http://www.pcworld.com/article/2890812/mediatek-wants-to-put-its-chips-in-chr...http://www.omgchrome.com/expect-broadwell-chromebooks/MediaTek and Rockchip and Intel Intel has now rolled out its 14nm "high end" ChromeWar chipset, with no integration beyond a separate 22nm video chip on board with a lackuster less than 10% speed improvement, but with some battery life improvement and some 10-20% video speed improvement.
It is a flop from the gate, being already pre-overcome by all the new big new guns from Tegra K1 and X1 and Mediatek and Samsung and Qualcomm.
It is also quite expensive to produce, comparatively.
So, Intel has to go buy a chipset to exist in the Chrome Wars the second half of this year since their next up chipsets are the Intel Core i3 stuff that are supposed to sell at a premium to PAY for the contra revenue spending down in the Chrome Zone.
Core i3 isn't energy efficient enough for a Chromebook, so you will only see them showing up in the plug in the wall socket style Chrome Boxes.Somebody else's chipset is needed in the Chrome Book Zone, immediately. Or else a total redesign of the Broadwell 14nm chipset to render it competitive.
Intel is known to be in talks with Mediatek to buy and rename brand their Helios X10 64 bit Octa Core product to use in the Chrome Book Zone. They have pushed Rockchip to go there too, but Rockchip is notoriously slow to go do things (more so after having been Intel'd already once).
Some speculate Intel has offered tenders to buy Mediatek complete (or else a large chunk of it) as that is what Wall Street Pundits keep saying Intel should do (and have been saying it for years now).
Intel's clumsy "can't succeed" has begun to lap over from phones and tablets to the Chrome Zone and they are starting to try to name brand other people's products in these "can't succeed" areas.
Having mauled one Chinese name branding partner already, Intel is finding the next one harder to approach. Being able to buy a 20% share in Spreadtrum isn't floating Intel's boat very well as Spreadtrum only does very very low end ARM chipsets and that does not include the Chrome Book Zone.
At 28nm ARM vendors were better than Intel was at 22nm. At 20nm ARM vendors are better than Intel is at 14nm. 16nm ARM will be a similar story to 20nm as far as Intel goes. 14nm fully integrated and past that point,
ARM vendors are actually arriving there first and shipping production runs of finished products before Intel even gets into volume first chip production.
Intel is going to have to "partner" with Chinese Chipmakers from now on in order to do anything significant past this point, which means their sourced chip product prices will have to carry two profit margins.Intel is rowing a very very leaky boat at this stage of the game and cannot keep up with the bailing and the paddling that is required and Intel is starting to flounder about not making a lot of progress.
But they have enough money to flounder around for another 3-4 years, doing occasional downsizings, etc. Lots of PR noise, not much progress.
..... if Samsung and Apple produce 10nm chipsets before Intel does, it begins to look grim for Intel.