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Green and Brown Fields in the Land of the Internet of Things
Last week, ARM — the company sitting at the very headwaters of the wireless endpoint ecosystem, the architectural well from which most mobile phones (and many other devices) spring — gathered its minions in San Jose, California, for the British firm’s annual technical conference TechCon. Press and analysts mingled with engineers and scientists, developers and partners from around the world for several days of philosophizing and explaining, panoramic visions and micro details, summarizing and forecasting, revealing and stoking. In short, we basked in the dawn of the Internet of Things (IoT), the next big digital market opportunity.
As those keeping track will recall, in the first great wave of computing, Intel’s x86 architecture accounted for more than 90% of the personal computer market. However, in the second wave — the smartphone era, spearheaded by Apple and its iPhone — the market shifted to ARM. Both Apple and Google (Android) mobile phones are based on ARM architecture. Even other smartphone variants fielded by companies like Samsung and Huawei trace their technical heritage back to ARM.
The great divide between x86 and ARM really falls on the cusp of wireless. When a device is untethered — that is, when it relies on a battery rather than an AC outlet — power consumption matters so much it ranks ahead of…
