Nowadays, you guys must be hearing the term 'Medfield' a lot. So, what is Medfield?
If you even have a vague idea of the 'Chips' and 'Microprocessors' market, you would know that Intel is one of the principal market leaders. Laptops and PCs from leading manufacturers like Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo etc. use Intel's chips to power their bodies which has made Intel one of the undisputed leaders in this segment. So, what about the smartphone market then?
Intel, for some reason, hasn't really focused on the smartphone market, which had thrown up a huge opportunity for companies like ARM and Qualcomm to make their mark in this segment. Today, they are one of the undisputed leaders in this market and have even for the last quarter earned huge revenues and also made huge profits by selling smartphone chips. The reason obviously is people's increasing preference towards buying smartphones. ARM and Qualcomm had probably forecasted this then and now are reaping its rewards. So, what about Intel?
It seems that Intel have finally realized their mistake and are now focused on gaining a slice of the 'Smartphone Chip' market pie. They are going to be out with their first SoC (System-on-Chip) in this year. The platform for this SoC is named 'Medfield' and the SoC itself has been named 'Penwell'. So, is the 'Penwell SoC' ready to take on established players like Exynos and Tegra? Let's find out.
Intel has demonstrated the power of their new SoC by pitting it against devices like Samsung Galaxy Nexus and have won the appreciation of everybody. The SoC seems to have a 1.6 Ghz single-core Atom Z2460 processor (CPU) and a 400 Mhz Power VR SGX 540 (GPU). In benchmark tests like 'Sunspider Javascript' and 'Browsermark', Intel's SoC has defeated the current leader (TI OMAP 4460 in Galaxy Nexus) by quite a good margin. While the 'Galaxy Nexus' scored 97381 on 'Browsermark', Intel's Penwell SoC scored a better 116425. As you already know, the CPU is entirely responsible for the remarkable performance on these tests and by the demonstration of such performance, it seems that Intel's single-core 1.6 Ghz Atom processor (also called 'Saltwell') is better than TI OMAP's dual-core 1.2 Ghz processor. Guess that the old man did have some wise tricks up his sleeve!!!!
Anyways, what feels like a kind of blip in this amazing SoC is the choice of GPU that Intel has made, a Power VR SGX 540. It's actually surprising why manufacturers like Samsung and Intel are opting to go for this GPU from 'Imagination Technologies' as it has almost been 2 years since it initially debuted in the market. But what actually makes the Power VR SGX 540 in Intel's SoC better than the other Power VR SGX 540s is that the GPU here is clocked at a higher frequency: 400 Mhz. Hopefully, this should make it perform better in Intel's SoC.
So it is pretty clear that if Intel had debuted with this offering for the smartphone market a year ago, it would definitely had a huge advantage and would probably have been rubbing shoulders with the current leaders like ARM and Qualcomm as far as 'Smartphone Chip' market is concerned. Anyways, as the saying goes, 'Better Late than Never'. Initial reviews suggest that Intel's first offering is most definitely not bad and it will only get better when the company comes out with their dual-core offerings. That might actually be the beginning of a new era as far as Intel is concerned.
Stay Tuned..!!
