The only real advantages ARM has over x86 currently is:<p>a: licensing cost / production cost<p>b: Power consumption<p>If you think that intel wont have both of those factors down to ARM levels shortly, you dont know intel very well. They are very competitive and dont like to get beat.
There are really two markets for processors: consumer electronics, and real computing. ARM may be the best processor (whatever that means, as it's a design you license, not a piece of hardware) for looking at ads on a 3" display, but I think Intel is still going to be relevant in the server market for a while. Think about some of Intel's key assets like being really fast and having a C++ compiler that makes C++ even faster. This is important because programmers write horrendous code that needs hardware assistance to produce answers in a reasonable amount of time. (There are also problems to solve that require a lot of CPU power, like protein folding and finding the next Mersenne prime. ARM processors are not used for this.)<p>Now, if you're saying, "yeah, but not for desktops", I can agree with you. Desktops are going to become less and less powerful as the average computer user becomes more and more computer illiterate ("the Facebook dumb terminal", I'll call it), and ARM may help keep the cost down. But I'm probably not going to be running Emacs on an ARM box anytime soon. (Hell, I even use x86 for my <i>router</i>.)
I take issue with the notion of Intel's model being obsolete in the mobile world. Quite the opposite; Intel's business model of treating CPUs as commodity is for market of mature technology, while current mobile model of heavily (and costly) customizing SoCs is one for technology being still insufficient for achieving market goals.<p>If anything, it's the current mobile model that will go obsolete at some point -- simply because it's costly, both in terms of customizing SoCs, taping out small batches of silicon and customizing software for it. Mobile will shift to commodity components at some point.
Here's a prediction, Intel will still be a dominant player in CPUs 10 years from now. ARM is making progress, great, good luck competing with Intel in FAB capacity and engineering capability. The world isn't going to suddenly switch to 100% mobile CPUs, desktops and severs are still not just a big business but the biggest part of the business.
Another terrible asymco entrant. Interesting how the author pushes one philosophy for processors (the inevitable superiority of a licensed model) but if you've read their many pro-Apple screeds, exactly the opposite conclusion is pursued relative to Android.<p>Quite humorous really.