And the first shot from the China show comes from ..... Intel.

"Hey guys, don't pay any attention to the rest of this show because our Bay Trail Chipset is coming in very late 2013 at 22nm and is is going to be a quad core that is gonna be really really great and just in time to miss the Christmas sales season."

Sad thing is Intel has been hawking this Bay Trail chipset for longer than one whole ARM development cycle now, and during that over one year period of time ARM has actually delivered up a whole bunch of quad core chipsets, the best of which are now at 20nm and shrinking to 16nm shortly.   Clover Trail is the chip set Intel actually delivered this year, and it is just another 32nm dual core ATOM chip in a whole world of 28nm quad core ARM stuff.

Intel yaks about their future vaporwear, while ARM delivers their quad core chips, then actually has the time to improve them for a full nm shift/generation before Intel even makes it to the starting gate.

Prediction:  by the time 22nm quad core Bay Trail actually ships inside a product there will be several 20nm octa core ARM chip sets inside a product shipping at or under 20nm.   Christmas will be ARM this year, quad core and 28nm or better across the board.

.... and Intel slips further behind from that point onwards, heading towards "who cares?' year by year by year.

At this point Intel has no answer to Big/LITTLE for power consumption and they haven't even announced any future vaporware plans for an octa core chipset for a tablet or a laptop.  Their developmental speed sucks compared even to the Chinese little guys and I suspect they will be lapped by them shortly as well as the new ARM generations keep rolling out year on year.

Prediction:  By 2016, Intel will not be in front of even the Chinese little guys on nanometer size or core count.

I for one can't wait for android OS 5,  I've already got a quad core phone just itching for a new o/s that makes full use of the cores.   I've also got a Nexus 7  16GB model but I can't remember what processor or number of cores it's got.

I use my phone alot more then I do the tablet for all my mobile needs, the screen is almost as big, it's the Samsung Galaxy Note 2

R.F.

And Microsoft rings the news gong again .... not even being there they are once again hot news during pre-show time.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57578883-75/no-microsoft-office-for-ios-and...

No Microsoft Office for iOS, Android until fall 2014?

"An alleged road map for Microsoft's coming Gemini wave of Office updates, if accurate, indicates Microsoft's Office for iOS and Android -- as well as Outlook for Windows RT -- might not happen as soon as many had hoped for and expected."

Now, bounce this around the China Mobil Conference for two weeks and let all the folks talk to it and about it during their various presentations of alternate tablet and phone OS systems.   You could get yourself a budding consensus of an action plan that simply doesn't include Microsoft at all, not even at the fringes, not even with the products that people actually like (but apparently cannot ever get).

Before long, somebody will have to ask Linus an innocent question at a Helsinki University Linux talk about this topic, and Linus may well have to apply his middle finger of death again to yet another uncooperative bullheaded vendor.

Fall of 2014 will be quite a ways out measured in ARM time, and everyone will then be deep deep inside the 64 bit changeover mode by then.  Things will be moving way way too fast for Microsoft to hit the hillside behind the backstop, much less hit a rapidly evolving and moving ARM/Linux target.  

And remember, Google just bought themselves a ARM/Android company that makes a Office compatible suit that opens, changes and saves a standard MS file just fine.   Such an item may well become the open source standard for MS file exchange, contributing code to Open Office and all the rest as needed to make MS's current stupidity/stubborness pretty much a non-issue by fall of 2014.

Well, Microsoft/Intel's last chance at large scale relevance in phone/tablet space depends on ARM/Android/Linux screwing up the 64 bit transition in some meaningful manner, and making a bobble period that gives Wintel a chance to exceed/excel during that bobble period.

You can see that Intel's hardware timing for Bay Trail is aimed at the early half of 2014 and Microsoft is frantically working at optimizing Windows Blue (9.0) to fit that hardware feature set exactly, yielding optimized results.   Given a whole year, they might actually make it.

