2012-01-11 13:36:57
By Leo Kelion Technology reporter, BBC News, Las Vegas
Intel's new processor designed for mobile devices will be used by Motorola
Mobility and Lenovo in upcoming Android-based smartphones.
The Medfield chip is designed to help Intel make headway in a sector dominated
by processors based on designs by the UK firm Arm Holdings.
The announcement was made at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
The Motorola partnership is significant as Android's maker, Google, is in the
process of taking over the phone maker.
This launch marks Intel's second attempt to get Atom-based chips used in
smartphones.
LG unveiled a previous tie-up at CES in 2010, but the handset never went into
production.
This time Intel has announced rough shipping dates for the new devices.
It said Lenovo would launch a Medfield-based phone in China before July, while
Motorola would sell its first handset in the second half of the year with
others devices to follow.
Battery life
Medfield's system-on-chip design packs an X86-architecture central processing
unit (CPU), RAM memory, storage and an Imagination Technologies-designed
graphics processing unit all onto the same chip using the firm's established 32
nanometre manufacturing technology.
The chip is smaller than a fingertip and is designed to balance processing
power against energy use in order to maximise battery life.
Intel said a prototype unit, which it built itself, could deliver eight hours
of 3G voice calls, six hours of 1080p video decoding or five hours of 3G
internet browsing.
"Battery life on this platform is not the best in the mobile market, but it is
by far not the worst," Mike Bell, Intel's Ultra Mobility Group general manager,
told the BBC.
Start Quote
If Intel wants to grow its business at a significant rate it must participate
in this market, there is no alternative
Ken Dulaney Analyst, Gartner
"We are very effective and good at some tasks and sort of in the middle of the
pack at others.
"Essentially we think you can build a smartphone based upon our processor with
an ordinary sized battery that you see in today's smartphones that will provide
a great experience. There will be no battery life issue on our platform."
Avoiding fragmentation
Intel said it has also taken steps to prevent existing Android apps from being
incompatible or slow on its chips.
It will deploy a team of experts to advise creators of Java-based titles on how
to optimise their code - something it already does to help PC program
developers.
The firm says it has also developed a technology to tackle "the 25% of apps"
designed specifically to run on Arm-based processors.
"Applications that have native components or that were compiled natively for
Arm - the majority of them, we think, by the time we ship will run just as well
here as they do on other platforms. So the user won't have to worry about will
it run on this or that phone," said Mr Bell.
"Compared to a native Intel version of the application it might use slightly
more power if it is running under our technology, but the user wouldn't notice
it.
"It will let those applications on day one run. And of course we are then going
and evangelising to those people: 'Hey, if you recompile it it is going to run
a lot faster on our platform as our platform is better.'"
Tablets
Intel said the chip could later be used in tablets.
However, for now it is promoting a separate Clover Trail processor, which was
demonstrated on a tablet running the upcoming Windows 8 system software by
chief executive Paul Ottellini during the CES keynote speech.
Despite showing off an Intel-designed Medfield prototype handset, Mr Bell said
that the firm had chosen to pursue "a more horizontal ecosystem" with handset
manufacturing left to others. However, he admitted that there had been
discussions about Intel moving into the sector.
Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer presents a keynote a CES 2012 Intel's smartphone
chip will face up with Microsoft, a long time ally
Intel's ability to crack the mobile device market could prove critical to its
future success. Many analysts believe the division between smartphones and
tablets versus PCs and laptops will become blurred over the coming years.
Microsoft's new system software has been designed to work on both Arm-designed
processors as well as Intel's X86-based chips. Manufacturers have also
experimented with Arm-based laptops running Linux operating systems.
"There are somewhere between three to five billion smartphones in the world, if
Intel wants to grow its business at a significant rate it must participate in
this market, there is no alternative," said Ken Dulaney, vice president of
mobile computing at the tech research firm Gartner.
"It also gives them a fallback if the Wintel monopoly begins to fall apart and
the browser, rather than system, becomes king. They have been too tied to
Microsoft for too long."