Ain't it magical?   I makes me a prediction, and it comes to pass .....

Harsh facts coming out of ARM land is that only Samsung had made a first 14nm core that didn't do the thermal slow down thing so badly that performance was degraded.

Part of it was Samsung's intelligent spec'ing of the output,  actually do X+ but only claim X such that when it gets warm in your product it does not drop below X.   Samsung did that this past year with their first 14nm chipset since their drop down X was still faster than anybody else's chipset's bogus X+ claims.

Intel isn't smart enough to do that -- they always claim the moon and then fall way way short.   Then, when they get caught falling short they "make a new version" with a high "turbo" setting just to move all the failed silicone.   Qualcomm has started doing this too, with their 810/808 chipsets.

Many times the very quick "new Intel part number" changes you see are somewhat bogus, just a respec'ing of wiped clean and part number reprinted chipsets.   Or, if sorting for Apple had taken place, the selling off of the sort failures as another part number.  

For example, Qualcomm admits that the 808 chipsets are 810's that failed testing and are being sold as lesser products.


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So, everybody has the 14nm and lower thermal issues now, but ARM has decided to combat this widespread issue with MORE CORES and very quick core switching built into the Android scheduling software.   Lots of ramped sets of cores and good switching software also allows for better energy management and it keeps throughput higher than a full thermal dump on just 4 cores will allow.

All of Intel's cores are MUCH BIGGER and less energy efficient than the current ARM cores.   They make more heat per milliamp of processor power and 14nm Intel currently gets thermal degradation  twice as badly as ARM does, to the order of half speed to 1/3 speed after warm up when run in a product that does not allow for a fan and a humongous heat sink.
 
A phone for example .....  phones can have heat spreaders, but it increases the weight of the phone rapidly.   And BTW Intel, using your battery as a heat spreader isn't the smartest move either.

Intel now specs BIG heat sinks and fans for all their 14nm products.    And nobody is using Intel phone chips any more.

More and smaller (less heat sensitive) cores is the only path Intel has to follow right now.  Being Intel, they will go with multiples of whatever core count they actually plan to use and they will spread the cores out such that the built-in heat spreader can take heat from the active set easily and move it out to the heat sink and fan.    Then the active set of cores will be switched to march around the population of many cores according to some scheduling algorithm or else each core will get used sporadically and then let sit idle for a few cycles to cool down.  Either way works to the same end, spread out the heating effects by lowering the % utilization time per core.

Intel will not go to 10nm as they already know it won't work for them.   You can bet they are frantically working on a non-silicon 7nm process that does not violate the IBM patents though.


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Here is my woopie thought for this week.    Those working with the new non-silicon stuff say it is a lot faster and it uses less power.

What if the non-silicon stuff is faster and better,  enough faster and better such that a larger, existing lithography node could offer large performance increases compared to the existing best of the best using silicon based 14nm ???

Wow, you could be back in business kicking out improved products ASAP that way.



Now do you understand why Google is hiring a very few of the very best processor designers away from Qualcomm and Samsung?   Google needs to understand the new non-silicon chipsets ahead of time, up to two years before they are released, so the OS can be ready for them.

Now let's say the dirty word --- COST.

A Windows phone is VERY expensive to buy, and you really are going to wind up buying it from Microsoft since nobody else is building them for much any more.

Next, you got no apps.   And if you want one that does exist, it COSTS you plenty.   And if MS happens to roll Windows Phone out from underneath it, well, tough turkey.    Go buy you a new phone.

Next, your MS Phone has a KNOWN track record as a pain in the butt to live with as far as how well the software runs over time (lots of buggy updates) ---- and MS has just shown a recent willingness to discontinue supporting your 1-2 year old phone COMPLETELY --  just plain stone cold dead.

I think the people MS screwed over so far mostly went to Android, the abandonment numbers line up pretty good with the non-support for Win 10 on the existing Windows Phone populations.

And now you know why MS has dropped development support on the Windows 10 Mobile line on quite a few of its model numbers, functions and support items.

Mutual abandonment -- a customer/supplier suicide pact


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http://liliputing.com/2015/11/reports-windows-falling-fast.html

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3169417

http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2015/mobility-report/ericsson-mobility-repor...

Reports: Windows Phone market share is falling fast

"Android is the world’s most popular smartphone operating system, followed by iOS. Windows comes in a distant third, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon… unless Windows movies further down the ladder."

Well, Win Phone is moving alright, skipping a couple of rungs at a time now as it drops down towards Blackberry status.

http://liliputing.com/2015/11/microsofts-con08-or-810-chip.html

Microsoft’s Continuum for phone requires a Snapdragon 808 or 810 chip

Microsoft has rolled their dice and made their play -- if you want full Windows 10 support on a MS Windows phone for real, you MUST use a Qualcomm 808 or 810 (same chipset, actually).   Intel chipsets need not apply.  Furthermore, only top end Lumina phones and the Acer Jade Primo are fully supported right now.





"To repeat, your old Windows phone is NOT supported for Continuum unless you chose rightly, and recently  --  i.e. if you bought one of the first three phones that we know of that will support Continuum software: the Lumia 950, Lumia 950 XL, and Acer Jade Primo that is."

