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Rumor: iPhone may get x86 processor, and pigs might fly

by Mike Schramm Mar 12th 2008 at 6:00PM


The Inquirer isn't just counting their chickens before they hatch -- they're counting all the feathers, the chicken feet, and even the eggs of those chickens, too. When we first heard that the slide you see above (reportedly from a CeBit presentation from Intel) apparently meant that Apple was going to put an Intel x86 "Moorestown" processor in the iPhone, we did a double take, and then a triple take (how is the iPhone not the one labeled "Premium Smartphone?"), and then we said, "they're kidding, right?"

But no, apparently they weren't: Apple Insider has jumped on the x86Phone bandwagon as well (granted, they originally jumped in December of last year). It took Apple about ten years to decide to switch its computer line to Intel chips, but if you're willing to believe the reasoning on this one (and personally, I'm not), it's only going to take a tenth of that to decide that the iPhone needs an x86 chip, too.

[Via Techmeme]

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The Inquirer isn't just counting their chickens before they hatch -- they're counting all the feathers, the chicken feet, and even the...
 

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Topper

In my opinion it's only visual presentation of smartphone. It's well known, so audience gets the idea..

March 13 2008 at 6:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dmc

Notice how the iPhone is the only image that's got a white border? It had to have been added on there

March 13 2008 at 3:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to dmc's comment
Tony Hoyle

The image is just a collection of clipart. There's a tomtom on there, and an N810. Neither of which run intel or are likely to in the near future.

It's clearly been doctored also - notice right next to the iphone? There's an entry for 'premium smartphones'. Why would there be 'premium smartphones' and 'smartphones' right next to each other, and why would the iphone not be 'premium'?

March 13 2008 at 5:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin

What a terrible post... This is the 3rd TUAW post in recent times that comes off as uninformed and uneducated. I prefer it when the knowledge source knows more than me about the topic at hand, not vice versa... sigh...

March 13 2008 at 2:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
potato

PrimeOne: This is hard to believe because 1.5 to 2W of power is *a lot* for a cell phone, even by iPhone/Blackberry/Treo standards. Seriously. Keep in mind that you can TALK on the iPhone (the heaviest power use level) and *charge* at the same time via USB, which only provides a paltry 2.5W max.

A cell phone processor (like the ARM that the iPhone runs) needs to run in the milliwatt range to be feasible. The Intel Atom is more targeted towards things like mid-sized tablets and ultraportable (an Eee PC on crack?).

There's really no advantage for Apple to switch to Intel on the iPhone at this point. The original switch was because:

A - IBM couldn't provide a faster PowerPC chip quickly enough, with low enough power requirements.
B - Compatibility with the rest of the PC world.

The iPhone faces neither of these problems. ARM processors are robust and face no major speed/heat/power issues, and there's no such thing as running Windows on your iPhone! :)

March 12 2008 at 11:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Singulariter

http://www.intel.com/technology/atom/index.htm

March 12 2008 at 9:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
PrimeOne

How is this so hard to believe? The Intel display demo of the Moorestown platform for the Atom (A.K.A. Silverthorne) line of chips would be the perfect beast for such an x86iPhone. The Moorestown Platform for pete sake looks like an elongated iPhone anyway. The Atom (Silverthorne) chip can be 1.2 to 1.7 GHz on par with the Pentium M chips. They are also dual core with the graphics and on board memory on the proc while at most using 1.5 to 2 watts of power! This chip under clocked with apples power management system would easily make battery life extremely lengthy while providing a sleeping beast of a platform for who knows what of a multitude of applications.
The easy move over to such a platform would easily allow future development and easy updating. The move away from the arm platform would also make a unified code base that Apple could easily start pushing as an x86 embedded version that would just be minor tweaks for a system that is so widely already known.

March 12 2008 at 8:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to PrimeOne's comment
mmendoza27

That's what's weird. We are talking 1.7 Ghz (and performance compared to Pentium M) with 1.5 - 2 Watts usage. The iPhone runs at 412 Mhz (which it's underclocked) and uses 185 mW.

That means the Atom processor uses 2000 mW, so that's a bit of a difference. You'd have to majorly underclock the Atom processor to about 200 Mhz in order to get the same watt usage.

Is it practical to do that? Not really. I think there is a possibility that eventually the Atom processor (when it hits the 32nm fabrication) will hit the iPhone. But with the release of an SDK for the ARM iPhone, I think ARM is here to stay for a while. Even though Atom may be a beast!

March 13 2008 at 1:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
defor

Somehow i see this as unlikely, and more just a usage of clipart; another example would be the existance of the n800 nokia internet tablet in the middle of the graphic, clearly not a device using an intel cpu.

March 12 2008 at 8:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Edsel


My Apple sources tell me it will be an 8086 processor for Apple's forthcoming line of iRetro computing devices.

March 12 2008 at 7:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Liam

I don't think this is going to happen. It'd take too much of a hit on battery life, really. Intel aren't designing or marketing these chips for phones yet, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I think this is an area they are inevitably going to encroach on, though.

March 12 2008 at 7:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Codey H.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3254&p=1

Not to link elsewhere, but I think the Intel Atom technology is what's being referred to here.

March 12 2008 at 7:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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