But a flurry of announcements this week shows that things are no longer so simple, and chipmakers that once ruled separate markets have started to come into conflict.Intel has long dominated the market for PC and server chips, but there are two other big classes of processors: those for high-end graphics and for mobile phones.
Besides the traditional embedded control and desktop computer segment, many new classes of processors have been derived to meet the market needs of this embedded world, Due to still impressive technology advances, makers of embedded microprocessor systems are facing new challenges in the design and implementation of new devices.
The ADL++ language supports an execution model that is suitable for expressing a broad class of processor architectures.
Digital signal controller (DSC) is a new class of processor that couples the powerful mathematical processing performance of a pure digital signal processor with the highly deterministic behavior of standard microcontrollers.
The company said at C.E.S. that it was developing a class of processors called Trinity, which will power "ultrathin" laptops that will cost as little as $500.
The Lumia 2520 and Surface 2 both have screens around 10 inches and run Windows RT, the variation of the Windows operating system designed for thinner, low-power mobile devices based on the ARM class of processors.
Network processors (NPs) are emerging new class of processors that combine programmable ASICs and microprocessors to implement adaptive network services.
However, this class of processors has faced many challenges due to its increasing fabrication cost and design complexity.
However, mapping a large fraction of this parallelism onto this new class of processors is not straightforward.
Chip maker Intel is now putting its heft behind the trend as well, launching a new class of processors it calls the Atom, designed to bring PC processors to ever smaller devices.