The weakest moment in any new hardware platform is the 64 bit transition period, when standards for the new 64 bit OS are not jelled completely and the hardware isn't compliant completely because the specs aren't shaken out completely yet and both are "searching" for a fit.

Yes, you see everybody working on 64 bit right now -- but are they coordinated enough?   ARM and Android and Linaro are in lock step so far, so if your cheap Chinese hardware isn't 64 bit standardized then you get booted down to the 32 bit execution mode instantly which is where you should stay.

My prediction here is that the Chinese quad core A9 guys make no effort to go 64 bit in any meaningful way, so the 2014 grades of Android must make a quick decision to execute in 32 bit mode and simply go that way for these products and always execute in 32 bit mode using fast 32 bit programming.   Actually, a separate 32 bit Android makes sense for at least one transition flavor of 64 bit Android ....

A major bobble would be having the software check every time a program lights up (slows down things considerably).    Much smarter would be having a separate Android xx for 32 bit processors and a fully optimized Android xx for the relatively few first generation 64 bit fully compatible devices.  

Or simply not allow incompatible devices to load the new 64 bit software in the first place.

This would give a cut off wall at Key Lime Pie for anybody who isn't fully 64 bit compatible.   Mellow Macaroon would not even start up unless you had a fully compatible 64 bit system to run it on.   Harsh, yes, but if you go muddled you give away relevance and a second chance to Wintel for in essence "better planning" than yours.

Microsoft/Intel's last true hope is a muddled up mess in Android land that allows them to excel for a short period of time.   We will see which camp can keep their act together better during this critical period.




......  Ballmer's Last Stand, Intel's Alamo


If I were Wintel, the people working on Bay Trail would sit in the same physical office as the Windows Blue people, desks side by side with the hardware/software guys from the two companies paired up for each major chunk of the software.   And their stated goal would be "excellence in optimization" right at the product launch.   They might even merge the two companies together (if Intel was stupid enough to do that to themselves).

Heck, if they want to be Apple so durn bad then by golly do it like Apple does ...

Oldfeller--FSO wrote on 04/15/13 at 08:05:15:


Well now that that has happened maybe Cisco will get their act together again and start putting out decent switches again.  They really went down hill when they got on board with Linksys.

R.F.

My wife wants to use her Ipad to beam a movie over to the TV using air play.  This is a wifey request as we are considering dumping cable again and she wants to get to all her shows that she is currently watching on her Ipad up on the big screen.

Apple TV is quite expensive and it doesn't work 100% with older Ipads.   I told her this up front.

What to do?         What to do?      

I told her to get her Ipad upgraded to IOS 5 at the Apple Store in Raleigh NC, get her airplay button up on the screen and I'd try to get her a box for the TV.

I watch this shite go by all the time and I remembered seeing a box with a large wifi antenna and it had decent memory and it made some Airplay claims for Ipads mirroring to the big TV using a driver they supply.

So, what the heck, for $69 I looked it back up again and I bought one -- it will arrive in two weeks roughly.

I am not so naive that I expect it to actually suck a signal well enough from an across the room Ipad to watch a real movie out of it, but I do expect it to come in fully rooted so I can load a future OS on it later on after the wife tires of her new toy and I get to re-purpose it later on.   Until then, I got a cordless keyboard to drive the thing and I can play with Android a bit to see what it can do compared to my old PC (   without risking or wasting anything as it is a Wifey Do Project   ).

http://miniandroidpc.com/shop/mk812-dual-core-a9-mini-pc-with-camera-micropho...






Key thing here is I didn't spend a mint on an apple box that has known issues, and I can always claim the Chinese lied to me and show her the Youtube video of it working.

OF this is the one I would have gotten if I were you, it's got the Exynos 4412 Quad core cpu in it

MK4412 Quad-core Exynos 4412 Android 4.2.1 Mini PC

It's on the same site from the link you provided above.

R.F.