The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Comments on: Intel knits SoCs roadmap for x86

Marketing drivel. 

Posted Friday 25th July 2008 12:19 GMT

Stop

Any product deserved as an "infotainment" device deserves to fail for flagrant bastardization of the English language.

You know what this means 

Posted Friday 25th July 2008 12:42 GMT

Unhappy

MS Windows on every damned device under the sun. I can't wait until my TV takes as long to boot up as my PC. Thanks Intel.

Can't see this as having much success 

Posted Friday 25th July 2008 15:10 GMT

The embedded market is driven more by price and power consumption (and Intel fails big in both categories) than it is by compatibility. Sure, an x86 processor can run Windows, but that is of little use in embedded devices (in fact, it may be rather silly to do so, as suggested in http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;282200690).

ARM, the listed competitor, can run a large range of embedded, PDA, laptop and desktop OSes (including Windows Mobile or whatever it is called these days) and a large range of Internet applications, including browsers with Java, Flash, etc. So I can't really see what using an x86 buys you, apart from five times the power use and price.

If they are comparing their SoC to a Pentium M ... 

Posted Friday 25th July 2008 15:57 GMT

... it means it is pathetic compared to existing SoC's.

Assert Failed 

Posted Friday 25th July 2008 16:37 GMT

IT Angle

"Intel asserts that because most internet application development today is done using the x86 instruction set..."

Which shows just how little Intel's marketeers understand about internet applications.

The best Intel can truthfully claim is that the compiled portions of internet applications (i.e, LAMP, IIS, .NET runtime, etc) are most often compiled to the x86 instruction set. However, that has little relevance to internet application development, as server applications are most often written in intermediary languages (Java/.NET) which compile to their own bytecode or scripting languages (PHP/VBScript) which are interpreted.

And it's completely irrelevant to the client side. The client side will be running HTML, Javascript, Flash, and/or Java, all of which have parsers/compilers/runtimes optimised for various CPUs.

Don’t Miss

NovellSUSE 11 takes off faster than 10

Novell still cool to KVM

Samsung SpinPoint 2.5in HDDFreecom adds RFID to HDD

Innovative feature or unnecessary security?

Intel X25-MIntel to double SSD capacity

Roadmap brought forward by a quarter

MacBook Air firmware update points to revamped batteries