With ARM shaping up to take on Intel for the mobile Internet device (MID) market, the smartphone market, the server market and, maybe further out, the laptop and desktop PC market, how is the battle shaping up?
On the face of it Intel, by fielding 
a chip with a power consumption ten times greater than ARM, hasn’t got a hope in the MID/smartphone market.
Intel has said it is two years away from catching ARM up in power efficiency. By that time, ARM will have moved on. But can Intel catch up?
"Intel is catching up. I wouldn’t disagree they are catching up", replied Warren East, CEO of ARM, "whether they are catching up fast enough to make an integrated offering which people will pay for, is another 
matter."
"It’s not just the microprocessor but the system around the microprocessor. We have upwards of ten years experience of building power-efficient systems on chip with multi-innovative sources in the dozen or so large semiconductor companies which have been developing innovation to ARM-based systems," said East.
Intel has had an ARM architecture licence since 1997, why hasn’t it caught up with ARM on power-efficiency? "ARM has had a focus on low-power for years. The whole design philosophy is low-power," responded East, "for Intel it’s the more MHz the better. While they were doing StrongARM (which Intel called X-Scale) the Intel marketing department were selling them in the same way – on MHz."
Where will ARM’s power-efficiency have moved on to in a couple of years’ time, when Intel reaches the power-efficiency levels of ARM today?
"We can make further improvements. We can track the trends in increased efficiency and don’t see these trends changing", said East, "we’ve used all sorts of techniques over the years. There tends to be a 50 per cent improvement in power efficiency at each new generation of ARM."
Fortunately for ARM, Intel hasn’t applied itself very well to the task of improving power-efficiency.
"How incredibly fortunate it is," said East, "that Intel has done a job that we would consider not a very good job on that."
How does he see Otellini’s remarks that: "The Internet runs on Intel architecture" and that the use of an Intel microprocessor provides a "fuller" internet experience.
"Weasel words," replied East, "I wouldn’t argue with the observation that if you’re looking at the Internet with a PC, which has an Intel architecture processor in it, that it’s a better experience than with a smartphone, but that’s because of the screen size of the Smartphone and the bandwidth of the data that’s arriving at the smartphone. But the user experience has got nothing whatsoever to do with the architecture of the microprocessor."
Otellini reckons that ARM’s licensees suffer a competitive disadvantage in not having access to the latest process technology. According to Otellini the effect of implementing computer functions in smartphones for ARM licensees like NXP, Samsung and Nokia is that it: "Pushes them to more advanced chip technology, which typically they don’t have access to. They are a generation or two behind."
How does East respond to that?
"I think it’s a little bit disingenuous with regard to those companies," said East, "had I been Paul Otellini, I wouldn’t have said that."
With NXP hand-in-glove with TSMC, which is planning risk production on 32nm next year possibly before Intel’s 32nm process, and with many other ARM licensees like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments using TSMC, and with Samsung having its own logic processes which are as advanced as TSMC, and with the equipment makers, like Applied Materials, making the enabling tools for 32nm available to Samsung, Intel and TSMC at much the same time, Otellini’s remark is curious.
Intel has another disadvantage, its business model which is to sell single sourced processors, will the market reject Atom because of that?
"One only hears anecdotes," replied East, "but people say they don’t like the monopoly. Intel has made that happen, and some customers would rather not repeat the experience."
Beyond the MID and smartphone markets, ARM is now actively engaged in discussions with the server manufacturers who are seeking to find ways to reduce the power they use.
"People are getting concerned about the power being used by server farms. ARM is potentially well-placed to do that. We do think that ARM has a role to play in making the electronics around the world more power-efficient, and if you can do that, you use a lot less power for the cooling systems," said East.
If ARM gets into MIDs, smartphones and servers, can it move into laptops and desktop PCs as well?
"It has the potential," replied East, "we’ve never particularly denied it. On our business cards we have the logo: ‘The architecture for the digital world’. ARM scales across the complete range of applications."