DesScorp's Journal: Intel rules the world

Is there any doubt now? Apple going over to Intel was the final proof. This was like Rommel or Tojo defecting to the Allied side. Game over. While AMD is carving out it's niche, there seems to be plenty of evidence that in mainstream business computer purchasing, AMD boxes continue to be shunned. HP looks like they're finally becoming successful in twisting their customers arms over Itanium, as most of their PA-RISC and Alpha customers are accepting the inevitable. If you're a big HP customer, Itanium has been like a third world election; you're going to keep voting until you get it right, peon. And I still think, now more than ever, that IBM will drop Power within ten years, effectively killing the platform.

We live in the age of (mostly) monopolies.

Boeing airplanes.
Windows operating systems.
Intel CPUs.

Everything else is either foreign purchased, or on the thin margins of the market.

Thin margins, but it's a huge market.

[peterpi]

It's true that Intel effectively own the microcomputer area, that's not the only place chips turn up. In fact, it's a huge but saturated area of the market.

In areas such as embedded devices and games consoles (which are just incredibly powerful embedded devices when you think about it), Intel chips are really quite a poor choice. Chips such as MIPS and PPC that are built for cost and power requirements rather than speed-at-any-cost do quite well.

Re:Thin margins, but it's a huge market.

[DesScorp]

Yeah, but company decisions are not always made on what the best technology is. Sometimes (MANY times) companies buy "Name A" because it's considered the thing to do, regardless of merits. I fear Intel will rule that way. The Xscale, though a nice processor, is not the best appliance processor available. And yet it's begun it's march to rule the embedded space. Witness its' dominance with handhelds such as the Ipaq. I fear that everyone else will use it, regardless of merits, simply because "Hey, it's Intel