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Ever since the Fairchild Company split up, Intel and AMD are just like a soap opera. They both have a honeymoon and a public affair, but it is precisely this half-century's love of killing each other that drives the flourishing development of the CPU industry and even the semiconductor industry.
In the CPU area, Intel has been the industry leader for the past 10 years and has occupied a market share of over 80%. However, as its time to mass-produce 10nm chips is once again delayed, more and more investors, analysts worry about it. The leading position may be affected.
The threat to Intel will be in the CPU field, which has long been the second largest market share (AMD) in the United States. Since the "blowout" quarterly earnings report was released at the end of April, AMD's stock price has risen more than 41%. AMD President Lisa Su, chief executive officer, even rumors at a recent JPMorgan Chase event that AMD's processor share will reach 40% in the next few years.
In fact, since Fairchild's (Fairchild, also known as 'Fairchild') company splits, Intel and AMD are just like a soap opera. They have both a honeymoon and a jealousy, but it is also the love of this half century. Killing' promotes the flourishing development of the CPU industry and even the semiconductor industry.
The 'traitors' in Silicon Valley
In the history of the semiconductor industry, William Shockley, the father of the transistor, once had a term that was considered the representative of the spirit of Silicon Valley - the Traitorous Eight.
Shockley once started a company, but because of team discord, etc., eight employees, including Robert Neuss and Gordon Moore, eventually signed the one-dollar bill and announced their withdrawal from the company. The origin of the eight traitors, and these eight people subsequently established another legendary company, Fairchild, in 1957.
An American journalist named Donald C. Hoefler, who wrote a series of reports called "Silicon Valley of the United States" in 1971, analyzed that in the manuscript, almost all semiconductor companies in Silicon Valley originated from Fairchild. It was Hoefler's manuscript. For the first time, Santa Clara Valley in California was given the title of 'Silicon Valley'.
It can be said that companies in Silicon Valley are more or less related to Fairchild. It was reported that at the 1969 semiconductor summit in Silicon Valley, only 400 of the 400 participants were not former employees of Fairchild. This was enough. Shows Fairchild's position in the history of semiconductors.
With the flourishing development of semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley, Fairchild is developing talents while educating semiconductor talents. They have established their own companies. Intel and AMD are representatives of the 'traitors' founding companies.
In 1968, Robert Noyes and Gordon Moore of the Eight Traitors founded Intel, and Jerry Sanders, who was also a fairy child, founded AMD in 1969.
But compared with Intel, AMD's origin seems to be a lot worse, Neuss is known as the 'father of IC', Moore is the proponent of 'Moore's Law', and Saunders is just Fairchild's high sales. This is the origin of Intel’s technological development orientation, while AMD is market-oriented.
In the eyes of the industry, the development of technology has made Intel's advantages obvious. In an interview with a reporter from the 21st Century Business Herald, the Director of the China-America Semiconductor Association, Yu Yingying pointed out that since the 1960s, Intel has promoted Moore's Law over the past 50 years. Drive the development of the entire industry chain and lead the US semiconductor industry.
In fact, at the beginning of its establishment, Intel's success relied mainly on memory chips. In 1970, Intel introduced the first dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip C1103, and after two years, achieved an annual revenue of more than 23 million US dollars until 1974. , Intel's global DRAM market share reached 82.9%.
The success of DRAM helped Intel to go public in 1971. In this year, Intel developed the first commercial microprocessor 4004. But at that time, the memory chip was still the main source of Intel's revenue.
With the rise of the semiconductor industry in countries such as Japan, Intel’s market share in the memory sector has been declining, and it has dropped to 1.4% of the global DRAM market share by 1984. During this period, Intel’s processor business began to shine, 1974 The 8080 processor produced laid the foundation for the future glory of the X86 architecture processor for 30 years.
