No way to 'stomp' on it - embedded is bigger than PC and has been for a couple of years. So if Intel wants to fight ARM, they need to one or more of the following: 1. Make a 'synthesizable', power efficient Atom. I don't think they can do much about the power unless they completely recraft it, and then who knows what happens to x86 legacy apps. 2. Buy ARM, if they can afford it. 3. Buy MIPS, like I've been hearing for a while now. 4. Build up the sexiness of Atom with things like enhanced security (that's become kind of a hot button for us.) This might be the Europe outfit that's rumored to have the goods - called Iunika, in Madrid (wow! How cool is that?): http://www.mips.com/news-events/newsroom/newsindex/index.dot?id=27937 Maybe this Iunika bunch is using MIPS for an MCU to run encryption for laptops? That wraps it all up - Intel needs a real embedded play and buys MIPS, and makes its embedded more appealing with the iunika security code.

Not kidding in the slightest - any kind of synthesizable embedded CPU that could support x86 ISA would be HUGE. I've been hearing for a good 6 months now about Intel getting serious about embedded to stay competitive, and maybe buying MIPS or ARM. If they're going on a spending spree in 2011 and buy an embedded RISC house, that would impact us in a big, big way. The RISC approach will consume lots less power than Atom, and if they could add better HW security too (maybe the Europe startup?), they would become a 'real' embedded player.

Going deeper submicron is all well and good, but it doesn't mean much to the place where I work. We're a MIPS house and can't use Atom. But there's chatter around the cubes about Atom getting a badly needed facelift, licensing an encryption CPU from some startup in Europe and maybe making Atom synthesizable - could affect us big time if Intel finally gets serious about embedded.

Going deeper submicron is all well and good, but it doesn't mean much to the place where I work. We're a MIPS house and can't use Atom. But there's chatter around the cubes about Atom getting a badly needed facelift, licensing an encryption CPU from some startup in Europe and maybe making Atom synthesizable - could affect us big time if Intel finally gets serious about embedded.