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Comment by eliben | Hacker News Reader

Oh the horror. What a bunch of random, clueless and non-technical crap. I especially like the part where he compares the operating costs of Intel (a company owning a number of multi-billion-dollar fabs that are far above the competition in capabilities) and ARM holdings (a comparatively tiny intellectual property shop).

Unfortunately, it is exactly by the advice of such "strategically thinking" MBAs our industry is often run :-(

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Yes, it's of course a grapes-to-watermelons comparison. But it's still worth considering.

This economic concept of 'dimishing returns' (small competitors can operate more efficiently than large ones) is to a big degree what enables and inspires the HN tech startup scene.

I like how he quotes the 7.6 billion primitive chips (embedded processors just a notch above a bunch of random logic gates) "shipped" by ARM to the high-margin (for Intel) PC market.

Even ARM's "embedded processors just a notch above a bunch of random logic gates" are fully-fledged 32-bit microprocessors with hardware support for preemptive multitasking, running at fairly respectable clock speeds. And that's the sub-dollar embedded stuff!

No he has a valid point, Intel whole value chain is built around x86. They can't just switch everything off, or switch to another architecture.

ARM has no such risk. Right now Intel has much more money, so they can pump more into R&D, but their company structure can be a liability really fast.

I guess that factoring in the rest of the vertical for ARM is rather difficult to do? Who ships the most ARM chips? Is it Samsung?

It's a lot of white-label Fabs, so manufacturers can take the blueprints, tweak and then do their own runs. I think the author's comparison is spot on - the ARM model is actually a killer advantage. It will actually shrink the value of the market while pushing the volumes through the roof. That sounds like a crazy thing to do - unless you're the one in control of the show.

>What a bunch of random, clueless and non-technical crap. I especially like the part where he compares the operating costs of Intel (a company owning a number of multi-billion-dollar fabs that are far above the competition in capabilities) and ARM holdings (a comparatively tiny intellectual property shop).

Yes, he sounds like someone in the late nineties comparing the nearly bankrupt Apple with competitors worth ten times more, like Sun and Dell.

Crazy right?

I applaud your witty use of sarcasm. However, if you think Apple vs. Dell is the same as Intel vs. ARM, you're deeply misunderstanding the market.

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