Intel outlines its SoC roadmap, will move mobile chips to 14nm process in 2014

Back at CES 2012, Intel had announced its first real foray into smartphone market with its Medfield chip powering Lenovo’s K800 smartphone and also at the same time the chipzilla inked a deal with Motorola. Today, Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, took the stage at the Mobile World Congress and announced more partnerships for the company’s mobile strategy with partners like Lava, Orange, Visa, ZTE and China Telecom joining ship, but apart from this Intel’s supremo also outlined the company’s product roadmap till the year 2014.
Apart from showcasing the current generation Intel reference design device, Paul Otellini said that Intel will ship its next generation Atom chipset in 2013 which will be based on the 22nm processor heralded on the Intel Ivy Bridge platform which is coming later this year to PCs. Otellini highlighted that these chips will maintain ‘Moore’s Law’ and will essentially double the graphical and CPU performance of the current generation Medfield chip which tops out at 2GHz. In addition to this Otellini maintained that these chips will further integrate LTE radios and will further reduce battery consumption.
Apart from this, Intel also announced that it is working on a low cost version of its mobile chip, which will clock at 1GHz and will hit markets the same time as the high-end successor to the Medfield processor in 2013 and will be built on 22nm process. Intel showed a reference design model and said it was targeting a sub $150 price point for smartphones powered by these chips.
As far the company’s long-term road map went, Intel said that in 2014 it will ship mobile chips built on 14nm process and these chips will essential quadruple performance of the current Medfield platform. This is a really aggressive strategy which in theory does give Intel chips an performance advantage in the long term over ARM based rivals considering ARM chipset makers like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are only starting to foray onto 28nm processes and by the time these chips capture substantial market share, Intel would have shifted to a much faster and efficient 22nm process.
Having said this, ARM based chips maintain their advantage of over Intel in terms of power efficiency and it remains to be seen how Intel’s Medfield chips fare up against ARM chips in this department. Looks like the mobile chipset market is set up for real slugfest between Intel’s performance advantage and ARM’s power efficiency. Truly, interesting times await mobile devices.

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