To the everyday smartphone user, the guts of a mobile device are inconsequential. At the end of the day, most people want to know a few basics: How long will it stay charged? How good is the camera? Is the Internet connection fast? How responsive is the touch screen?
All are key elements for choosing a phone, but it’s what’s on the inside that makes that possible, and for any avid tech enthusiast, there are a few major components that we like to check, including the processor. To date, ARM’s processors have dominated mobile. But, according to a recent report from PC World, Intel claims its new Silvermont processor will outshine ARM’s designs.
Game of Specs
ARM first claimed it was top dog with the release of its Cortex-A12 so, naturally, Intel decided to up the ante with this new chip, based on Silvermont architecture. The company’s executive VP and general manager, Dadi Perlmutter, believes that the performance and battery life ARM technology delivers to smartphones pales in comparison to the Silvermont processor.
Coming from the computer industry, Intel has had to scale down in order to adapt and battle ARM, which has been in the mobile business for years. ARM has even gone so far as to recognize Intel as the top dog in the PC world. And though ARM may be at the top of the smartphone processor food chain right now, at this year’s Computex, Intel’s Atom chip powered several new devices.
Intel’s Perlmutter explained that it was able to improve both circuitry and power management by introducing a smaller, 22-nanometer process, which increases the amount of circuits via a 3D transistor structure, allowing it to reduce the overall size of the chip.
Perlmutter stressed that manufacturers need to keep pressing forward, not settling for products that are just satisfactory. He even predicted that more advanced human interfaces, like gaming and gesture recognition, will eventually be a part of the everyday mobile experience.
We aren’t sure when this new processor will make its way into devices on the market, but we look forward to checking it out.
