Intel watches Arm as low-powered computing thrives

As the PC market continues to decline, Arm is proving that non x86 chips are cool and have a long and prosperous future.

Intel has said it is watching closely its "biggest competitor", the semi-conductor firm Arm, which holds almost 95% of the burgeoning smartphone segment.

Dylan Larson, director for Intels Xeon product marketing, made the comments during a workshop in Intel's Hillsboro campus in Oregon.

There have been speculations that Apple could replace Intel chips with those made around Arm architecture in its Mac devices from 2016 onwards.

The company already uses Arm architecture in its processors for iPhones and iPads. Intel has been used in Apples Mac devices since 2006.

The rumours were sparked by a blog from former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee in which he said: When Apple announced its 64-bit A7 processor, I dismissed the speculation that this could lead to a switch away from Intel chips for the Macintosh line for a homegrown 'desktop-class' chip. I might have been wrong."

It is estimated that Arm-based chips are found in every six of ten mobile devices in the world.

Arm technology is often cheaper and more power efficient. While Arm dominates the smartphone and mobile device market share, it holds only 5% of the server, personal computing and high-performance computing market that Intel dominates.

Intel could face tougher challenges from Arm as the PC market continues to diminish, analysts said.

Intel became complacent when AMD stopped innovating and acting as competition, said Nebojsa Novakovic, a Singapore-based consultant at Computational Resource Centre.

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Intel watches Arm as low-powered computing thrives