Intel’s Silvermont Architecture Revealed: Getting Serious About Mobile
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 6, 2013 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Silvermont
- SoCs
Final Words
Silvermont really is Intel’s Conroe for the mobile market, but not in the sense that many have been expecting. Given that success in mobile is so closely tied to device wins, Silvermont alone isn’t enough. Unlike Conroe, a very competitive Silvermont won’t change the world overnight. What Silvermont does however is offer a great foundation for Intel going forward. Conroe lead to Penryn, Nehalem, Westmere, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and soon, Haswell. It was the platform that Intel could build on regularly by executing on tick-tock. Conroe paved the way for the insane advantage Intel has held onto for the past few years. Silvermont is like Conroe in that it provides that same foundation.
The mobile market is far more competitive than the PC industry was back when Conroe hit. There isn’t just one AMD but many competitors in the SoC space that are already very lean and fast moving. There’s also the fact that Intel doesn’t have tremendous marketshare in ultra mobile. Silvermont may feel a lot like Conroe, but the market it’s competing in is very different. That’s not to say that Intel can’t be successful here; it’s just not going to be easy.
Architecturally Silvermont is very conservative, and that’s not a bad thing. A side effect of not wanting to make Haswell irrelevant by a far lower cost part is the benefit of maintaining power efficiency. Intel joins the ranks of Apple and Qualcomm in intelligently scaling performance while respecting power consumption. Intel’s 22nm process should give Silvermont a lot of runway to use. If it can quickly follow up with 14nm, Silvermont’s power advantage could end up being akin to Conroe’s performance advantage in the mid-2000s.
Even so, Silvermont is long overdue. It’s the first mobile architecture where Intel really prioritized smartphones and tablets, and on paper, it looks very good. Now it’s up to Intel to turn a great architecture into great design wins. From what I’m hearing, we may actually see that happen.
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Kevin G - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Actually I've gotten the impression from Anandtech that Intel has been so tardy on providing chips for the mobile market that they may have lost the fight before even showing up. Intel may have good designs and the best foundries but that doesn't matter if ARM competitors arrive first with 'good enough' designs to gobble up all the market share. There is a likely a bit of frustration here constantly hearing about good tech that never reaches its potential.There was the recent line in the news article here about Intel's CEO choice about how Intel is foundry that makes x86 processors. That choice was likely selected due to Intel's future of becoming an open foundry to 3rd party designs. Intel has done this to a limited degree already. They recently signed a deal with Microsemi to manufacture FPGA's on Intel's 22 nm process. Presumably future Microsemi ARM based SoC + FGPA chips will also be manufactured by Intel as well.
Kidster3001 - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
Intel has publicly stated that it's foundry business will never make products for a competitor. That means no ARM SoC's in Intel fabs.Kevin G - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
Intel isn't active in the FPGA area, well there than manufacturing them for a handful of 3rd parties. The inclusion of an ARM core inside a SOC + FGPA design wouldn't be seen as a direct competitor. Indirectly it definitely would be a competitor but then again just the FPGA alone would be an indirect competitor.name99 - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Actually the REAL history is- Intel article appears. All the ARM fans whine about how unfair and awful it is, and how it refers to a chip that will only be released in six months.
- ARM article appears. All the Intel fans whine about how unfair and awful it is, and how it refers to a chip that will only be released in six months.
- Apple (CPU) article appears. Non-Apple ARM and Intel fans both whine about how unfair it is (because of tight OS integration or something, and Apple is closed so it doesn't count).
Repeat every six months...
Bob Todd - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
Winner winner chicken dinner. I love how butt hurt people get about any article comparing CPU or GPU performance of two or more competitors (speculatively or not). I have devices with Krait, Swift, Tegra 3, Bobcat, Llano, Ivy Bridge, etc. They all made sense at the time for one reason or another or I wouldn't have them. I'm excited about Slivermont, just like I'm excited about Jaguar, and whatever Apple/Samsung/Qualcom/Nvidia cook up next on the ARM side. It's an awesome time to be into mobile gadgets. Now I'll sit back and laugh at the e-peen waiving misguided fanboyism...axien86 - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Acer is shipping new V5 ultraportables based on AMD's Jaguar high performance per watt technology in 30 days. AMD is 10 to 20 times smaller than Intel, but with design wins from Sony, Microsoft and now many other OEMs, they are delivering real performance for real value.
By contrast Intel really has nothing to show, but endless public relations to compensate for a history of company that has been upstaged by smaller companies like AMD in forging real innovations in computing.
A5 - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
If by "high performance per watt" you mean "less performance in a higher TDP" than sure. Intel trounces AMD in notebooks for a reason.As for the Sony/MS stuff, I doubt Intel even bid for those contracts.
kyuu - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
I hope you're kidding. Bobcat-based designs have been superior to Atom for forever, and if you take graphics performance into account, then Atom has been nothing short of laughable. I wouldn't be surprised if Silvermont beats Jaguar in CPU performance, but it'll be a small delta, and Jaguar is coming out a full half-year ahead of Silvermont.It's also nice that Intel might get GPU performance around the level of the iPad 4's SoC by the end of the year, but I believe AMD's mobile graphics already handily surpass that and the ARM world will have moved on to solutions that handily surpass that by then as well. So, yet again, Intel will be well behind the GPU curve. It won't be laughably bad anymore, though, at least.
And I really love that last line. "Intel didn't get some design wins? Well, psh, they totally didn't even want those anyway."
kyuu - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Oh, and also not sure why you brought notebooks up when we're talking about architectures for very low-power devices like tablets, netbooks, and maybe some ultrathins. No one would claim that Trinity/Richland is at the same level of CPU performance as Ivy Bridge/Haswell. Personally, though, I'd still prefer an AMD solution for a notebook for the superior graphics, lower price, and more-than-adequate CPU performance.xTRICKYxx - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
This is where I want AMD to come into play. Their low power CPU's are so much better than Atom ever was, and always had superior graphics.