@ndi

I'm not sure I'm really getting you here. You seem to be mixing a lot of unrelated things to the same discussion. What I still haven't figured out is why exactly would X86 be better on smartphones than ARM. You seem to be equating ARM = closed, X86 = open, while it's not the architecture that makes it or breaks it, it's the manufacturer who makes the product. Now mobile products have traditionally been more closed than PC products but it's not because they use ARM instead of X86.

Now let's assume there was an open X86 handheld and you could just drop Windows on it. What then? Desktop Windows isn't actually designed with mobility in mind, neither is the UI suitable for tiny screens that you could possibly only drive with your finger. Then drivers, what about touchscreens, accelerometers, proximity sensors, cellular and other wireless HW, cameras, DSP stuff etc. etc? Let alone software that would make use of those. It often seems to be the hardware drivers that make porting mobile OSes into other devices unfeasible, why would it be different with Windows? Why would anyone write such drivers for WinXP in the first place?

It just seems to me that there's much more to lose than to gain by running any desktop OS on a handheld device which again has nothing to do with X86 or ARM.

The logical route, to follow ndi (I think) is that if you were to use ReactOS you could apply existing windows drivers or simply write windows-style drivers for it, since the platform is open source.

In a sense, however, this route is flawed since you end up reinventing the wheel to chase an OS architecture you have no real control over for the sake of backwards compatibility, something even Microsoft is having trouble with to the point of virtualizing win32.

It'd still work, unless you went the Motorola route and signed your root file system and kernel, then used a chain of trust to lock the whole thing down (see everything but DROID.)

Give it a read to this:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=52074

What I got from both articles is that the new chips from Intel can beat without problems ARM devices in raw processing power, however, they will kill the battery very quickly (unless the systems is kept under control by the OS).

If they have a OS optimized for hand held use (like MeeGo is supposed to be) I for one would be very interested on this, because there would be a chance to unlock this "overdrive mode" for faster apps (and I would have the hand held plugged to a nearby power socket).

?

Trusted Boot (tboot) is a pre- kernel/VMM module that uses Intel(R) Trusted Execution Technology (Intel(R) TXT) to perform a measured and verified launch of an OS kernel/VMM.

Stick that in your BIOS and I can see it very effectively keeping you from running ’unwanted’ OSes. Besides, we don’t need to be theoretical, the XBOX was a widespread locked down X86 based platform way before these sophisticated security technologies.

The bottom line is that a functional equivalent of security features is just as present on X86 as it is on ARM, it’s just the MB/Computer manufacturer’s current business practice that keeps your freedom.

I have a question for the people that want mobile X86.

My background - I'm a software engineer that writes in C, targetting Windows, Linux on x86 and S390, HP-UX on PA-RISC, Solaris on Sparc and X86 and AIX on Power. At home I run windows, mac osx and Linux on intel, ARM and MIPS.

My question - why do you want a monoculture?

Each of those platforms has its own peculiarities but each one has a processor, memory, networking etc etc and to the programmer is much the same.

Having a thriving ecosystem in which there is competition is how we advance. X86 would not be where it is now without AMD nipping at intel's heels in the consumer space, or without Sun and IBM to compete with at thw high end.

ARM getting mor popular is, IMHO, a very good thing. It will drive competition and massive investment in the mobile market. Even if they don't go fully mainstream (and by most measures they already are), we end up with a marketplace full of better products because of their innovation AND others feeling the need to compete with them.

I will fully support them and love the small, cheap, low power consumption but decent performance devices that they enable.

@david.hicks: great post.
But just one thing... I thought ARM is the popular one (in mobile space) and Intel is the one trying to nip at ARM's heels.

I'm all for ARM though.

I may have slightly misworded my post if I gave the opposite impression, yes they are far ahead, ans as such intel entering their market may be a good thing too. I just wanted to warn off the "one platform to rule them all" meme.

(I missed a platform earlier, and I know I'm just bragging now, but I also work with HPUX on Itanium

Also, there is AAVA Mobile : it is a startup in finland that has done a prototype smartphone with Atom processor + Android or Meego. There is several people coming from Nokia in their investor :www.nexitventures.com. I wonder if that company could be a dummy corporation that serves to intel and Nokia to prepare discretly a MeeGo+Atom Z600 Nokia smartphone.

aava looks cool. ilove that they are just selling the hardware and not trying to get you on a specific network/service/app ecosystem etc.

i think(hope) this is where the mobile industry is going. you buy a device just like you do an x86 pc nowadays and then do what you want with it.

Maybe. I'll believe it's going that way when HTC starts offering devices to end-users directly in the US, instead of forcing them to go through a carrier.

This is one reason that I like Nokia, they actually sell to their customers, instead of to 3rd parties.