A Chinese Challenge To Intel 364
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?"
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Great for User (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Why x86-compatible? (Score:5, Interesting)
US Export Laws Helps This Project (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Obligatory (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Bad for User (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
A threat? Doubt it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Their current chip [wikipedia.org] 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.
Threat to Intel? What about freedom? (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Whew... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Chinese OS Censorship? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Great for U (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Looks cheap. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the Dragon-1 chip.
The Dragon-3 will have 4 cores. It uses MIPS64 but has additional hardware-aided x86 translation instructions.
Re:A threat? Not anytime soon. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Another attack on Taiwan (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Great for U (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [yahoo.com]
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 [yahoo.com]
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.
It means something to Americans... (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Bad for Use (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Bad for Use (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the Arpanet/Internet was born?
Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Great for U (Score:2, Interesting)
Although the design is Chinese, the Godson processors will be manufactured by STMicroelectronics [st.com], 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.
Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Great for U (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Great for U (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Xenophobia indeed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sorta. Almost. Well, ok, not really. Sorry. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
Re:Whew... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Great for U (Score:3, Interesting)
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.