Intel at MWC 2015: SoFIA, Rockchip, Low Cost Integrated LTE, Atom Renaming and 14nm Cherry Trail
Context & Ripple Effects
Intel arrived at MWC 2015 with a coherent answer to the question it had been circling since Cherry Trail tablet chips began shipping in January: how to sell x86 into the sub-$200 device tier where ARM owns the bill of materials. The SoFIA platform, the Rockchip collaboration, an integrated low-cost LTE solution, and an Atom renaming together package that answer — integration as price competition rather than raw performance.
First-order effects
- Budget tablet and phone OEMs gain a single-chip x86-plus-LTE option, cutting their modem BOM cost and giving Intel a credible entry SKU against MediaTek-class parts.
- Rockchip gets access to Intel's process and IP through the collaboration, converting a rival into a channel partner for low-cost designs.
Second-order effects
- ARM licensees selling into the same cheap-Android segment must respond on integration — bundling modems and lowering prices — because Intel is now competing on cost floor, not benchmarks.
- Intel's own roadmap fragments around this bet: Braswell launched weeks later for the same low end (the quiet 14nm Bay Trail successor), while Skylake carried the performance flag separately.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Intel keeps feeding the money-losing low-cost Atom line one generation at a time — culminating in Apollo Lake in 2016 — until the economics force either retreat or architectural reinvention.
- The eventual reinvention shows up years later as hybrid, stacked designs aimed at ARM's home turf: Lakefield's 3D-stacked ultraportable chips explicitly target Qualcomm-class form factors, and AMD meanwhile attacks the same cheap-device segment from the other side in Chromebooks.
The trend: Mobile silicon is consolidating toward integrated single-die platforms where modem inclusion and process node decide the budget-tier market, pushing x86 and ARM vendors into each other's price segments.