Intel's 32nm Medfield SoC specs and benchmarks leak
Intel's Medfield may still be a ways from breaking into the smartphone and tablet market, but we're finally starting to get some concrete details on its specs and capabilities. VR-Zone got the bitty gritty on Chipzilla's first true SoC …
Context & Ripple Effects
Intel spent December laying the groundwork for a mobile push: on December 21 the company confirmed prototype smartphone and tablet devices running its own chips, slated for 2012, with unconfirmed reports positioning them against Apple's iPhone and iPad. What was missing was any hard look at the silicon itself — Medfield is Intel's first true SoC rather than a CPU-plus-chipset arrangement, and it has yet to ship in any phone or tablet.
First-order effects
- The VR-Zone leak — still unverified — gives phone and tablet makers their first concrete spec-and-benchmark picture of Medfield while 2012 design decisions are being made.
- If the leaked numbers hold up, they set public expectations for the prototype devices Intel has already confirmed; any gap between leak and launch lands on Intel before a single unit ships.
Second-order effects
- Apple's iPhone and iPad, the devices the prototypes are reportedly positioned to challenge, would for the first time face Intel-designed silicon inside competing mobile hardware rather than Intel chips only on the desktop side of the house.
- Medfield arriving alongside the confirmed Q2 2012 Ivy Bridge desktop launch stretches Intel across two product roadmaps at once, raising the cost of any mobile stumble.
Third-order effects
- If Medfield performs close to its leaked benchmarks, the smartphone and tablet market stops being an effectively single-instruction-set ecosystem and x86 becomes a real design option for OEMs.
- The longer-term question the leak frames is whether Intel's manufacturing scale can offset ARM's entrenched ecosystem advantage in power-efficient mobile design — a contest that would define Intel's next decade either way.
The trend: Intel is attempting to carry its process-node advantage out of the PC and into ARM-dominated smartphones and tablets, with 2012 as the proving ground.