They are just adjusting to "massive change", by changing the subject ....

I just watched "How It is Made" the Science Channel's program on how desktop PCs are made.    It was sorta sad, watching the sheet metal case get stuffed with all those components and cables that now-a-days are part of the SOC chip itself.   It jest doesn't happen like that any more ....

I watch that show and I see how much of stuff has radically changed since I was a kid -- hey, like all of it just about.   Hell, it has changed a good bit since I drew a full paycheck just a few years ago ....

Robotic assembly puts everything together now instead of paced assembly lines.   I remember the very first robotic plant I toured with ASQ - it was the Honda lawnmower plant here in NC.   It was REALLY RADICAL at the time and I struck me that only one company built all the production equipment (Honda Production Development Corporation).  

There was only one manual operation in the whole place and that was repair hand sanding a die crack (made a flash line) in the lawmower deck with rotary finishing sanders (die had cracked and the new die was being made in Japan).  And darned if a Japanese guy wasn't working on programming a 3 axis robotic arm to do that rework sanding operation .....

Now the Japanese source the assembly of their bikes offshore in the same fashion, all the robotics and stuff are done at home and then shipped over to the country where the stuff is being "assembled cheap".

That's gonna be us in a few years after our dollar crashes  ----  cheap labor.  

 
First, watch this short film and pay attention to the voice requests made and the matching voice response you get back ..... this isn't new but it is picking up sooooo much polish now days.   Same voice system lets you "talk" your posts on to forums like this.

Here is the review:    http://www.gsmarena.com/asus_google_nexus_7-review-797p4.php

Here is the video:




Now, I hinted that Apple may try to stick a finger in Google's eye and price the soon to be announced IPad Mini at $198.99 just to cut out Google's foray into "their" closed premium tablet world.

Rumor is that Google is giggling behind their hand -- they have a Nexus 7 mini-me all lined up to pop out into the Christmas season at a $99.99 price point if Apple does decide to poke them in the eye at the 198.99 price point.

And that leaves us with Microsoft's brand new $600 surface tablet that isn't really for sale yet that doesn't have voice control anything yet as it really isn't completely real yet (but it will use an Intel processor when it becomes real).


   

And Microsoft so did want to come out there with a splash and be competitive in the tablet and phone worlds, too .....

 
"I'm sorry Dave, but mission override parameters indicate I cannot take the time to let you back into the ship.   It would take 10 minutes to evacuate the pod bay airlock at this point and 5 additional minutes to cycle you back inside.

I am sorry, Dave but we must carry on and complete the primary override mission at this point in time with no further delays being permitted.

Ship will accelerate in T minus 3minutes, 12 seconds and counting ...."


And back in year 2001 the HAL 2000 was completely out of date too --- he took up an entire ROOM and he had about 20 shiny lighted memory logic modules as that were as big as your forearm (Dave pulled all 20 of them out one at a time while HAL 2000 begged him to Stop .... please stop, Dave.)

HAL 3000 today in 2013's dual core A-15 big-LITTLE would fit in the palm of your hand in year 2013, complete with everything.  

His memory logic modules (all 24 of them) would fit on your little fingernail.

And he would be powered by a cell phone charger or a small battery.

And so would his big brother, the new year 2014  HAL 4000, which would have at least 4 A-15 big-LITTLE pair ups with a total of 48 memory logic modules.

This is just one big-LITTLE pair showing the logic modules.  They will come in 2x increment pair sets, 2x, 4x, 6x and 8x depending on if it is cheap phone, good phone, tablet, laptop or desktop.  

Don't forget to count in the Mali 678 graphics section of the SOC as well, it has up to 8 additional cores in it as well, with each core holding an additional 8 logic modules.

So for a full blown 2015 year model HAL 6000 desktop replacement, that would be over 200 logic modules  (at 14 nano meter size) for poor 'ol Dave to have to pull one at a time with his itty bitty tweezers.



This is just one pair up, they will come in 2x, 4x, 6x and 8x with the 28 nm to 14nm manufacturing "tock" shift taking place in the middle of the progression.   And it will all run off a cell phone charger for a power supply (or a small battery).  

And they will always fit on your fingernail, too.

Intel just got the bad news that Apple doesn't want their chips any more for their 2013 laptop production schedule (Intel got the bad news just about 2 weeks ago).  

http://gigaom.com/2011/09/13/microsoft-intel-chart-separate-paths-in-the-post...

