In the recent years, Intel has faced huge competition in the semiconductor industry. One company that has become prevalent would be AMD (Advanced Micro Devices). Before looking at the recent competition, let us take a look at Intel’s past glory.
The Intel 8080 microprocessor can be regarded as the father of all microprocessors that we see today. It was birthed in 1974, and due to its widespread success, Intel switched their focus, and transited from being a memory chip company to the semiconductor and microprocessor company we see today.
Since then, up until the early 21st century, Intel made several leaps in semiconductor technology, such as the revolutionary Intel Pentium 4, introduced in 2000, which had high clock speeds of up to 2.8GHz and allowed the average user to enjoy watching videos and playing video games. Intel also introduced their Core-series processors in the mid-2000s, which we are familiar with. Because of this, Intel had a large market share, and could command higher prices for their products.
In the recent years however, the AMD name became more apparent, and while their products tended to be cheaper, the notion that its quality was not up to Intel’s standard was diminishing. As the general masses started accepting AMD, Intel seemed to suffer from “brain drain”. Many talented engineers left, “demoralized by the status quo,” as mentioned by hedge fund Third Point Chief Executive Daniel Loeb, in a letter to Intel. With decreasing market share in the microprocessors, data centers and core PC markets, Intel appears to be losing its superiority.
“Without immediate change at Intel, we fear that America’s access to leading-edge semiconductor supply will erode, forcing the U.S. to rely more heavily on a geopolitically unstable East Asia to power everything from PCs to data centers to critical infrastructure and more,”
– Daniel Loeb, Third Point Chief Executive
In the years to come, I predict that the technology world would be revolutionised by the introduction of nanoprocessors. However, as chip design and engineering is largely limited to physics, this process might not happen in the coming years. As such, the era of microprocessor might not end even in the next decade.
With AMD recently outperforming Intel at the Cinebench R20 testing, as well as the introduction of Zen by AMD, I am inclined to think that AMD would be the way to go in the near future. Despite this, I still hope to see the ex-giants of microprocessors mount a comeback.
I have recently invested in an AMD powered laptop, more updates to come!
