Interesting (but still rather speculative) news item by VR-Zone. It seems like Intel is putting a lot of effort into making Android succeed as a platform for non-mobile applications. Android is free, of course, whereas Windows is not. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft deals with this!

Oh, and nice meeting you Braswell!

In a few years Android may be a mainstream contender in the PC operating system ecosystem, taking on Windows and Mac, or so Intel is hedging its bets.

According to a new roadmap obtained by VR-Zone, Intel has extensivley tested Android on its Haswell U and Y series of chips. Intel, according to this roadmap, was using the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean UEFI BIOS and Linux 64 bit 3.9 Kernel for testing. It appears that going forward Intel is aiming to have its chips be as compatible with Android as they currently are with Windows. This document also reveals that the successor to Broadwell, on the Skylake microarchitecture, will be called Braswell. Braswell will be using the 14 nm process node and will support DDR4 RAM. Skylake and Braswell are expected out in 2015.

If Intel can adequately support Android, ARM's PC efforts will be dead in the water. Intel's chips will leave ARM in the dust when it comes to performance, if properly optimized for the operating system, making experiments like an HP all-in-once PC powered by Tegra 4 foolish in retrospect. At IDF in September, Intel's Doug Fisher is quoted as saying that Intel has a "broad engagement" with Google and has over "1000 engineers" working on bringing Android to Intel. Braswell, and the general aim for increased compatibility, might be the reason for it.