The Future of the x86 Market (Feature)

I have made some predictions about future of the x86 market. Some interesting possibilities, many of them involving IBM. Read on...

Thanks go to Phillip R. Janeke for his gracious contribution to this article.

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Recent developments in the x86 market may lead to the decline of Intel's monopoly power in the market. The increasing success of its competitors, as well as financial turmoil at the company may lead to increased competition, heaper prices, a more segmented market, and the rise of IBM as a powerhouse in the fabrication industry.

Yesterday, Cyrix introduced the MII chip. I expect the chip, along with the AMD K6 will dominate the low and mid-end markets. With the introduction of the MII, Cyrix has finally introduced a chip that will hopefully exceed Intel's chips in both integer and floating point performance, and exceed the price/performance of any chip on the market.

The rise of the K6 has lead to the resurgence of AMD in the x86 market. With the K6 3D, hopefully to be introduced next month, AMD will introduce a set of MMX-like instructions that will NOT be supported by Intel. IDT will also support the extentions. These two chips may take away a sizeable portion of the mid-end market from Intel.

IDT is a vendor with an as-yet unforseeable future. The vendor has been relativley successful, signing a foundry agreement with IBM, as well as exceeding sales expectations. Will the unsophisticated C6+ chip be enough to let the chip designer retain control of the little market share they have in the low-end? Maybe.

But there is something all three vendors have in common: all have signed foundry agreements with IBM. By the end of the year, IBM will be able to manufacture any non-Intel x86 chip, and that will certainly help them gain a noticeable portion of the desktop computer market. What does this mean for Intel? Will it be simply relegated to the high-end? If so, how will it compete with non-x86 offerings from Digital, MIPS, and other vendors? The company will introduce Celeron today, a cache-less version of the Pentium II. The chip has already met with many industry critics, and walked away in shame. Performance of the 266MHz model is expected to be on par with a 233MHz version, and many OEMs have snubbed the chip for an AMD or Cyrix chip. Is Celeron too little too late?

Intel has also announced plans to lay off 3000 employees. This, combined with the Asian financial crisis has lead to long-term growth questions about the company. Will it be able to successfully dominate the low end, or will IBM and its partners sweep the company out of the market from under itself?