Intel uncloaks next-gen 'Braswell' Atom, 64-bit Android KitKat kernel On the second day of its developers conference in Shenzhen, China, Intel revealed the codename – "Braswell" – of its next-generation Atom processor for low-cost mobile devices and a 64-bit Android KitKat 4.4.2 kernel, and outlined its belief that a "large resurgence" is coming to the desktop market. Slide from Intel Developer …
It is good to see them leading with a choice of operating systems. Seems like we have had generations of gear designed to not run anything but Windows.
Now to get my hands on it and see if it's any good. Would be nice to replace these old, loud, hot PCs with something silent and power friendly.
For a long time, Intel have have done a proper job of providing high quality open source Linux drivers. Their GPUs have been poor compared to ATi and nVidia, but the drivers have been stable and never restricted what kernel you could use.
ATi and nVidia grudgingly gave us binary blobs and tainted kernels. A community effort produced drivers of varying quality despite lack of documentation. AMD released proper documentation when they bought ATi and eventually, after some rude words from Linus, nVidia followed suit. ARMs come with a wide selection of GPUs - and the driver is almost always an unsupported binary blob.
Intel provided proper free software Wifi drivers. The competition gave us binary blobs if we were lucky and a chance that Windows emulation would work with the unsupported chips. It has not been all good. Intel implemented fine grained power management which was working with Windows before they documented it publicly. As for the people responsible for UEFI, I hope they get stuck with Windows 8 with an undeletable Clippy.
Intel was impractical for many mobile and embedded applications because their needed too much power and their prices were too high. Intel have got the power requirements tolerable for some applications and they are taking steps in the right direction on price. Intel are ahead on documentation and drivers, but ARM are catching up: The Mali GPU has a community made Lima driver. nVidia are making an effort with documentation and Broadcom have documented the Pi's GPU. If you want embedded system using a GPU that can have kernel updates for a decade, Intel are still a good bet.
That may be so UNLESS you talking about Poulsbo.
The most abominable clusterfuck of crock ever to come from Intel's GPU team (admittedly they're an Imagination Technologies chip; but still).
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Seems like we have had generations of gear designed to not run anything but Windows.
Meanwhile in Redmond, it is strangely quiet as there are no chairs flying around but behind the scenes further work on UEFI Protected Boot is continuing rapidly. From Microsoft's POV, the sooner they can get UEFI Signed Boting made mandatory and they become the only signer in town the better. Apple? Irrelevant. Linux? Well those pesky penguins need culling before they get out of control.
Sounds horrible.
Until you realize that there are 54 articles (not counting highlight spots) on the front page, meaning they're only mentioned upfront in about 24% of articles. Since for some of them (like this one) you'd have to read the subtitle to get the MS reference, Microsoft probably figures prominently in only about 16-20% of articles.
Considering how much Microsoft affects the IT world, that's not surprising, except that it might be surprisingly low.
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