So far, Intel's Clover Trail+ Atom processor has only found a design win or two within Asian smartphones. But if ABI Research's report is accurate, smartphone makers and consumers alike should start clamoring for it.
In tests comparing almost all of the latest smartphone application processors, Intel's Atom Z2580 chip based on the Clover Trail+ architecture delivered comparable performance to the Samsung Exynos Octa and the Qualcomm APQ8064T. But Intel's chip also consumed 60 percent of the current of the Exynos Octa, and less than half (47 percent) of the current of the Qualcomm chip. (The Octa chip is found within European versions of the Samsung Galaxy S4, while the Qualcomm chip is used in the U.S. version.)
ABI Research's report measured the current draw, where current times voltage equals power. But the assumption is that the operating voltages are comparable. In short, Intel's Atom offers the same performance but with a much lower power draw than competing chips, ensuring longer battery life and significantly undercutting the ARM proposition its chips offer much longer battery life than traditional X86 chips. If the ABI report is true, then Intel stands a good chance of cutting into the traditional smartphone market.
In fact, James Mielke, vice president of engineering at ABI, told PCWorld that his firms' tests show that as the ARM providers increased the performance of their chips, the current drain scaled up as well, reducing battery life. This would imply as ARM's licensees scale up the clock speeds of their chips to meet the increasing demands of apps and other phone software, the battery life of those phones could dip as well.
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