Do You Think Another CPU Company Will Come?

Do You Think Another CPU Company Will Ever Come?

  • Yep

    Votes: 8 18.6%
  • Maybe

    Votes: 9 20.9%
  • No

    Votes: 14 32.6%
  • idk i was promised a cake?

    Votes: 12 27.9%

  • Total voters
    43

Cazalan

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Sep 4, 2011
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20,810


IBM is a 210 billion company
Intel is a 100 billion company
AMD is a 1.45 billion company

 


IBM is in a completely different league than Intel and AMD altogether.

To use a very rough estimate, it would go like this: IBM >>>>>>>>> Intel >>>>>>>>>> AMD (For those mentioned here, anyway. Texas Instruments and other companies are right up there close to, if not even with, AMD, too).
 

melikepie

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Dec 14, 2011
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19,810

I chose no.
 

ebalong

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Sep 11, 2011
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IBM makes, or is planning to introduce a 5.5Ghz processor - awesome, except they don't make stuff for us lowly consumers, only enterprise-grade server hardware for huge data centers and the like.

Apple is talking about maybe making their own chips again - I wonder if they are going to go back to collaborating with IBM and make a new version of the "Power PC" chip - lol.
 

anxiousinfusion

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Jul 1, 2011
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It's reached the point where I would like to see this happen. Competition from AMD is just so weak :( .
 


I agree. That seems like about the only way we are going to have any real competition again.
 

braincruser

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Aug 26, 2011
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It is still possible that AMD returns in the race. Especially if the whole return GPU in CPU works. If they are able to link the CPU and GPU close enough, there will be a great speedup for most of the tasks people use more than two cores for. And it will still be fast enough for regular stuff.
 
In the high end server space there is IBM, Intel and AMD and in the lower end (mobile phones, tablets) there is ARM, Nvidia, Intel, AMD and some others fighting it out.
For desktop systems (which I assume we are talking about) its just AMD and Intel (with possibly Apple making their own eventually).
Definitely need to see some more competition in the desktop space, if Intel gains a monopoly, can only see bad things ahead.
 

dscudella

Honorable
Sep 10, 2012
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Anyone remember Cyrix? Back in the 486 era there were three main consumer CPU manufacturers, Cyrix, AMD & Intel.

The market is always open to newcomers. Could there be, sure. Will there be, who knows. Competition is always welcomed.
 
Since Apple is dropping Intel, they will be designing their own CPU similar to what they are currently doing now with the iPad; it will be based on ARM. Apple computers will still continue to use Intel CPUs until their ARM CPU is ready for prime time which will likely be in a few years. Therefore, Apple will be the third CPU manufacture with a global reach.

IBM wants nothing to do with the consumer market. They have a very focused strategy that basically only encompasses the "enterprise sector". IBM sold off their PC & laptop division back in 2005 or 2006. In 2009 they cancel development of the cell processor used in Sony's PS3.

Other than Apple, there won't be another player in the consumer CPU arena. The barrier is too high and the market is slowing down. There simply is not enough room for another player. VIA still makes x86 CPUs mostly for embedded applications and low cost PCs sold in Asia. They don't have the resources to spend on R&D to even be a value end player in the US and Europe.

The new growth market is the tablet and smartphone segment which all use ARM based processors. Even that market is very competitive. The two biggest players are nVidia and Qualcomm; Samsung is up there as well since they design the ARM processor for iPads and phones as well. Texas Instruments was a 4th player, but they decided to exit out of that segment; they believe the profit margins are too small for them to bother with. They are currently in talks with Amazon to sell the business.

BTW, the processors used in mobile devices are known as SoC; System on Chip. Qualcomm is the definitive leader.

 

They've only got less than 100 people in the US working....
 

twelve25

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There are already a lot of CPU manufacturers.

Apple makes chips for thier ipad and iphones, They are toying with the idea of making higher end chips for their desktops. Nvidia makes processors for mobile devices and some computing clusters. They'd like to get more into the datacenter ARM makes small power efficient processors for mobile and devices. IBM makes processors for big mainframes and midrange systems. There are other small/specialized chip makers I haven't mentioned.

The interesting thing is that devices are converging. Tablets are outselling budget desktops and laptops lately. Phones are the #1 computing device now. Windows is being transitioned to a mobile OS. It may end up that ARM and Nvidia end up being the top chip makers in the world as PC usage shrinks or stagnates.

Will there be another big x86 player? Probably not. But the question in my mind is will the old intel x86 architecture be a big factor in 10 years? I don't know.

(Edit: seems I repeated a lot of the same ideas as Jaguar above, but that just proves we are both really smart :) )