AMD Joins Intel's MeeGo OS Effort 117
angry tapir writes "In an effort to expand software compatibility for its upcoming Fusion chips, AMD has joined rival Intel's efforts to develop the open-source MeeGo OS. AMD 'will provide engineering expertise intended to help establish the technical foundations for next-generation mobile platforms and embedded devices,' the company said in a blog post on its website."
Re:Desktop dinosaurs realize mobile cannibalizatio (Score:1, Insightful)
> That might be what brought AMD to the table.
The Meego project is hosted by the Linux Foundation.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/node/5887
AMD is a gold member of the linux Foundation, and it has a seat on the board of the Linux Foundation.
AMD has released programming specifications for its GPUs so that open source drivers could be written.
www.x.org/docs/AMD/
Open source driver for Linux have indeed been written for Linux for AMD/ATI GPUs. The have existed now for a couple of years.
AMD are about to enter the low-power embedded and mobile space in a big way with their Fusion family of APUs ... which are chips with a GPU and a CPU together on the one die. Perfect for the low power mobile space.
All things considered, Meego and the mobile space is a very good fit with the future directions of AMD/ATI and Fusion APUs.
This is what brought AMD to the table.
AMD and Intel both need to compete in mobile (Score:2, Insightful)
They have to because we're going mobile with or without them. This much has been clear for years. They're trying to come up to speed, and Fusion looks like a credible effort but it's not going to be under anyone's tree this year - and iPads and iPhones and Android phones and tablets on ARM will be. Oak Trail from Intel looks promising but we'll need actual power and performance figures to know for sure.
Windows? It's not coming with us. It will wither slowly in the first world. It has a long tail. Familiarity is important. But the next billion users? Almost all of them will come online having never used it, or a machine that can use it - and they'll do fine.
Re:Desktop dinosaurs realize mobile cannibalizatio (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt AMD or Intel feel much of a sting from the 4-5 million iPad units sold this year, but strategically, this is an area where both AMD and Intel have to start worrying about. There are a ton of low-end consumer spec devices growing rapidly in a highly volatile market of mobile phones and personal computing devices. This is an area where X86 systems have fared poorly. Intel and AMD need to find some magic to get themselves through the door before the market is so tight upon ARM arch that there's no hope for penetration.
How did they get here:
1. Intel blew their early adopter chances here when they dropped StrongArm/XScale years back. Maybe the licensing and profits were bad then, but it makes it a lot harder now to claw back into the sector
2. Intel bought into Atom big time, which combined with Windows put the chill on Linux/ARM based netbooks before it got enough traction to become 'a threat' to the status quo, though I doubt Intel makes nearly as much as it does when compared to a standard Notebook computer, residuals are better than nothing, though its yet to be seen just how low end (power and affordability) that Intel can scale down the chip line.
3. Both AMD and Intel are not seeing gigantic sales growth in PC CPU's or GPU's, so they need to look at other areas to continue to grow their businesses
4. With supporting Meego, at least AMD will gain compatibility for free instead of say investing in OHSA requiring the native pieces to be ported from ARM7 to X86
5. Nokia has been supporting Maemo as an also run Windows mobile type smart phone OS for a long time, and having iPhone, Android, WebOS, and WP7 absolutely blow their offerings out of the water means that something had to change with them. I'm not sure why they just can't pull something compelling together, but its hurting the company until they work on getting something. I personally think that bringing in Qt was a bad decision which has at least in a small part hindered efforts to get product to market.
Why this probably doesn't matter to consumers in the long run:
1. We have three large companies (AMD, Intel, Nokia) that are all considered dinosaurs of their industries who have very little impact on the software development or OS space to make me think that they can pull off a win in both areas of the scale needed for this product to do well
2. They have a large hurdle in getting X86 capable of competing on mobile computer-type devices at the same power efficiency that ARM chips seem to get for a lot less effort. They could license ARM which gets them part of the way, but then they get bit with higher royalties
3. In 2 years when the 'tablet computing' fad has largely blown off, Intel and AMD will realize that its just not that important to keep pushing down their marginal revenues until its just not worth the investment to keep with it. Nokia will either keep with Meego (and hopefully for them) make something substantial out of it for their phone platforms or just fumble along as they have with efforts like Symbian and further reduce their mind share and eventually their revenues
Re:Desktop dinosaurs realize mobile cannibalizatio (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia has been supporting Maemo as an also run Windows mobile type smart phone OS for a long time, and having iPhone, Android, WebOS, and WP7 absolutely blow their offerings out of the water means that something had to change with them. I'm not sure why they just can't pull something compelling together, but its hurting the company until they work on getting something. I personally think that bringing in Qt was a bad decision which has at least in a small part hindered efforts to get product to market.
I agree with everything else but this. Have you used an N900? Maemo is the most capable of the mobile OS's and it's a solid progression from the previous versions. The interface is slick - four desktops with useful widgets, combined IM/SMS/SIP "conversations", nice view of multiple running apps and more. The reasons it's niche is because Nokia has not aimed Maemo at the general public, but instead has targeted a small geek market. In fact the N900 is marketed as a mobile computer, not a phone. I'll bet their next Maemo or Meego offering will be a smart phone.
Qt has long surpassed GTK and since Nokia owns the company they'd be nuts not to use it. From what I can tell they've done a fine job of transitioning developers.
Re:Desktop dinosaurs realize mobile cannibalizatio (Score:3, Insightful)
Qt has long surpassed GTK
Um, I think the words you're looking for is "GTK has never caught up to Qt". Qt was first, GTK was a crappy response to it by a panicked FSF.
Nokia Icon? (Score:4, Insightful)