[GTALUG] Intel entering the low end, AMD taking ARM to the high end (Was: HummingBoard-i2eX First Impressions)

[Scott Sullivan]

On 12/29/2014 01:35 AM, William Park wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 09:12:53PM -0500, Scott Sullivan wrote:
>> This Christmas I got myself another ARM dev board. In this case the
>> HummingBoard-i2eX from SolidRun.
>
>> http://www.solid-run.com/
>
> $100... hmm, I guess we're paying for mSATA, mPCIe, and gigabit.
>
> I really don't know why Intel/AMD don't release x86 version for this
> market segment.  People say, power consumption on ARM.  They can reduce
> power consumption on x86, too.  After attaching USB devices, mSATA SSD
> card, mPCI wifi card, the power issue is moot anyways.
>

Intel certainly has not ignored these low power, small form factor SoCs. 
The have provided two SoC over the last few years, with inexpensive dev 
boards, one of which that is in it's second generation.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/galileo-maker-quark-board.html
http://arduino.cc/en/ArduinoCertified/IntelGalileo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Galileo


http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/edison.html
https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/272
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Edison


AMD on the other hand, has taken a different direction. Their still 
recovering from nearly gutting the company from chasing Intel on the 
pyre that is Gaming Performance. Their new CEO is focusing on 
profitability in the markets where they are still strong, Servers and 
GPUs. This does however includes a road map for a common socket 
architecture for AMD64 and ARMv8 server systems. AMD became a full ARM 
licensee a few years ago for this purpose.

http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/ambidextrous-computing-2014may05.aspx
http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/64-bit-developer-kit-2014jul30.aspx

-- 
Scott Sullivan