Mobile story. ARM, Atom, X86, PDA, UMPC and other letters and numbers ...

"Microsoft officially announced that it will not port Windows 7 for laptops based on ARM processors" ...
" Samsung has begun production of ARM processors using 45nm technology " ...
“ Apple introduced a new,“ very fast ”iPhone 3GS with a Samsung ARM 600MHz processor ... ”

In addition, this summer has been three years since Intel abandoned the release of XScale processors ( ARM architecture ) for handheld devices, selling all of its respective Marvell divisions.

So there are enough informational reasons. Reasons to remember the story - to tell about the situation on the mobile device market at the time of selling XScale (summer 2006), to see what has changed in this area since then and try to look into the future: where is the mobile-computer industry going?

So, 2006.

Of the mobile devices we are interested in, there are laptops , handheld computers (also known as PDA , PDA , HandheldPC), mobile phones , and smartphones ( communicators ) on the market.

Laptops and laptops .

Expensive, heavy, and too bulky for constant wear. As a rule, they do not work on battery for more than 2-3 hours and often do not have built-in Bluetooth and / or Wi-Fi communication modules. Used mainly for work - by those who really need it. Although such people are becoming more and more. The market is growing, and Intel is clearly in the lead.
')

PDA.

Starting their ancestry from electronic notebooks, "handhelds" very quickly progressed, getting close to the PC. In 2006, the PDA has on board highly productive processors with a frequency of more than 600 MHz (approximately the level of Celeron Pentium III), VGA screens and Bluetooth / Wi-Fi modules.
Pocket PC operating systems are constantly updated: Microsoft releases Pocket PC 2002, Pocket PC 2003, Windows Mobile 2005 (with the integrated Microsoft Office Mobile compatible with the desktop Microsoft Office), and Palm OS is also evolving. Independent developers produce a lot of software for PDAs - you can not only read books and use e-mail on handhelds, but even play Doom and watch movies in good quality. PDAs are sold not only in specialized stores, but also in almost all computer equipment stores.
Given the disadvantages mentioned laptops, "handheld" becomes a constant companion of many users. Intel holds the lion's share of the market with its XScale (PXA2xx). And everything would be fine, but ... The pocket computer market is steadily shrinking: smartphones and mobile phones are coming on the heels.

Smartphones (communicators).

Even if your “fancy” mobile phone has a touchscreen and 500 functions, including TV showing and synchronization with a computer, then this is not necessarily a smartphone.
Smartphones differ from ordinary mobile phones by the presence of a sufficiently developed operating system open for software development by third-party developers and, accordingly, for its installation by users. Of course, for such a system to work, we need the appropriate advanced “hardware” resources - a processor, a memory, a screen. in fact, smartphones are the same PDAs, but with an integrated mobile communication module. It is quite natural that those who do not want to carry both a telephone and a PDA with them choose a smartphone. As a result, the smartphone market is growing in 2006, although not as fast as the manufacturers would like. After all, smartphones have a couple of significant drawbacks. First, it is a short battery life. Ved fully discharged phone is an order of magnitude worse than a fully discharged PDA - the first means “to remain without communication with the world”, and the second - simply “to remain without additional information / entertainment”. Secondly, phone manufacturers have been convincing everyone for years that “a good phone is a small phone”. And then all of a sudden - bulky smartphones. Those. serious people are invited to apply to the ear and talk on the "notebook". Therefore, there are still relatively few smartphones, and even models with an Intel XScale processor can be counted on one hand. The share of this market in Intel, contrary to desires, is quite small.

Cell phones.

They are distinguished from other specialized devices (cameras, players, fans ) by their side, far from telephone, and computer functions.
Phones, with the exception of the cheapest, already provide multimedia playback, Internet surfing and e-mail. In addition, the phones support Java (more precisely, J2ME) applications, which, although by capabilities and performance, are inferior to the full-fledged “native” programs of smartphones, but significantly expand the “computer” capabilities of the phone.
The percentage of Intel XScale in mobile phones, alas, is zero. And the reasons for this can be understood - if, according to many manufacturers, XScale is too powerful (and at the same time energy-intensive, expensive and great) even for smartphones, then for phones it is even more so.

This is the situation in the mobile device market in 2006.

And what happens at this time in the companies that fill this market?

And there is some financial and economic crisis in the field of computer technology (however, compared with the current one, it looks like a prime). Therefore, companies are actively looking for both ways to raise revenue - new devices, applications, and ways to optimize costs.
All processor manufacturers, not only mobile, but also server processors are actively fighting not only and not so much for performance, as for lowering power consumption and heat dissipation of their products.

In July 2006, Intel launches a new generation of processors - Core 2, where, among other technical innovations, a universal microarchitecture is implemented. That is, the same processors, differing only in frequency, number of cores and size of caches, are now used both in laptops and in desktop computers and server solutions. I believe that it is unnecessary to explain the advantages of such universality for the company, and as a result for consumers.

With reference to the mobile market - a union of leading companies, including Intel, Microsoft and Samsung, devices are being designed to fill the empty niche between laptops and PDAs - for those who have a small PDA and a laptop is large. The code name of these devices is first “Origami”, later - Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC). It is for such devices that Intel initially develops a new processor, later called the Atom .


