Intel more dominant than ever. And prepared for coming upturn. I'm stoked.
Ted wrote (over on the Mindcontrolled AMD thread, which I am still banned from posting on):
"Never in its history has AMD challenged INTC in the way it has in the last two-three years."
Intel has *less* overall competition for its CPUs than at any time in the 28 years I have either worked for the company or followed it closely as an investor. In the 1970s it faced very serious competition from Motorola, Zilog, TI, AMD, Fairchild, Zilogand even upstarts like MOS Technologies.
In the 80s, competitition was fierce with Motorola, NEC, Fujitsu, TI, Zilog, and others. As the 80s wore on, some of these competitors dropped out, replaced by MIPS, Sun, and IBM. AMD then had their own proprietary processor (when they tried to innovate) and was a strong second source to Intel.
The 90s brought us the PowerPC consortium, the attempted ACE consortium ("anybody but Intel"), and processors from DEC, MIPS, Sun, and IBM.
Intel now has about a 80-85% share of the x86 market, which is probably a 70-75% share of the _entire_ advanced processor market (exclusive of video game boxes, where MIPS and PPC have established a good presence as microcontrollers).
I've never seen this dominance, this lack of serious competition.
Frankly, I think the recession of the past 2 years has _helped_ Intel considerably. Consider the alternative, a boom comparable to the 1997-99 boom: products on allocation, double ordering, high ASPs.
I believe this situation would likely have led to consortiums with AMD to produce more x86 processors, perhaps closer ties between AMD and UMC or TSMC, and perhaps even the entry of Motorola and TI into the x86 market. With or without ties to AMD.
Instead, Intel is able to meet demand and ASPs are low. This has probably scared off anyone thinking about entering the x86 market or forming a joint manufacturing consortium with AMD.
AMD is so strapped for cash that they are not even _talking_ about building the new plants any serious supplier will surely need. When the upturn comes, AMD's share of the market will drop, just based on inadequate production capacity.
And with several 12-inch wafer lines coming onstream, with 130 nm working better for Intel than for AMD, with an extensive line of support chips and kits, I think Intel is better positioned for the (likely) upturn than I have ever seen it.
I'm stoked.
--Tim May |
