What has changed?
What didn't seem to be addressed in this presentation was why Moorestown, which Intel itself deemed unsuitable for smartphones last May, is now suddenly a smartphone platform.
The claims about the massive reductions in idle power consumption and smaller size of the platform are consistent with the information available in May, so what has changed?
Patel did describe a bunch of architectural innovations to increase performance and reduce power consumption.
However, we suspect the rapid evolution of the competitive environment since May was a major factor in Intel promoting Moorestown from a MID (mobile internet device) to a smartphone platform.
Companies like ARM, Qualcomm and NVIDIA made a big noise about their next generation chipsets at this year's Computex, while Intel was left to talk mostly about its CULV notebook platform. They're all taking it in turns to attack Intel's smartphone roadmap, and retaliation was long overdue.
The key factor in the success of Moorestown as a smartphone platform will be its power consumption. If it can compete with the varied offerings of the ARM ecosystem in this respect, then it's game on.
