Intel has never been shown to be a monopoly. Granted, it has a monopolistic share of the market, a point to which I was speaking, but has out-competed AMD to get there. Of course, in recent years, AMD has developed better performance and power characteristics, out-competing Intel, and is beginning to win back market share as a result. This is the major factor that will help to prove they are indeed not a monopoly. Especially, if Conroe, with a better core design, better power, and lower cost due to more efficient manufacturing wins back market share, it again shows that a more competitive product wins customers. That's good for customers and AMD will have a hard time proving otherwise.
The CPU (and all the process technology that goes into making it) is anything but a commodity these days. By its nature computing power is insatiable and requires massive research and innovation implementation. Also a factor is that Intel threw massive amounts of resources at their architecture (Netburst) and failed to continue to maintain the lead.
We should find that Intel is still capable of reinventing itself. You saw minor evidence in adopting EM64T, designing Conroe vs Netburst and other changes. As I said, if Conroe is not successful in reestablishing the (monopolistic-like) SOM, Intel may lose that position if they don't reinvent themselves as they have done in the past. They have been a voracious competitor, let's hope they still have it.
Smooth |
