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A Chinese Challenge To Intel
motang writes "Chinese government funded Godson-3 a CPU that is developed to bring personal computing to majority of Chinese people by the year 2010. Will this pose any threat to Intel?"
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I'm not an expert but I would guess that a shift to Chinese made chips will be harder on the environment since Chinese pollution laws are generally more lax. Also, if it is pushed by the government, I'm sure they're willing to overlook things. I believe corruption is rife in the People's Republic of China. This is very bad for Intel (and probably AMD, why not?) since there will be a much more cheaply made multi-core CPU available on the market.
Great for the end consumer, however. Possibly even really really good for me as a United States citizen as Intel/AMD will be forced to drop prices to compete in the world market.
Also, there's the 'patriotic' view of this and the fact that the U.S. owes China dearly as a trade partner. Import import import import and export nothing. This would be further propagating that, thus hurting the dollar a tiny bit more.
Oh well, such are the intricacies of world economics.
My work here is dung.
I wonder why they are working on making this CPU x86-compatible. If they want to be really "free" from the western IT-world they don't have to care about running Windows, and when they don't have to care about that, they can just adopt gcc, the rest of GNU and Linux to run natively on their own instruction set.
c++;
According to the article, "Federal laws also prohibit the export of state-of-the-art microprocessors from the United States to China, meaning that microchips shipped to China are usually a few generations behind the newest ones in the West." Thus, a native Chinese microprocessor project does not need to be state-of-the-art. It just has to be good enough to compete with the older stuff from Intel and AMD. Once the Chinese build up their own knowledge base in microprocessor design, then nationalism and Communism will help foist it upon their populace as they demand computers. It'll be interesting to see how this dovetails with any effort to create Red Flag Linux to move away from the Wintel-opoly.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Can it run Linux? ;)
I think this will be interesting to watch. It's not like this is the very first challenger to Intel's market. So far none have really succeeded (AMD being the exception, but they aren't exactly considered the czar of the processor world at the moment) aside from niche markets. My guess is that this will be another company that will find its niche and settle for it. Intel just always seems to avoid losing "King of the Hill" status time and time again.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
Transmeta has tried, Godson has already tried, and both have yet to make a dent. It's just another knockoff that will not take off.
Like a lot of things from China, reliability will be suspect, not to mention any willful patent infringement.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Their current chip is basically a pentium 3, without the x86 instruction set. It comes in 500 mhz to 1.2 ghz flavors.
They're even less of a threat than Via and Cyrix were.
One has to wonder... will a chip brought to you by the makers of the Great Firewall be benign, or a serious threat to human freedom.
Actually the first thing that popped in my mind was 'why don't they just buy AMD'
AMD has really good technology but extremely poor financials... the Chinese could turn them around.
love is just extroverted narcissism
It seems the next logical step for them will be to develop a Chinese-grown OS and "strongly frown upon" use of Windows at home. (While at the same time having their OS support Windows apps) That way they can have the OS report any "dangerous behavior" by default, and roll out any patches or refresh a new "blocking list" daily....
You jest, but I would be strongly suspect of buying hardware like this. Given such an opportunity to put in a hardware backdoor into every PC with such a chip, do you really think the PRC would pass?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
That's the Dragon-1 chip.
The Dragon-3 will have 4 cores. It uses MIPS64 but has additional hardware-aided x86 translation instructions.
China will be selling the 4 CPU chip for a fraction of what a 1 CPU chip from intel costs. In addition, it has the ability to shutdown all but 1 core, which leads to really low power requirement. China has been taught how to do all this by companies like Intel.
These chips will show up in small laptops within 2 years and those systems will be sold the world over for under $200. Intel is in BIG trouble in both the short AND long term. In fact, I suspect that Intel AND AMD will be in worse shape than America's steel and car industry within 2 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Taiwan is a big chip maker. I wonder how much of this is an attempt to undermine one of Taiwan's important sources of economic strength. Also, this has a double bonus for imperialism in that making the world less dependent on Taiwan's chip production will make other countries less concerned about Taiwan's fate. A free trade agreement with Taiwan would sure be a big help for democracy and against modern day imperialism.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Great for the end consumer, however. Possibly even really really good for me as a United States citizen as Intel/AMD will be forced to drop prices to compete in the world market.
You missed a few basics in economics 101. Cost of production, Cost of development, Economy of scale.
The cost of R & D, FAB construction and operation is why these complex parts are dirt cheap now. Cutting production in half due to competition will not reduce prices. It runs up costs and slows R & D as each product must remain on the market longer.
AMD is screaming foul now because their yeild is about 1/2 that of Intel, so they are swearing that Intel is dumping on the market below manufacturing cost. For the same manufacturing cost, Intel is shipping about twice as many parts. They can sell below AMD's production cost and still sell at a profit because more of AMD chips can't ship.
