Intel's new Clover Trail chip will support Android & Linux
Summary: There have been rumors that
Intel's new Atom CPU, Clover Trail, would only support Windows 8, but
not Android or Linux. We now know that the chip will support these
open-source operating systems as well.
When the "news" came out that Intel wouldn't be supporting Linux on its new Atom CPU, Clover Trail, I didn't buy it. This next-generation Intel Atom processor was always meant primarily for Windows 8; but with Intel's x86 instruction set, it would also always support Android and Linux.
We now know that Intel will officially support the popular open-source operating systems on the Clover Trail family as well.
In an e-mail from an Intel spokesperson, Intel said, "Intel has plans
for another version of this platform directed at Linux/Android; however
we are not commenting on the platform specifics or market segments at
this time. Stay tuned.”
Earlier this year Intel had released a new low-power Atom processor,
the Medfield, primarily for Android. These one-core chips are now being
used in engineering samples running Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, and the just announced Motorola RAZRi.
The “problem” with Clover Trail for Android and Linux was that it had two cores. Intel has long been concerned with Android's power and heating requirements for multi-core Atom CPUs for mobile platforms.
There was never any difficulty with running Android or Linux on Clover
Trail. The trouble was getting it to work efficiently with Clover
Trail's power management.
Clover Trail is designed to have much better battery life than the
earlier Atom processors. It does this with a new power state called S0ix
or “active idle.” Intel claims that Clover Trail -- as well as other Haskell family chips --
will use 20 times less power while in active idle state, compared
with when it’s on and idling. In this state, the system will continue to
keep its network connection up and to be able to quickly wake up when a
user "turns" a Clover Trail tablet on. Intel will support Android and Linux on the new power-efficient Clover Trail and other Haswell processors.
Since Haswell, Intel's forthcoming fourth-generation Core processors, will be Intel's primary processor for 2013,
there was never any question that Linux would support its new power
management features. Indeed, Intel has already been working on Linux
support for active idle. In July, Rajeev Muralidhar, an Intel software
architect and Linux kernel developer, presented a paper on integrating
the standard Linux and Android power management architectures with
aggressive low power idle standby states, aka active idle, in Medfield chips.
In short, while Intel was making Windows 8 support its first priority
for Clover Trail, the company had also been working to make Android and
Linux work with its key power management features.
That said, some Linux experts dismiss Clover Trail as a dead-end chip. Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative, wrote in his blog that, “Atom isn't really the right architecture for portable devices with limited power budgets.
Intel has tried to address this by building a hidden core within the
chip that actually runs RISC instructions, while providing the CISC
instruction set that ia32 programs like Microsoft Windows expect. But
this doesn't approach ARM's power efficiency.”
In short, “Clover Trail's target is a future Windows 8 Tablet. ... If
you expect the Windows tablet to do as well as the Windows 8
smartphones recently released by Nokia and others, you probably aren't
far from wrong. Clover Trail, built with partner Microsoft, might be
Intel's biggest loser since Itanium, built with partner HP.” Related Stories:
They're just saying this because of the
backlash from the community over the "Windows-Only chip". The
Linux/Android Clover Trail chip does not and will not exist.
"Intel has plans for another version of this platform directed at Linux/Android."
I think we need to differentiate between the processor and the platform.
It is clear that a Clover Trail SoC has been designed specifically for
Windows 8 This will not work on Linux. This may be related to
Microsoft's implementation of UEFI, connected standby and power
management, and special firmware for Windows 8, for example. secure
boot.
Intel states that there will be another version of a Clover Trail that
will work with Linux. In other words, you can not load Linux on machines
with the Windows 8 version of a Clover Trail.
"Intel has plans for another version of
this platform directed at Linux/Android; however we are not commenting
on the platform specifics or market segments that at this time."
Why is "another version" required or desirable? I still think I may smell a rat somewhere in this.
something is not right here...so we have
two different CPUs for windows and linux? what about dual booting can
we do it or not? are we going to be blocked in one platform?!
these are important qs which intel should answer it seems they are going
to take the choice away by their messed up architecture....
Android-based smartphones and tablets
aren't anything like the desktop GNU/Linux market. You can walk into a
local brick and mortar retail store and have a choice of Android-based
devices. There's no need to buy a Windows 8-based tablet and install
Android on it.
As for Intel and Android, Intel (and their Wind River Systems subsidiary) are bullish on Android:
Nobody has tried to explain WHY Intel
"needs" two different versions of the same processor, one for Windows
and one for Linux. All I read is what Intel has done for Linux and may
do in the future.
Fine, but it does not address my point AT ALL, which is pretty pathetic.
Unless someone can provide a sensible explanation, it still concerns me.
Intel's next generation of SoC, Valley
View, has full Linux support right from the beginning (Intel is already
submitting patches for Valley View).
In fact, not only the CPU, but the GPU is fully supported with open code
because the GPU is an Intel chip. This is unlike Clover Trail, which
has a GPU from PowerVR, and thus has binary only support in Linux for
the GPU, since PowerVR refuses to lend any support to open source
drivers for their chips (of course there are some reverse engineering
efforts).
Intel is hardly abandoning Android or Linux with future SoC development.
It appears that Microsoft has made a deal with both Intel and AMD to
have exclusive support for Windows 8 in this generation of low power
chips (including Intels's Clover Trail SoCs and AMD's Hondo APUs), but
only for a limited time. AMD clarified that their APUs would work with
Linux, but not all the features of the chip would not be specifically
supported in Linux at first. Linux support would come later. It
appears that something similar is going on with Clover Trail.
Intel clearly wants the pc buyer to be
buying an Intel processor, regardless of whether the os is Windows, OS
X, or Linux. But, looking at the numbers of new computers that will ship
next year under those various os flags, we see where Intel has to put
its priorities. Any announcement that includes date available and price
supersedes an announcement that includes either the phrase "real soon
now" or "sometime in the next year."
It's better than nothing and there's no reason to doubt Intel's
sincerity on the matter, but I feel better when there are more
specifics, especially as I think the proponents of the vague
pronouncement figure people project optimistically.
Obviously this is a coordinated effort on
Microsoft's parts to have _both_ major x86 vendors announce a
commitment to Windows-only chips for Windows 8 in the same week. What
is it about Windows 8 that is so poor it needs to be protected from
honest competition on open low power platforms? I suspect I know the
answer, but we'll have to wait and see.
When the inevitable antitrust suit comes out of this the court documents will shine a bright light on these shenanigans.
"This is unlike Clover Trail, which has a
GPU from PowerVR, and thus has binary only support in Linux for the
GPU, since PowerVR refuses to lend any support to open source drivers
for their chips (of course there are some reverse engineering efforts)."
They may jointly own the patents. Which
would naturally include nondisclosures, and an agreement to not grant
licenses for the technologies to others. Or maybe Microsoft patented
some of the technologies during the development partnership. Intel may
find that they literally can't make the chip open - which they should
have thought about before working with Microsoft in the first place.
Why should Intel continue to make a
processor that will run both Windows and Linux if they are selling the
chips to say, MS, who plans on using them exclusively on Windows
Tablets?
If they make two chips, each optimized for the particular OS, then that's a win for Intel, manufacturers, and consumers.