Like all other Intel desktop and mobile CPUs (except for XScale), the Atom is an x86 processor, which automatically means that all desktop OS and applications work with it on devices. Unless, of course, if they have enough resources.
Although Atom supports such technologies as 64-bit extension, Hyper Threading, vector instructions up to SSSE3, but its core is very simple (the main ideas are taken from the first Pentium and even from the Intel 80486), thereby reducing the size of the processor, as well as energy consumption \ heat dissipation is significantly reduced.

So much so that according to forecasts (by the way, it has not yet come true now, in 2009), Atom must surpass XScale in all respects, which means it will not only get into ultra-mobile PCs, but also smartphones.

That is why, in order not to compete with themselves in the future (XScale vs. Atom), and in the present not to disperse resources into two different architectures, Intel is selling the entire XScale mobile business to Marvell.

Newest history, or XScale - alive!

As a result of the transaction with Intel, giving away $ 600 million, Marvell receives technologies and plants producing XScale (PXA) families: with a maximum frequency of 624 MHz, SpeedStep technology to save energy, support for WMMX vector instructions accelerating multimedia applications like SSE2 on x86 machines; and a number of useful features.

In addition, Intel's new XScale family, code-named Monahans, is ready for mass production. Back in 2005, Intel demonstrated a prototype device with Monahans, operating at a frequency of 1.25 GHz (800 MHz is planned in production) and decoding / reproducing HD video on a standard QVGA screen for PDAs. The main differences from the previous generation of Monahans XScale - a further reduction in power consumption, vector instructions of the second generation - WMMX2, as well as the possibility of integration into the processor of the graphics module.

Now we can say for sure that having bought XScale, Marvell was not disappointed and did not return the purchase back under the guarantee and did not spend money in vain. XScale can be found in many models of PDAs and smartphones under the brand name “Marvell PXA3xx”. And in January 2009, Marvell finally unveiled its first PXA168 processor, combining its own developments with the PXA3xx core. The frequency of the processor is 1. GHz, it supports screens up to 1920x1200, it is produced using 55-nm technology and has a power consumption of 0.2-0.3 W (which is slightly higher than the predicted performance of even the upcoming 2010 Intel Atom!).

And this is not surprising. XScale (ARM) is a very simple RISC processor. Therefore, its power consumption, heat dissipation and physical size, other things being equal (!), Will always be less than that of the x86 processor, the same Atom. The fee for this is some limitations and lack of universality — for example, floating point operations. But it almost does not affect the typical functionality of a mobile device.

But back to the modern mobile market.

Laptops.

Over the past three years, of course, they have become lighter, more compact, and most importantly, cheaper. But nothing fundamentally new is happening here. The exclusivity of x86 processors (and the predominance of Intel) is preserved.

Ultra-Mobile PC.

But these devices are actively developing. Of course, this is not a UMPC of sample 2006, (from the components of that time it was simply impossible to assemble something really ultra mobile, but not ultra-expensive). There are processors with low power consumption; lightweight and capacious SSD became replacement of the hard drive. Yes, and they call such devices differently now: subnotebooks, netbooks, eee-pc, MID (Mobile Internet Device). Although the meaning remains the same: the golden mean between PCs and PDAs. And in the absolute majority of them - Intel inside.

PDA.

Technical progress here, alas, is invisible. Some models of 2004 from 2008 will be distinguished only by an expert. And this is not surprising. Predictions about the reduction of the PDA market are not just fulfilled, but significantly exceeded. And the culprit of this can be called not even abstract "smartphones", but specifically: iPhone.

iphone

Thanks to its active advertising, stylish design, active advertising, excellent screen, active advertising, ease of use for many applications and advertising again, the iPhone not only became the best-selling smartphone model in 2008, but also created fashion (i.e. demand) for smartphones in general. “IPhone-like” solutions now no longer offers just well-lazy manufacturer.


What's inside? ARM. For example, in the iPhone 3G processor Samsung ARM11 -620 MHz, although its frequency is programmatically limited to 412 MHz, in the iPhone 3GS-Samsung ARM Cortex A8 -833MHz with a frequency limit of up to 600 MHz. Apparently, energy consumption excites manufacturers much more than performance, which is why the XScale line of smartphones didn’t get accustomed: they are not used either by a clear leader - Nokia (more than 40% of the global smartphone market in 2008), or Apple (about 10%). market in 2008). The silver medalist of the 2008 market - Research in Motion (BlackBerry), although they use PXA in their products, but not all.

By the way, I did not manage to find a single advantage of Samsung ARM11, operating, for example, in iPhone 3G, in front of Intel PXA. This does not mean that there are no such advantages, it is possible that I was not looking enough, or that Samsung processors are simply cheaper. But I’m sure that if Intel continued to develop PXA, the probability of getting an iPnone with an Intel processor would be much higher - after all, Intel processors have long and successfully been used in Apple desktops and laptops ...

Although, looking at the advertisement of the latest iPhone 3GS - “Up to two times faster!”, We can assume that the smart phone stores are waiting for changes in the near future - there, as in the rest of the computer equipment, the “on speed".

So, on the one hand, Intel Atom is aiming at smartphones, but at the same time productive ARM processors are trying to penetrate the netbooks niche ... Making predictions of the market for mobile devices, mobile processors, and, most importantly, mobile OSes is extremely exciting and fashionable. And, akin to the sweepstakes, very risky: too large and motley contingent of users. Nevertheless, it would be curious to hear the opinion of habra people: what is your forecast for 2012?