On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 11:41 PM, Christopher Havel laserhawk64@gmail.com wrote:
I know, but IIRC the 8mm ones aren't going to be the first out of the gate, or even the third -- and an x86 offering would be, uhm, a very good idea IMO -- and the sooner, the better.
that's going to be down to intel, to get a decent SoC out their door that can fit in a 2.5W budget. there are other design factors involved as well, not least is that the... naive people at intel seem to think it's okay to put out 1,100 pin monsters with a 0.4mm pin pitch, then expect people to fork out thousands of dollars on protoytpe 10 to 12 layer PCBs @ only 1.2mm thick...
... and that's *just the prototypes* cost, when all the china-sourced SoCs make do with 6 layer (which costs around $600 for 5 samples), 4 layer (which can be had for around $500), and there are even china SoCs out there which can fit onto 2-layer PCBs, now.
then there's the cost of their offerings. the SoCs that go into the USB-PC dongles? look up the price on intel's web site: those are $32. $32 for fuck's sake! are their marketing team high or something?? there's *$5* quad-core 2ghz 64-bit ARM processors out there that can address up to 32 gigabytes of RAM, and they're trying to still pretend that the processor is the most important factor in the BOM of a product.
basically intel haven't got the faintest clue as to why they aren't even remotely in the market. and because they're not in the market, they haven't a chance to find *out* why they're not in the market.
they focussed so much on desktops, servers and laptops that they've had ARM and MIPS SoCs create an entire market that they're *never* going to get into if they keep up with their current "strategy". back in 2007 they even sold the PXA design because it was too embarrassingly good, it was making the intel atom look piss-poor by comparison in the performance/watt stakes.
anyone from intel - if you're reading this - for god's sake get a grip, contact me and i'll help you to spec out a decent SoC that will stand a chance in the china market. you've already found out why china fabless semiconductor companies can't work with you - that was another costly learning experience, wasn't it? when you're ready to listen, i'll be happy to walk you through what you need to do.
l.