I tend to think, that Intel will be able to leverage their process advantage also against ARM. For one thing, Atom based cell phones are at the moment rather unremarkable.[1] This means, that Intel can fully leverage the advantages of the 22 nm fin FET process. (Since the cell phones are unremarkable, one will get a good phone by just putting a better processor into the phone, as opposed to the risk of developing a viable platform for general use.) On slightly higher powered devices, Intel has a huge ecosystem and the marketing advantage of building stripped down versions of higher powered processors. For even higher performance, Desktops and Servers, Intel is already close to a monopoly and there is no one to change this. And in addition Knights Corner/ Xeon Phi seems to be a rather good competition for GPUs in HPC applications. ( They just don't have a good competition for IBMs Power processors.)
So in conclusion I think that Intel is in a good position to beat ARM in their home field (cellphones, tablets). Can easily shield the low power desktop/ netbook market from ARM and has of course the dominant position for high powered processors. So I simply do not see a bright future for ARM based (consumer) computing. ( That is not to say, that there are not niches for ARM, but Intel has the stronger position in everything the average consumer thinks of as computers.)
Comments
I tend to think, that Intel will be able to leverage their process advantage also against ARM. For one thing, Atom based cell phones are at the moment rather unremarkable.[1] This means, that Intel can fully leverage the advantages of the 22 nm fin FET process. (Since the cell phones are unremarkable, one will get a good phone by just putting a better processor into the phone, as opposed to the risk of developing a viable platform for general use.) On slightly higher powered devices, Intel has a huge ecosystem and the marketing advantage of building stripped down versions of higher powered processors. For even higher performance, Desktops and Servers, Intel is already close to a monopoly and there is no one to change this. And in addition Knights Corner/ Xeon Phi seems to be a rather good competition for GPUs in HPC applications. ( They just don't have a good competition for IBMs Power processors.)
So in conclusion I think that Intel is in a good position to beat ARM in their home field (cellphones, tablets). Can easily shield the low power desktop/ netbook market from ARM and has of course the dominant position for high powered processors. So I simply do not see a bright future for ARM based (consumer) computing. ( That is not to say, that there are not niches for ARM, but Intel has the stronger position in everything the average consumer thinks of as computers.)
[1]http://www.anandtech.com/show/5770/lava-xolo-x900-review-the...