Consumers almost always benefit from this kind of battle.

I say Bring it on Intel!

AMD.....you gonna just let this go?

Earth to Motorola.

At the end of the day, ARM thrives because it's awesome in almost every respect over x86. Granted, that's a less-than-fully informed opinion, but if I recall correctly I've read some technical articles suggesting the instruction set was better on ARM for some reason or another; ARM being supperior power consumption-wise is well-known, and what ever happened to the rumblings of Windows planning on supporting ARM eventually?

I admit that sometimes I hate that certain manufacturers support x86 in a special way, such as Adobe providing a flash player only for x86 as a free download, but aside from the occasional proprietariness-limited crap, everything is doable on ARM really.

Well, yes, you got out-of-the-box-but-with-no-graphics support.
Very usefull for servers and routers, a bit less so for smartphones and tablets.
Not really a problem if you're a big company, you can buy the closed drivers with the hardware, but for start-ups and community, not so good (you're left with android basically, which is not really linux).

It's not really ARM vs x86 support that matters, it's this kind of support (documentation and sources*) vs, to my knowledge, any GPU constructor in the ARM world (although there are recent efforts for open 2D drivers from these constructors).


* I know intel's atom associated gpu driver support is rubbish, but at least some times it's correctly done.

The new ATOMS are getting better, but yes the ARM is still a bit better power wise.

That said, first chance i get i will get one of the UMID's (<6" Laptops running x86), i like arm but i would just love to have a mini x86 system, this is what im used to, for with WIN for 15+years and not linux.

One thing that could be very nice/funny would to have a NEW Motherboard designed for our N900, but this time with the newest and best power efficient ATOM CPU, it should be quick to have drivers and such running, it only needs to have drivers for screen and touchscreen, everything else is on the board, still it has to have all the stuff, IR, FM TX/RX.

I'm not judging which platform is best. If ARM has reached the status of standard is the by the same reason x86 has reached the same status. Each one in its own area.

But the fact is that the way is open for a platform to finally compete where the other has been alone for years.

And

This system allows builders to create devices only by adding features to the core. If the hardware needed to have that features is driven by open source code, or at least by free code, developers and hackers could make that systems do what they want, and install, adapt or port whatever open source software they want.

more then a victory for Intel, this looks rather like another game won for Google...
the 1st "smart phone" like device to come out with one of those CPUs is the Lenovo K800 which will run... ANDRoid 4.0
apart from Lenovo, Motorola is going to use the Medfield chips... guess what OS those will run
then again, this will make the field more even, giving each CPU architecture the same OS to compete with and the performances more comparable...

Don't count on open GPU drivers on this new Intel architecture.

As its predecessors it uses a third party GPU provided by Imagination technologies (the same company responsible for the GPUs in N900,N950,N9 and many other devices). Concerning how open-source unfriendly Imagination is and what mess was the driver situation with Paulsbo (a prior Intel netbook/mobile architecture), it really doesn't look good - basically the same sitatation as with ARM - no problem using the CPU but no open GPU drivers.
You can find more info to this issue in this slightly chaotic Phoronix article.

amen to that.

The most interesting hope has been that by having linux
on x86 we would have open source drivers for bits
from desktop hardware,
but your point is well taken.
Furthermore, there will probably be lockdown codes built
into more than just the bootloader in the future.
(Thinking communication lockdowns, gps firmware disables etc)

Intel releases press release at trade show. Game Over, ARM!

No really. We signed an agreement and everything. Seriously guys. Look! we created a timeline and pie charts. Please. We mean it this time. Look at this artist's rende- err...I mean picture of a device.

hopefully intel release a vanilla device

this all seems like a positive development, am hoping amd decides to enter the stronghold but id be happy with an intel phone