Intel Atom inventor/CEO fired? Intel’s lower power Mobile Computing efforts failing?

Image by umpcportal.com via Flickr

Last week, the blogosphere exploded with speculation about what really happened at Intel, as Anand Chandrasekher, the founder of the Intel Atom group, the man responsible for launching Intel’s MID and UMPC initiatives, the manager of Intel’s efforts to reach into tablets and smartphones, he was either fired or he voluntarily resigned, it’s often hard to really know which is which (when everyone involved already is a billionaire), as often a firing can be obfuscated as a resignation, to keep the interpretation of the transaction as positive as possible, and not create a scandal out of such announcement. And as senior vice president at Intel, employee of Intel throughout 24 years, he has been well paid and would feel no need to diss his now former employer.

Anyways, I don’t need to ramble more about things I don’t know about. The purpose of this thread is for you to comment here about what you think is really happening at Intel. Do you think Intel should give up and simply join the rest of the Industry in licencing the ARM Architechture and bring back new Intel customized and optimized ARM Processor designs? Why wouldn’t Intel simply licence the ARM Architecture and use some of their 82500 employees to work on that? Why wouldn’t Intel afford to work on both x86 and ARM and deliver on the full potential of what their industry leading semiconductor R&D and fabs are able to output, thus deliver the chips that the industry demands for? Why does Intel absolutely need to try to force their x86 onto an industry which obviously prefers choice?

Another fun fact, Intel recently acquired for $1.4 Billion a division of Infineon Technologies AG, called Wireless Solutions (WLS) that has more than 3,500 employees worldwide. Out of that acquisition, Intel is now releasing the XMM 6260 platform, which they say is the worlds smallest HSPA+ 40nm baseband processor, brace for it, it’s obviously an ARM11 SoC, now made and sold by Intel.

In Barcelona this week Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced that Intel’s new XMM 6260 platform is shipping to customers and will be found inside smartphones later this year. Sounds familiar? Well it might because Intel has been trying its best to find a way into smartphones for years. This time howver I think they might just make it happen. Why? Because it turns out that the XMM 6260 is in fact an ARM11 SoC designed by Infineon and manufactured in Taiwan by TSMC. Looks like, Intel’s secret weapon against ARM is…er…ARM. Quoted from: shanzai.com

What other areas would you agree with me, that Intel should just kill their darlings, they should just swallow the pill, Intel needs to licence the ARM Architecture and they need crank out the best ARM Processors they can make out of their best in world foundries. That does not mean Intel needs to give up on x86 at all, it just means they need to stop trying to cram x86 down everyones throats and they need to get with the trend in free market competition that means provide better choices for the industry.