Forcing lower prices the market simply stops production if you can't manufacture for that price. Ask AMD what this feels like.
Last time I checked their profit margin is -58.24%. They can't continue for long in the price war.
Link http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AMD
AMD can't lower prices without fixing yield, They will fold first.
Intel is operating at a profit and NOT dumping on the market to kill AMD.
Their profit margin is 17.79%
Link http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=INTC
Don't expect competition to cause either company to suddenly cut prices in half. It ain't gonna happen because it can't.
If the prices are lower, it is because the parts are cheaper with less performance to meet the lower prices the market will bear. Example Intel's Atom. Smaller, lower power, lower performance, lower cost. You won't be buying Core Extreme quad chips for Atom prices. It can't happen.
China has lower labor costs as well as lower FAB costs (less EPA costs) so even with a lower yield, they may be able to under price Intel/AMD. AMD can't enter a price war, they are already in the red. Intel can come down a little until the volume drops off, then the unit price will stall as the divide between red and black ink rises due to lower volume. The margins can be cut some, but as volume is cut, the red ink price line will rise as the cost per unit increases. Cross that line and jobs and FABs are cut. R & D is reduced. You get less for the buck.
Take finance 101 again and try again.
Intel pushes faster, better, cheaper. Without all three, someone else will take the market.
Let's face it, you can buy an Atom chip for less than the price of a good steak dinner for a family of 2. Guess which has much more R & D and manufacturing costs. Only through volume at high manufacturing yield is the prices this low. Cut volume or yield, and the price takes a hit.
The truth shall set you free!
They don't get anything in exchange for the US currency. It means nothing.
I thought this is what they were using to buy up all the US companies?
And since when has government backing been a good idea for product development?
China's recent economic success has been based on the government being less involved in the running of businesses.
Since the Arpanet/Internet was born?
No thats not true.
Although the design is Chinese, the Godson processors will be manufactured by STMicroelectronics, which is a French-Italian company.
The processors will probably be manufactured in Crolles, France on the ST 65nm process. The backend packaging is done in Singapore and Malaysia using RoHS compliant package design.
Actually the Israeli guessed the frequency of their radars (well, they measured it), then used a station based in Lebanon to send out a very powerfull pulse on that frequency.
"Hacking" certainly. Backdoor ? No. Just limits of the technology.
The value of the dollar is decided on the free market. So if no one is willing to trade Euros for Dollars at any price, the value of the dollar is 0 Euros. If more people are trying to sell dollars than buy dollars, the value of the dollar will decrease until things balance out.
If the value of the dollar drops, that increases the number of dollars needed to pay for oil. But since it is cheaper to buy those dollars with Euros or Renminbi or Yen, the price of oil in other currencies might remain the same.
I'm not sure what benefit China would have from helping to drive down the dollar's value, but if the value of the dollar is decreasing over time it might make sense to sell or spend some of them sooner rather than later.
I'm not worried, and my country is a lot closer to China than the US or Europe. In fact, I think many Asians welcome a strong China which will allow us to play China against the US to curry favours, just like we did during the Cold War. See here, the way I see it, there is no difference in principle between so-called democratic capitalist governments and communist governments. The only difference is the method of choice that they use to screw you. Unlike China, the US has developed far enough to no longer needing to use a bullet to the back of the head (Guantanamo aside) to keep the populace in line but instead uses an arguably far more devastating method: litigation and obtuse laws. To a citizen of a capitalistic society, there is nothing more deadly than being sued to bankruptcy. Also, I wonder who was the first person to come up with this theory of capitalism = democracy? This is utter crock. Throughout history, capitalistic societies are sometimes the worst there is. The Roman Empire is probably the ultimate example of this, fueling its economy by invading, pillaging and enslaving everyone. It is no surprise then that China is turning out not as a clone of the US.
You said it! If you read TFA, you'd see that Godson-3 actually does claim to have x86 compatible instructions -- and runs at about 80% of the speed of a real Intel chip. One of Intel's people was mentioned in the article as being very interested when details of the chip are released, because he's curious how exactly they're virtualizing the x86 instruction set without a license. (IIRC, Transmeta had to license some Intel patents to make their Crusoe chips, and they were doing something similar.)
Thinkpads are not allowed in most US departments.
Nonetheless, Lenovo takes intel/AMD parts and other manufacturer's stuff (or gets somebody else to do that) and sticks them a box, tests them, sells them.
AMD makes those parts. Bought up by chinese means no x86 license.
I'm really hoping IBM buys up AMD just to support it. That means Intel gets another serious run for its money. Will likely leave VIA in the dust, unless they merge/partner with nVidia. But anything is better than watching AMD die.
They are not holding it down using reserves, they have semi-pinned it to the US dollar. It does not float freely against our currency, it is a managed float.
If they did that it would shoot up drastically, devaluing the dollars they hold and making Chinese goods much more expensive here.
That would injury both parties.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra