ROUND 5

Future Dominance

As things stand, neither x86 nor ARM dominates the whole landscape. For power, x86 has the edge, for efficiency and portability, ARM is the obvious choice. But will it always be this way?

For a while, it looked as though Intel wanted to insert x86 into every form factor and application. It created the Atom processor to take on ARM in phones and other ultramobile devices. Meanwhile, ARM chip makers, such as Qualcomm, have been increasing pure processing power, and even creating products for server computers. Indeed, Microsoft ported Windows Server for ARM architectures, though it hasn’t yet been released for retail, and it’s having a second crack at supporting client ARM machines with a Windows OS.

That said, Intel has pulled out of the phone market, and narrowed its ambitions for Atom to high-performance tablet PCs. And ARM’s server strategy is far from proven, as are ARM client PCs. Who would have guessed that Intel would fail so miserably in its efforts to move into ARM’s territory? For the foreseeable future, the built-in advantages of x86 and ARM will make them very hard to budge from their respective strongholds.

Winner: A small edge to ARM