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By 91TTZ on 1/6/2011 10:13:24 AM , Rating: 2
This article is making it sound like Intel is fighting for its life trying to defend the x86 architecture. The writer makes it sound like if Intel can't get its x86 architecture to compete with ARM, Intel will slowly wither away and go out of business.

Reality is not nearly that extreme or exciting. ARM is a licensable architecture and if Intel wanted or needed to compete with other companies making processors using the ARM architecture, they could simply license the design and using its modern fabs and immense manufacturing capacity, could produce ARM chips at a speed and price that others would find hard to compete with. When AMD created the AMD64 extensions to the x86 architecture, Intel didn't wither away, they simply licensed the design.

As it is right now, Intel is following a more profitable business model of designing its own chips and paying no royalties to ARM. But if it suddenly became more profitable to produce ARM chips, they would. But let's be honest, with the size of Intel and the amount of engineers they employ, they would first try to create their own low power RISC architecture that competes with ARM.

