ARM versus Intel: a successful stratagem for RISC or grist for CISC's tricks?

ARM and its licensees are striving to expand their overall market presence by tackling Intel’s x86 in servers and client desktop and laptop computers. Intel has responded by attacking ARM on its own turf: handsets, tablets, and the like.

Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor -- EDN, April 7, 2011

ARM, along with its core licensees, and Intel, along with its x86 CPU competitors, have recently taken action to put to rest any remaining doubt that both camps were on a collision course—ARM touting its RISC (reduced-instruction-set-computer)-based technology and Intel backing the CISC (complex-instruction-set-computer) approach. When Intel three years ago formally introduced the first-generation Atom processor family, the company made it clear that it was aiming not just at low-end desktop and notebook PCs but also at the handheld systems in which ARM had historically dominated. In response, ARM more recently unveiled the Cortex-A15 core, whose application targets extend up to the server segment in which Intel and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) have long reigned supreme. And at the January 2011 CES (Consumer Electronics Show), Microsoft revealed its willingness to put a nail in the coffin of the Wintel alliance by broadening upcoming Windows 8’s instruction-set compatibility to encompass both ARM and x86.

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