AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA Over the Next 10 Years

GhostX9 writes "Alan Dang from Tom's Hardware has just written a speculative op-ed on the future of AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA in the next decade. They talk about the strengths of AMD's combined GPU and CPU teams, Intel's experience with VLIW architectures, and NVIDIA's software lead in the GPU computing world." What do you think it will take to stay on top over the next ten years? Or, will we have a newcomer that usurps the throne and puts everyone else out of business?

Comments

YAY! More Prognostication!

[newdsfornerds]

I predict wrong predictions.

Re:YAY! More Prognostication!

[lorenlal]

I think it's because they're being paid to.

Re:YAY! More Prognostication!

[PopeRatzo]

I predict wrong predictions.

Not only wrong predictions, but predictions based on a completely faulty notion.

From the summary:

What do you think it will take to stay on top over the next ten years? Or, will we have a newcomer that usurps the throne and puts everyone else out of business?

Do you get that? It's no longer enough for a company to innovate, to produce a quality product, and to make a profit. They have to be "on top". They have to kill the competition, to put everyone else out of business. Welcome to Capitalism, 2010.

This might be why some people see this era as being the end-game of "free-market" capitalism. Because now the only way to produce is to destroy. Because it's not enough to succeed, but others have to fail. What good is being rich unless there are poor people to which you can compare your success? After all, if everyone's standard of living goes up, who's going to clean my fucking house?

There was a time, in my lifetime (and I'm not that old) when a company, let's say an electronics manufacturing company, could sell some stock and use the proceeds to fund the building of a new plant, the purchase of new equipment, the hiring of new employees. The family that owns the company sees their success in terms of this growing and profitable concern. A "healthy" profit on investment for such a company could be as little as 8 percent (and this was a time when you could get 5 percent for a savings account). The people who work for this company like it so much, have done so well as employees, that entire extended families go to work for the company, generation after generation. I watched this entire cycle occur right here in my home town to a company that made industrial lighting (like the kind you'd see at a major league ballpark during a night game). Now, the company is gone. Swallowed by a company that was swallowed by a company that was swallowed by a foreign company that lost contracts to a company in Europe. There's a trail of human loss all along the way.

The theory of markets and business that sees the killing off of companies as a preferred outcome will always end up badly.

Re:The Singularity?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

With greater personal power, we won't have Microsoft dictating what 3D features we can have. With individuals become supercomputers, these three companies will be out of business. However, personal survivability and power will be sufficient that former employees will be fine.

What?

ARM

[buruonbrails]

All three will be marginalized by the ARM onslaught. Within 10 years, smartphone will be the personal computing device, AMD and Intel processors will power the cloud.

Re:ARM

[h4rr4r]

So you could get an arm laptop or x86 workstation. For work use thinclients will be popular again soon and many people will use a smart-phone, hooked to their tv for display when at home, instead of a home computer.

Then the cycle will restart. Welcome to the wheel of computing.

Too much hyperbole...

[Foredecker]

You can always spot a sensationalist post when part of it predicts or asks who will go out of business. Or what thing will disappear.

For example, in his post, ScuttleMonkey asks this:

...Or, will we have a newcomer that usurps the throne and puts everyone else out of business?

NNote, the post is a good one - Im not being critical. But change in the tech industry rarely result in big companies going out of business - if they do, it takes a long time. I think sun is the canonical example here. It took a long time for them to die - even after many, many missteps. Sun faded away not because of competition or some gaming changing technology, but simply because they made bad (or some would say awful) decisions. Same for Transmeta.

People have been predicting the death of this or that forever. As you might imaging, my favorite one is predicting Microsofts death. Thats being going on for a long, long time. The last I checked, we are still quite healthy.

Personally, I dont see Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA ding any time soon. Note, AMD came close this last year, but they have had several near death experiences over the years. (I worked there for several years...).

Intel, AMD and NVIDIA fundamental business is turning sand into money. This was a famous quote by Jerry Sanders the found of AMD. Im paraphrasing, but it was long the idea at AMD that it didnt matter what came out of the fabs as long as the fabs were busy. Even though AMD and NVIDIA no longer own fabs, this is still their business model (more or less).

I think its interesting how a couple of posters have talked about ARM - remember, AMD and NVIDIA can jump on the ARM bandwagon at any time. Intel already is an ARM licensee. Like AMD, they are in the business of turning sand into money - they can and will change their manufacturing mix to maintain profitability.

I also dont see the GPU going away either. GPUs are freakishly good at what they do. By good - I mean better than anything else. Intel flubbed it badly with Larabee. A general purpose core simply isnt going to do what very carefully designed silicon can do. This has been proven time and time again.

Domain specific silicon will always be cheaper, better performing and more power efficient in most areas than a general purpose gizmo. Note, this doesnt mean I dislike general purpose gizmos (like processors) - I believe that the best system designs have a mix of both - suited to the purpose at hand.

-Foredecker