Santa Clara, Calif., Oct. 25, 2016 – Rick Merritt, EETimes
10/25/2016 09:00 AM EDT
The battle for the Internet of Things heats up this week as Intel and Arm fire off competing announcements to establish their microprocessor architectures on its broad frontiers.
Intel announced its first Atom SoC with real-time capabilities tailored for automotive and industrial markets. Less than two miles away from Intel's headquarters, Arm kicked off its annual developer's conference with news it is bringing hardware security to its lowest-end microcontroller cores.
Arm has a clear lead in the emerging ground game for end nodes with its Cortex-M microcontrollers. Intel, the world's largest semiconductor company, ranks 17th among MCU vendors with its relatively new Quark x86 chips, making it about equal with Panasonic and Sharp according to market watcher IHS Inc.