The Road Map as it now is . . . . .

[Richard Gaskin]

Colin Holgate wrote:

 > With the Intel Android devices you have a choice of either living
 > with the emulated performance, which is what we’ve done so far, or
 > you have to use a tool that can publish to Intel. Those people you
 > cite have more budget than we do, and may well have used tools that
 > can publish to Intel.
 >
 > I know Adobe AIR best, and there the compiler creates native ARMv7
 > code. For supporting Intel devise the processors would presumably be
 > making x86 native code.

Once the platforms LiveCode is currently committed to supporting are 
more satisfyingly in parity, we'll also have more data on market share 
to evaluate the desirability of pursuing Win 8/ARM or Android/Intel.

But the bigger question lurking on the horizon is:  What happens if 
Intel is able to actually pull off what they're promising with their 
unprecedented 14nm process?

Their roadmap has 10nm by 2016, 7nm by 2017, and 5nm by 2019.

Imagine a chip beyond the full Core i Broadwell instruction set in a 
device that takes less power than the mobile phones we have today.

At that point everything we know about form factors and the relationship 
between form factors and capabilities goes out the window.

Sure, they're pushing the bounds of physics, but even 14nm is a 
game-changer.

Heck, just imagine if an OEM used a 64-bit chip in a way that actually 
makes use of 64-bit addresses, shipping a device with more than 4GB RAM.

It might be (and it might not) that 10 years from now we look back and 
see ARM as a momentary workaround for a lithography bottleneck, 
something we did for a few years before everyone went back to compiling 
for x86.

Add to the mix flexible screens that are nearing productionability, and 
the most certain thing I could say is that the future of computing is 
uncertain.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com