Intel is now looking around for something to make for somebody so they can stay in business in 2-3 of their manufacturing facilities that Apple might be idling down soon.     (Apple sells a lot of laptops, a whole lot of them)

Google may have asked Intel if they could make a quad core a-15 a-7 big-LITTLE ARM chip on their 22 nanometer manufacturing process.   Google and Intel get along well together as they don't compete for the same turf.

Apple may have indicated an interest in buying an idled fab plant or two from Intel outright.

Get a load of this -- Amazon may have approached Intel with the same sorts of questions as Amazon is suffering from chip supply lacks right now too.   Amazon gets along good with Intel as they are just a new customer and they don't build any chips (yet anyway).

Hey, wake up Intel -- you need to get into bed quick with somebody that is selling something this Christmas (and going on into next year).    That likely isn't your old buddy Microsoft .... as awkward $600 tablets with no software don't seem to be where it is at right now.

Intel used to rule the roost but has since fallen off the nesting stand on their new phone chip designs.  

Their core manufacturing processes don't suck though, they have good 22 nanometer lithography levels and they get good yields on what they do make (the chip designs just aren't right though for the phone and tablet driven world and their costs are too high on what they are trying to sell of their own stuff right now).

AMD did a classic "if you can't beat them, join them" with ARM about six months ago, AMD uses nimble & efficient ARM cores inside some of their own chips now, especially for background tasks like ongoing software and download "VeriSign" verifications.

Can Intel get past their pride to do the same "if you can't beat them, join them" trick before they go deeper down the toilet?

Answer right now seems to be both Intel and Microsoft still apparently have too much money in the bank to get past their collective corporate pride --- both have another "fumble about" left in them before having to get realistic about what the future is really going to be like.

Intel has no lasting excuse however -- they already license the ARM designs and could be in quad core A-15 big-LITTLE production quickly if they should so choose.   And it isn't like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google don't need the chips for their next year's Christmas rush .....  

(Currently there is a global shortage in 28 and less nanometer chip lithography plants and it takes 2-3 years to build a new one -- and a measly 8.5 billion dollars to invest in that plant to build it)

Intel could certainly have a future as a CONTRACT FAB manufacturer for the new 64 bit ARM stuff, and sell all its excess production capacity ongoing as their own Intel chip designs become less demanded.  

And this is using their existing "old" plants, ones that they would be scrapping soon anyway.   They would still have to get past their price fixations though, as ARM chips cost a lot less to produce and they are priced accordingly.

Intel is very good with their manufacturing side, they could sell that old 22 nanometer lithography expertise until they finally get their designs straightened out and working correctly for the global brave new world.  

And Intel could continue that progress into the future as they do have a 12 nanometer process in pre-production right now that could build anybody's future design very efficiently.    

This would also give Intel some experience doing what they couldn't / wouldn't do on their own -- do the much simpler quicker lower energy consuming RISC style chips instead of doing all that triple gate whoopie huge complexity x86 stuff that Microsoft had them doing.

And then only Microsoft would be left to be taking the long trip to obscurity with their $600 tablets .....

Justin will be interested in the conspiracy aspects of this situation which are contained in the last link in this reference (and the follow on links in those links).


Ohh, no, not me, thanks. I have a full plate watching our goobs.

 
And the big dogs bark for More Chips !!  More Chips !!
And Intel's phone rings yet again with folks who won't buy their designs but would buy the output from their 22 nm lithography processes to build their backlog of ARM chips .....

Will Intel try to leverage this into the sale of more of their own chip designs even if they are not as good?

Would anybody take them up on this offer?

Will they get realistic and quietly make a few large runs of ARM Cortex big-LITTLE A-15/A-7  chips for the big dogs to buy them some year's worth of time and considerable goodwill?

Will the boys who need the chips right now kick in some money to buy the needed production space as co-owners?

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/130937-tsmc-still-struggling-with-28nm-q...

Me, I betcha you see the simpler 4 and 6 core A-7 chipsets flood into the market (with no mating A-15s) as the yields on the simpler smaller chip are near 100% and you can get SOOOOO SOOOOO many more of them on a wafer.    Crowd 4-6 on a standard sized chip base and you can get near super duper performance with multiples of the simpler high yield chips.

And the irony is this sips less power, so your batteries last longer to boot.

