That is until they first completely failed to compete against Arm on mobile
Intel even had a jumpstart with ARM with acquiring the StrongARM CPU from DEC when it went under. I owned a number of devices with “Intel StrongARM” CPUs in them. Then Intel evolved XScale in 2002. I owned one of those devices too. Then Intel decided “this ARM thing isn’t going anywhere” and sold their entire ARM holdings to Marvel semiconductor. Its pure hubris on Intel’s part.
Here’s an article from 2005 talking about the industry at the time and Intel’s floundering in the mobile space. source
For those that may have forgotten, the original iPhone came out in 2007, which most would agree ushered in the modern mobile phone era.
I Absolutely agree. But I didn’t even know that Intel took over StrongArm, I only remember hearing the name, but not what it was actually used for.
Funny because the Alpha ended up with Compaq/HP, who ended up killing the superior Alpha to pursue the giant failure that was Itanium.
The nu7mber of blunders were insane!
this ARM thing isn’t going anywhere
AFAIK Intel thought small devices meant low performance, and had to be cheap, so they thought the profit margins would be tiny.
It was such a humongous misreading of the market!
The Intel failure against Arm was obvious already with the OLPC, Intel made the netbook concept with Asus to compete against that on tiny laptops.
And they basically tried to muscle Arm out of the market with shenanigans like “supporting” projects that chose Intel over Arm.
But quickly when smartphones became a thing, it became obvious how bad the X86 Atom was, and X86 lost everything in mobile.
First they ignored ultra mobile, then they tried to move the concepts for higher end devices where Intel could better compete with for instance Netbook, and finally they tried to compete head on, and failed miserably.
I was so frustrated that I couldn’t get an Arm based laptop that could run Linux. It would have been amazing back in 2005.
That was a stupid concept, I remember their videos with the french accent. Kudos to them for giving it a try though, but they tried to do too much.
Obviously what I wanted was for a proper company like Asus/MSI/Lenovo making a netbook based on Arm instead of Intel.
Or even a minor company making something sensible like the Intel based Asus Netbook that came out in 2007. Arm should have been out BEFORE intel, because they had better technology for it and Intel did not, and original Netbooks based on Linux were very popular. Popularity actually took a dive initially when Netbooks swtched to the phased out Windows XP. Because Windows sucked really really bad for netbook.
And I hoped a standard could arise for “desktop” Arm like existed for the PC standard. Texas Instruments announced it with Freescale, but nothing ever came of it, and AFAIK TI sold off Freescsale.
So no a proper Linux netbook was never made, that competed directly with X86 netbooks. Despite they could have had more than twice the battery life for the same performance. Why Arm never bothered to make such a standard, I will never understand.
And why such a standard remains missing in the market is also strange IMO?
Apple has shown that an Arm platform can be way superior to X86 on laptop. Still it’s crickets from the PC industry and Arm?
Intel even had a jumpstart with ARM with acquiring the StrongARM CPU from DEC when it went under. I owned a number of devices with “Intel StrongARM” CPUs in them. Then Intel evolved XScale in 2002. I owned one of those devices too. Then Intel decided “this ARM thing isn’t going anywhere” and sold their entire ARM holdings to Marvel semiconductor. Its pure hubris on Intel’s part.
Here’s an article from 2005 talking about the industry at the time and Intel’s floundering in the mobile space. source
For those that may have forgotten, the original iPhone came out in 2007, which most would agree ushered in the modern mobile phone era.
I Absolutely agree. But I didn’t even know that Intel took over StrongArm, I only remember hearing the name, but not what it was actually used for.
Funny because the Alpha ended up with Compaq/HP, who ended up killing the superior Alpha to pursue the giant failure that was Itanium.
The nu7mber of blunders were insane!
AFAIK Intel thought small devices meant low performance, and had to be cheap, so they thought the profit margins would be tiny.
It was such a humongous misreading of the market!
The Intel failure against Arm was obvious already with the OLPC, Intel made the netbook concept with Asus to compete against that on tiny laptops.
And they basically tried to muscle Arm out of the market with shenanigans like “supporting” projects that chose Intel over Arm.
But quickly when smartphones became a thing, it became obvious how bad the X86 Atom was, and X86 lost everything in mobile.
First they ignored ultra mobile, then they tried to move the concepts for higher end devices where Intel could better compete with for instance Netbook, and finally they tried to compete head on, and failed miserably.
I was so frustrated that I couldn’t get an Arm based laptop that could run Linux. It would have been amazing back in 2005.
What you’re asking for here actually DID become available in about 2009…and I got one. The experience was…not great.
source
That was a stupid concept, I remember their videos with the french accent. Kudos to them for giving it a try though, but they tried to do too much.
Obviously what I wanted was for a proper company like Asus/MSI/Lenovo making a netbook based on Arm instead of Intel.
Or even a minor company making something sensible like the Intel based Asus Netbook that came out in 2007. Arm should have been out BEFORE intel, because they had better technology for it and Intel did not, and original Netbooks based on Linux were very popular. Popularity actually took a dive initially when Netbooks swtched to the phased out Windows XP. Because Windows sucked really really bad for netbook.
And I hoped a standard could arise for “desktop” Arm like existed for the PC standard. Texas Instruments announced it with Freescale, but nothing ever came of it, and AFAIK TI sold off Freescsale.
So no a proper Linux netbook was never made, that competed directly with X86 netbooks. Despite they could have had more than twice the battery life for the same performance. Why Arm never bothered to make such a standard, I will never understand.
And why such a standard remains missing in the market is also strange IMO?
Apple has shown that an Arm platform can be way superior to X86 on laptop. Still it’s crickets from the PC industry and Arm?