ARM Exec Says 90% of PC Market Could Be Netbooks 307
Barence writes "ARM chief executive Warren East has claimed that netbooks could dominate the PC market, in an exclusive interview with PC Pro. 'Although netbooks are small today – maybe 10% of the PC market at most – we believe over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90% of the PC market,' he said. East also said ARM isn't pressuring Microsoft to include support for its processors in Windows, claiming progress in the Linux world is 'very, very impressive.' 'There's not really a huge amount of point in us knocking on Microsoft's door,' he said. 'It's really an operational decision for Microsoft to make. I don't think there's any major technical barriers.'"
Re:But Steve Jobs said... (Score:2, Informative)
I have one and I have to say I'm very happy with it (Asus 1000HA, Atom based). It came with XP and now dual-boots Linux (Ubuntu Netbook Remix). I'm happy with the performance in both operating systems as far as the basics go, but there are times I wish it had a bit more power to it. It runs Open Office just fine as well as Firefox, Python, and a few other apps I use regularly. I even tried putting Lord of the Rings Online on it and it worked... with about 3 FPS.
UNR: http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr [canonical.com]
Re:Absolutely not. (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to do anything else mildly processor intensive like watching a HD video, good luck. (Even Intel's Atom processor is essentially an overclocked 486.) If you want to watch a DVD, good luck--your netbook is probably a little too small for that DVD drive!
I know what you're trying to say, but I've got an Intel Atom and it plays DVD's fine (with USB external DVD drive) and can do Matroska with CoreAVC without any problems. (Without CPU scaling anyway. But surprisingly Youtube/iPlayer is fine at 800mhz for me). For most people, a Netbook is far more convenient.
Re:you can say whatever you want (Score:3, Informative)
Do you think MS isn't already on this? They have WinCE which is slowly but surely focusing on ARM as the primary platform. They have Windows Mobile which is designed to run *only* on the ARM platform.
They will stress interoperability between device and PC. The ecosystem works (they say) because the two systems are designed to work well with each other. Even things like Vista/Win7 are designed to work with CE-based projector devices. Their strategy extends far beyond Netbooks/Smartbooks and reaches into every single high-function embedded market.
Linux doesn't have the same ability to say something and have it taken as gospel truth. If Linux wants to claim seamless interoperability, the vendors need to put up or shut up.
Re:Absolutely not. (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the newer arm processors include video accelerators, which can play HD video, Tegra 2 for example but also many others.
Re:Absolutely not. (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to do anything else mildly processor intensive like watching a HD video, good luck
All of the recent ARM SoCs that are targeted at this kind of thing can decode 720p H.264 in hardware, some can decode 1080p and some, like the i.MX515 have hardware for encoding H.264 as well.
Re:But Steve Jobs said... (Score:3, Informative)
The benefit to more cores is you can completely turn off the cores that are unneeded, instead of simply slowing the clock speed of one big honking core that may not be nearly as efficient at that lower clock rate. It appears (although I am no expert) that this scales well in low power applications, since many chipmakers are favoring higher core counts for their performance lineup. As far as making use of them, it's up to the OS and application authors to code things that behave well (i.e. are properly multithreaded) on many cores. This is a field that is improving constantly.
Re:Absolutely not. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not. Ten seconds on Google would show you thousands of folk using Atom chips for HTPC's. The Atom can easily play back DVD content and some 720p content too. We just saw the launch of the iPad which plays 720p content and appears to run an Arm chip.
My own HTPC uses a single core Atom and plays 1080p content perfectly. How does it manage this? Because of hardware accelerated video playback. The video is offloaded to an Nvidia Ion chipset. Even if your netbook didn't come with Ion graphics, you could add a Broadcom Crystal HD Mini PCI-e card for about $25 on ebay and get 1080p playback assuming you have a spare mini pci-e slot.
ARM can do this just as easily as Intel. sure, a low power general purpose cpu will struggle with HD video, but there are plenty of low power graphics chipsets available to manufacturers.
Re:Netbook? (Score:1, Informative)
ARM and other non-intel (i.e. TI's OMAP4 [gizmodo.com]
OMAP is ARM. ARM does not sell silicon, they sell designs which TI, Qualcomm etc. implement.
Re:But Steve Jobs said... (Score:2, Informative)
Huh? What are you talking about? My favourite hardware online store has an Atom-based motherboard for a whopping 58.90€ [alternate.de]. Add in a 1GB stick (if you don't already have some lying around, like I do... from dumpster diven machines) for a 23.99€ [alternate.de]. You can most likely reuse your cases and power supplies (I have an Atom ION 330 motherboard living of a 300W powersupply and that overkill). That's your base system for less than 85€! Matches your "below £100" no?
Ever heard of Soekris [soekris.com]? Sure, they are not *that* cheap and not that high-performance but you were talking "home servers". I have a net5501-70 [soekris.com] and it handles pretty much anything I throw at it for home server usage. Of course, that's not in your given budget range...
Now, I admit that these are all x86 machines but currently your machines are too.
Perhaps you can base something on this [gumstix.com]. Based on XScale processors, but they seem to be out-of-budget too.
Perhaps you might start reavaluate your £100 requirement. I haven't seen any netbook at that price either. £100 ~= 115€. Cheapest netbook I have seen was 199€ and was Linux based. So, I ask you the reverse question; Where can I find a £100 netbook?
Re:But Steve Jobs said... (Score:1, Informative)
Except this isn't an ad populum fallacy. He didn't say "'x' is better than the iPhone", he said (paraphrase) 'users don't like the iPhone OS', the counter argument was '43 million people bought iPhones, they don't seem to care'.
Re:Tegra Performance (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Absolutely not. (Score:3, Informative)
I'd guess MOST people still do...at least in the US.