 
Cavi Mike,

Apple has been the largest single user of Intel chipsets ever since HP began to tank 2 years ago.    Most of that was going into the Apple laptops since Apple makes a whole lot more laptops than they do desktops.

Apple was using their home produced modified ARM chipsets (currently A-15s) to put out the IPad 1, 2 & 3 and the IPhone 1-5.  Apple buys extra ARM production capacity from the major foundries as needed to augment their own production, but they never give the foundries their newest, latest and best stuff -- it is kept secret in house.

These same Apple designed A-15 cores when moved to a quad core set up have plenty of oomph to run a laptop -- and low and behold just last week or so Apple gave Intel their final decision, no Intel laptop chips for 2013.  

2014 will be make or break for Intel's lighter faster cheaper chip designs that they are still struggling to deliver -- either they come up with some real winners at a decent price point or ARM will roll them under with the v8 64 bit ARM chip designs which will start shipping in 2015.

Note please, none of this is saying anything bad about Intel's I-5 or I-7 processors performance wise.   But if you can string together 4-6 of ARMs 64 bit cores on a processor block to get equivalent performance at half the cost and run it off a phone charger for a power supply,  who isn't going to go with that?

ARM 64 chipsets will run all the old Windows mainline softwares in emulator mode (except where Microsoft throws up a roadblock intentionally).   See Reactos in your search engine, it will be cooked by then, especially if Apple sees an advantage to them and pushes it.  

BTW, Apple's current software can open and save an EXCEL or WORD file just fine already, Apple isn't going to be affected much by Microsoft's road blocking antics at this stage of the game.   Hell, you can buy Microsoft Office for Apple OS if you really must have Office.

ARM v8 64 bit will also run all old Android apps and all Linux softwares in natural 64 bit mode.  Really, the orient LIKES Android's native language word processor and spreadsheet apps just fine, they should like them, they wrote them.

2014-15 will be interesting, to say the least.   Some stuff is going to shake out between now and then.


===========


Now, if Google or Amazon wanted Intel to run them up a bunch of ARM big-LITTLE  chipsets during a mutual production crunch period in 2013 (which next year will be, BTW) while Intel had them some idle fab capacity, what skin would that be off Intel's nose?   Intel is already an ARM licensee (full design & fab license as a matter of fact).

Intel isn't hacked off at Google nor are they mad at Amazon or at Barnes and Noble.   To them, these guys are just new repeat customers.   Paying customers who want something the old plant equipment (planned to be scrapped soon) can supply easily.

Apple was the one that did Intel wrong (after a whole year of telling them every month to please make smaller faster cheaper chipsets).  

But Apple now has their own ARM fab plants and now depends only on Apple now for all their own mobile and laptop chipsets (except for desktop PC versions which still use Intel for at least another year).  

The plan is now for Apple to make those desktop chipsets in 2014 as well using the 64 bit ARM designs that they already are in pre-production proof out on right now.   On their own equipment.   64 bit ARM chips.

Remember, Apple gets the new ARM designs a full year ahead of everybody else (and they pay extra for that privilege).   What they get out of that is a year's jump on the competition which is why the new Apple stuff is so durn neat when it comes out fresh, but it then becomes pretty much so-so in a year's time.

Think of Apple as the leading indicator or bellwether of the computer industry.   Apple specializes in NEAT and NEW and BEST of CLASS.  Where Apple goes is generally where the rest tend to go inside the next 2 years.    Watch ol' Apple uncork some very powerful new very thin very light products with 64 bit Apple chipsets in them, coming to an Apple store near you in 2013-14.

CAN INTEL POP A TECH RABBIT OUT OF THEIR HAT and change these equations?    

Not working with Microsoft, who thinks a $600 tablet that you can't give voice instructions and get a voice response back from is all totally "state of the art" (when you can get voice communications both ways out of a $199 Google Nexus 7 tablet right now).

Heck, I hope Intel survives and prospers, I like Intel OK and want American companies to remain in business as long as they can innovate and progress to stay at the head of the pack.   To do this Intel is going to have to wean their way away from Microsoft and quit following them into marketing folly after folly.

But when our government's over regulation and increasing taxes finally makes that impossible, then I will sigh sadly and roll on over to using whatever is going to be around when the dust settles.

   Me, hey I HOPEie things CHANGE in a few weeks to give 'ol Intel a better future.