The rest of you Windows phone people (yeah, all the Intel chipped guys) well, you are out in the cold going forward.

Sorry.

http://www.itworld.com/article/2968437/windows/good-bye-chromebooks-acers-new...

Every once and a while it is good to go out to light house point and get in a boat and ride out in the deep open ocean currents to see which way the current is going out where it really counts.

In this case, we ride out to the IT World lighthouse point and we put in our boat in the water and we ride out for an hour and a half.  Then we park our boat way out there by the Preston Gralla sona-buoy way out there in the deep deep Microsoft IT main ocean current and we lower our instrument package into the main current itself.  

This is so far out in the MS Gulf Stream that no-one could mistake which way the currents should run, right?   I mean really, we are doing our sampling right next to the official sona-buoy for chriminny sakes .....

To perform this experiment, you need to read the article and then read the comments below the article.

This is a whole dolphin school of IT professionals responding to a respected MS preacher who had just delivered what was last year's standard pulpit sermon -- and they wholesale threw it back in his face like he was getting slapped by a wet fish for being stupid.


If you didn't think things were changing for much, please reconsider that mindset after taking your little boat trip.    Even IT professionals know very well what Chromebooks are good for and why that is the way it is.



http://www.itworld.com/article/2968437/windows/good-bye-chromebooks-acers-new...

http://semiaccurate.com/2015/05/04/microsoft-just-palmed-mobile-market/

This is deep and chewy stuff -- very sales and marketing detailed and it is completely based on 20 years of watching computing grow and develop.

It isn't an easy read, but the man makes his salient points in the first sentence of each paragraph and then spends the rest of the paragraph proving the salient point.   It makes it easy to scan the article and you only need to deep read the bits that catch your attention.

If you want to know why MS suddenly can't do anything right, this man has an explanation.  It isn't a very nice explanation, but he's got one.

Realize he wrote this back in April of this year, and it looks like his predictions all came true in the time line he estimated.    Microsoft did indeed lose mobile market share hand over fist since this article first hit print.   They have literally lost half of what they had and are still dropping like a rock in deep water.   MS literally can't do anything right any more.

So, you can perhaps say his theories have worked out in real life and can now possibly be considered "explanations".    Just not very nice ones ......

http://semiaccurate.com/2015/05/04/microsoft-just-palmed-mobile-market/

I read about this pulled update yesterday. Did the update break something or have they changed their mind? This is my biggest issue with MS these days. They seem to change direction every couple of weeks. I would certainly hate to be a corporate customer these days. How do you plan for the future when the target keeps moving?

Not to just pick on MS about screwing up updates. Apple has been having the same problems with IOS. Releases 8 and 9 come out and stuff breaks. The whole operating system business has become too complicated. Chrome intrigues me, but I have not tried it yet. I have no desire to dive into Internet access required cloud computing. Not that I don't trust the vendors, but I just don't trust the vendors.

Ed Bott speaks ......  Microsoft's pocket boy is completely bumbfuzzled by MS's actions.    Somewhat angry, too.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/ed-botts-weekly-wrap-update-disappears-amazon-ad...

"Microsoft's latest communication snafu dominated the news last week.

WINDOWS 10 NOVEMBER UPDATE (VERSION 1511) GOES MISSING

What happened to the big Windows 10 Microsoft released on November 12? It's supposed to be the first in a continuous series of new feature releases. But if you tried to update over the weekend, you were out of luck. The Windows Update servers appear to have stopped delivering the update package, and the manual tool has also been downgraded to the original release.

Microsoft yanks latest Windows 10 release from its download server

Another by-product is that anyone upgrading from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 today has no choice but to accept a 3 GB upgrade to build 10240, followed a month later by an equally large second upgrade to version 1511.

And to add insult to those injuries, the sudden removal of the build 10586 ISO files means that the newly added capability to do a clean install using a Windows 7 or Windows 8.x product key is now unavailable to the general public unless they were fast enough to download and save an ISO file before the change.

Microsoft's official statements on the matter are almost incoherent, and I'm told that the real reason is "complicated." Maybe we'll get some real answers next week.

============================

LUKEWARM LUMIA 950 REVIEWS

Microsoft released its Lumia 950 smartphone this week, the first of two flagship phones that will show off the Windows 10 Mobile operating system.

The reviews were not kind, in general

Peter Bright, Ars Technica: "Camera is great and Continuum is cool, but Windows Phone likely blew its last big chance"

Joanna Stern, WSJ: "Can a Smartphone Be Your PC?" (Spoiler: Probably not.)

Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet has a less-than-enthusiastic first look, with a more detailed report coming later.

One common impression: The first-of-its-kind Windows Hello feature, based on iris-scanning technology, is flawed, especially for anyone who wears glasses."

Ed Bott and Mary Jo Foley have reverted to being reporters now, rather than being an insider/booster.   They have both been cut off from the insider knowledge that they was once given, and both are honestly shocked at what is going on right now.

Chalk up another two members of the media who are not really happy with Microsoft at the moment.

OF, if 110 million computers have now gone to Win 10, do you have any idea of what percentage of the worlds computers 110 million is?