Intel Confirms That Android 3.0 Is Coming To x86 Tablets

timothy writes "Considering that x86 and ARM have been playing leapfrog in at least their future *promised* efficiencies, and that there are a ton of x86 tablets in the works, it's good to see cross-platform OS choices. The most popular Linux distro (Ubuntu) as well as several other conventional Linux options, Windows (even if so far confined to tech demos), and Android — interesting mix."

Re:Out of Order Execution

[Richard Dick Head]

OOO requires a huge silicon footprint, and it is tricky to avoid increased power consumption. Not exactly an embedded-friendly feature.

Re:What about Meego?

[Microlith]

To head off the stupidity before it infects Slashdot, no.

Intel sells processors. Any OS that will run on their processors is OK by their standards.

Of course, contributing to Android is to undermine open source as a whole, seeing as how they continue to hide the Honeycomb source but deliver it to Intel. If you truly appreciate open source and want it to succeed in the mobile space, you should support and push for MeeGo (and stop buying shit from companies like Motorola.)

Intel

[BasilBrush]

Easy to see why Intel thinks it's worth using X86 for Android devices. Hard to see why anyone else would think it's a good idea - except perhaps AMD.

Re:and how will this work

[geek]

Who cares? If Adobe can't keep up (entirely their own problem) then they will fade away.

Re:What about Meego?

[icebike]

Of course, contributing to Android is to undermine open source as a whole, seeing as how they continue to hide the Honeycomb source but deliver it to Intel. If you truly appreciate open source and want it to succeed in the mobile space, you should support and push for MeeGo (and stop buying shit from companies like Motorola.)

Really? http://www.androidcentral.com/gpl-portions-honeycomb-entered-aosp [androidcentral.com]

Re:What about Meego?

[Microlith]

Yeah, probably only related to changes made to the kernel as everything else is Apache licensed. Nothing of use or real value, seeing as how little of it ever gets into the mainline, and nothing contributed to any other parts of Android help any other open source software.

Re:Atom vs. ARM

[Locutus]

and the point ends up enabling Microsoft to come in and pay vendors to put Windows on the device at the expense and exclusion of the other OS's. ARM means you'll have vendors adapting and competing while x86 means you get Microsoft's vision of the world and you only get Windows unless you are creative enough to install another OS yourself. We know most of the world does not install their own OS and couldn't if their lives depended on it.

We are already seeing Intel paying vendors to push out x86 devices so they'll also be taking Microsoft's funny money because on x86 they can throw Windows while on ARM they can not. Consumers lose because of the lack of choice and they'll lose because the x86 and Windows solutions will not have the staying power in the portable device segment because of the bloat. IMO

LoB

Re:What benefit of out-of-order?

[AcidPenguin9873]

In that case, the compiler will already have reordered the instructions to fit Atom's microarchitecture.

Sort of. There's not much a compiler can do when you have a last-level (L2, L3) cache miss, which takes hundreds of clocks to service. Even an L1 miss hurts somewhat. OOO processors can execute other, independent instructions for which it has data available in registers or in the L1, and which are in the processor's OOO execution window. In-order processors can't do much. Atom does have some limited ability to hide cache miss latency via some bypassing around L1 misses, but not as much as true OOO.

And what is the benefit of out-of-order compared to simultaneous multithreading [wikipedia.org]?

SMT gets you throughput on multiple threads, for a cheaper area/power budget than just stamping another core down on the die. Obviously it's not as good as another real core, but for some applications that lightly load the processor, for example memory-bound or I/O-bound apps, it is pretty good. It does nothing for single-thread performance however; it can even hurt it single-thread IPC, in fact.