Intel announced a port of Android to the Atom architecture at the Developer Forum in Beijing. EE-Times blogged "Has Intel Move Wrong Footed Microsoft" and although I like the title and buy it to a certain degree, the blog goes further. It claims that Intel and Microsoft had a tacit agreement: Intel doesn't do Android, and Microsoft doesn't do Arm. I don't buy that, not without some evidence or a more convincing argument.
Microsoft has supported non-Intel versions for quite a while, putting significant engineering resources behind AMD and other architectures. I suspect Microsoft would ship Windows for Arm if they could make it run well enough, but the OS requires more than Arm can easily give them. Intel has also supported a wide range of embedded development environments from competitors to Microsoft; they've always tried to compete in every market they could get to.
Intel wrong footing Microsoft doesn't surprise me, but Intel getting power levels competitive with Arm does. Running the stack is one thing; doing it for a fraction of a watt is something else entirely. I haven't followed Intel's specs and I don't know Arms either, so it's certainly possible Intel has their power down to Arm levels, but historically Intel hasn't even been close.
Arm has talked about multi-core implementations and Intel has been shipping them for a while. This has the potential for some healthy competition which is nice from phone and embedded device user's point of view - multiple cores using less power yielding better smart phones, you gotta like that.
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