[hga]

To be more precise, they're failing to deliver the whole package, the hardware ecosystem that goes beyond the CPU. I.e. their chipsets are both discrete and at least initially very hungry (Intel normally uses old fab lines with older processes for chip sets).

They aren't even trying to do the SoC thing, for marketing reasons the Atoms won't do ECC (ARM can) and for whatever reason they won't accept more than 4 GB of memory, which is the one place they have a fantastic lead over ARM (besides being Intel compatible :-), which has just decided to follow Intel's history in doing a PAE diversion before maybe someday doing a real 64 bit version.

[nextparadigms]

"Intel" may have that lead in RAM, but for other chips, and we're talking specifically about Atom here. I haven't seen any Atom netbook have more than 2 GB of RAM (AMD's Fusion chips support up to 8 GB), and the Atom in my netbook, which is about 3 year old can only support 1 GB of RAM.

[laconian]

I don't think that limit exists for technical reasons, I believe that it's an arbitrary limitation applied by Intel/MS businesspeople trying to protect their higher profit product lines.

[hga]

Indeed, and I was specifically referring to the Atom line of processors and how Intel has crippled them (no ECC, 64 bit capable but <= 4 GB max physical memory ... although I must note both of those would increase their cost) and otherwise not invested sufficiently into them (worse than subpar for the market chipsets and not even trying in the SoC direction, the latter more of a cultural and business model thing).