Who killed the Intel microprocessor?

The recently announced move by Microsoft to support the ARM architecture with their Windows product, indicates something profound is happening in the market for microprocessors.

Dr. Hermann Hauser puts in bluntly:

“The reason why ARM is going to kill the microprocessor is not because Intel will not eventually produce an Atom [Intel’s low-power microprocessor] that might be as good as an ARM, but because Intel has the wrong business model,” said Dr. Hauser. “People in the mobile phone architecture do not buy microprocessors. So if you sell microprocessors you have the wrong model. They license them. So it’s not Intel vs. ARM, it is Intel vs. every single semiconductor company in the world.”

via Intel Microprocessor Business ‘Doomed,’ Claims ARM Co-Founder – Tech Europe – WSJ.

To make sense of that you have to step back and look at what’s been happening in microprocessors and how mobile computing is affecting the whole processor value chain. Continue reading “Who killed the Intel microprocessor?”