In 1982, Intel chose to cooperate with AMD in order to win IBM's orders for mass production of personal computers. After getting Intel's authorization, AMD became the second supplier of 8086 and 8088 chips, thereby creating a clone of the 80286 processor. Am286'
This period was once regarded as the 'honeymoon period' of the two processor giants. However, following Intel’s licensing agreement with AMD was torn down in 1986, AMD chose to court the company. Intel’s breach of contract, monopoly market, etc. In suing Intel, Intel counterclaimed AMD on the grounds of infringement, and the two companies fell into legal battles in the following eight years. AMD ultimately won the lawsuit but was technically far behind.
The story reversal: catch up and be overtaken
It seems that after the courtroom is over, the story should end with a full stop, but the story behind it is like a soap opera.
Intel’s technological advantages have allowed small-market companies such as WinChip and Cyrix to be phased out, while AMD has survived. In 1995, AMD acquired the troubled CPU design company NexGen and successfully launched the K6 series. K7 ( Afterwards, the rebranded Athlon, "Athlon") made AMD's limelight over Intel. Athlon's high-speed FSB and high-performance performance made AMD occupy a certain market share. Being able to 'overclock' also made AMD a loyal user.
By 2003, AMD proposed the 64-bit concept and introduced Athlon 64. At that time, 64-bit processors were only used in high-end server products. Although Intel claimed that 64-bit processors will take several years to market, In the pursuit of AMD, it was still a 64-bit processor on the line one year later.
At the time, people in the industry generally believed that Athlon processors could swallow most of Intel’s market share. According to data from Mercury Research, a market consulting firm, AMD’s share of the processor market reached 22% in 2006. Beyond seems to be just around the corner. .
However, in July 2006, Intel introduced the Core 2 processor, claiming to be able to reduce its power consumption by 40% while increasing its performance by 40%. After the launch of the product, the relative performance of the Athlon 64 X2 plunged, and the price of a single processor dropped overnight. The decline was more than one thousand yuan. With the promotion of 'Moore's Law', Intel led the way for more than ten years. AMD’s market share has also been continuously compressed, and even the market accounted for only 8% in the fourth quarter of 2016.
It is worth noting that, before the 1980s, semiconductor manufacturing companies were almost all vertically integrated (IDM) companies. By the 1990s, Fabless began to rise, and design, followed by foundry, Fab-Lite (light-crystal) The round factory) followed and followed. In this process, Intel has not abandoned the IDM model.
Yingying believes that Intel has its own exclusive products. The combination of design and production will form a unique competitive power. However, this model also has certain drawbacks. If there are problems with the design or production, the risk is still relatively high, but Intel’s execution ability is strong. In the case of risk control, it can be transformed into a very strong competitiveness.
Lin Jianhong, a research manager at Jibang Consulting's Tuobai Industrial Research Institute, pointed out that the 1995 CPU and DRAM and NAND Flash products that are currently seen are the embodiment of the advantages of the IDM model. When the sales scale of products is still growing at a high speed, the IDM model is actually There is also good growth momentum.
However, if the economic scale of the product is saturated, the IDM model will continue to grow and will face great challenges. Lin Jianhong said that Intel also uses Foundry and non-violate memory as a breakthrough point for growth.
The semiconductor industry under the development of 'Moore's Law' seems to be stuck in a bottleneck. Intel originally planned to mass-produce a 10nm processor at the end of 2017, but it will repeatedly skip tickets and delay the mass production schedule again in 2018 to 2019. , AMD announced that the 7nm Zen 2 processor will be available in 2019.
Although Intel’s current CEO Ke Zaiqi expressed at the 2018 shareholders’ meeting that he is not worried about AMD’s technological advancement, 14nm technology still has advantages in 2019. In addition, Intel is also developing other chip business. However, AMD launched the AMD Ryzen Institute. The representative's 'APU' (acceleration processor) achieves deep integration of CPU and GPU, breaking through the processor development path.
Mercury Research data shows that in the fourth quarter of 2017, AMD’s market share has risen to 12%. Su Zifeng also stated that in 2018 AMD can occupy about 20% of the desktop processor, and the mobile processor will reach 18%. It also pointed out that AMD's market share could double in the next few years to 40%.
It seems that in the field of processors, the catch-up and catch-up plots will be staged again.