Since he returned to Intel, Maloney has been working to get the company focused on phone and tablet processors, Brookwood said. Intel's market share in both categories is negligible compared with the dominant ARM architecture used by most other mobile chip manufacturers. Most of the mobile ecosystem, including hardware designers and software developers, revolves around ARM, he said.

At least at Computex, Intel will go up against that rival with a man not unfamiliar with challenges.

The IDG News Service