Intel has all but officially axed its XScale business and put the multi-million dollar division up for sale, claim sources. It's being seen as a huge humiliation for the chip giant, which spent $10 billion on diversifying itself away from its range of PC chips by buying into the XScale and other communications-based ventures.According to Mercury News, "Intel's XScale business, which includes applications processors for cell phones and chips for BlackBerrys, smart cell phones, handheld computers and portable media players, is up for sale.
"That business generated approximately $250 million in sales last year, according to sources who saw documents on the business."
Intel is now reportedly seeking buyers for the divisions facing closure.
The XScale is an ARM-compatible processor, based on the StrongARM designs, acquired by Intel from Digital in 1997. Rumours of the cuts first surfaced in early last month, putting to bed any hope that the Castle Iyonix range of RISC OS computers will be blessed with a much faster XScale CPU. Current Iyonixes continue to use the 600MHz IOP321, which is known to suffer from a crippled memory bus. An 800MHz relative, the IOP333, later arrived, although Castle were reluctant to upgrade to it as it didn't provide enough of a speed boost to warrant the effort.
• RISC OS 5 developers Castle said at the start of the year that they would be willing to sell off the operating system "if the price is right".
Links
How Intel wasted billions from Mercury News