kin.

“This is a consumer show, like it or not”, said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, as he gave his maiden CES keynote talk last night. Judging by what he said (and didn’t say), the consumer electronics world is built on Linux and Android. His focus was on wearables.

“They don’t integrate all the features you want, you still had to have something else with you”, Krzanich said about smart watches and other wearables.… More

Old guard chipmakers emphasise the old at Pepcom

19 October 2013 by Steve Blum
amd, Android, ARM, consumer electronics, dell, geek stuff, Intel, mobile, pepcom, windows

Plenty of leg, but no ARM at Pepcom.

If you were wondering why Intel and AMD released downbeat quarterly reports this week, you only had to look at their products. The difference, though, is that AMD has control of its own destiny, while Intel will have to rely on the kindness of strangers to survive.

The two chipmakers showcased the hottest products rocking their silicon at Pepcom’s Holiday Spectacular in San Francisco on Wednesday. That’s not the same, though, as saying they were showing the hottest products on the market.… More

Intel selling heavy metal thunder to a lightning fast market

25 July 2013 by Steve Blum
ARM, business, consumer electronics, Intel, mobile, qualcomm

The next industry standard.

After playing with an Atom-powered smart phone at CES this year and hearing execs talk up Android, I saw glimmers of hope that Intel was finally coming to grips with the mobile world. It seems I had it backwards: the mobile world is tightening its grip on Intel’s corporate throat.

Long the dominant player in PC and big server processors, Intel is all but shut out of smart phones and tablets, a billion unit market, and has no presence at all in the machine-to-machine space, which could be five or ten times that size in the next handful of years.… More

Tizen Foundation throws candy at mobile app devs

20 July 2013 by Steve Blum
consumer electronics, firefox, geek stuff, html5, Intel, mobile, samsung, tizen

Game on.

A $4 million lolly scramble is underway to jump start the Tizen mobile operating system’s app store. The Tizen Foundation announced a developers’ competition with individual prizes that could go as high as $250,000, and released a new version of the software developer kit for the Linux-based and HTML5-centric OS.

Among other things, Tizen is Samsung’s coming replacement for bada, its in-house smart (or at least modestly bright) phone OS. While bada is a very functional, if lower end, platform, it’s suffered from a lack of developer love.… More