There is exactly one 800-pound gorilla in the CPU arena, and that’s Intel. But the company, which controls about 80% of the global CPU market, is soon getting some serious competition from Japan. A pool of Japanese companies has decided to team up and produce a made-in-Japan CPU that’s supposed to rival Intel’s products.
The CPU will be jointly developed by Fujitsu, Renesas, NEC, Canon, Panasonic, Hitachi and other companies from Japan. It will be used in a range of consumer electronics, servers, robots and cars and it’s “green”. The CPU adopts itself dynamically to the amount of data being processed, resulting in energy savings of up to 30% when compared to the power consumed at normal times.
Initially, each company is supposed to contribute a CPU on its own, aiming at a final model that’s supposed to run on solar cells. The new CPU and the corresponding software are supposed to constitute a industry-wide standard that will be positioned against Intel.
The Japanese companies expect the new format to be in place by the end of fiscal 2012. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is ready to help with $33-43 million in financial support.
Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]
This may be big, or not… These newcomers need to make a fast efficient x86 Intel Architecture System on Chip to replace the Atom. AMD, Via, and NVidia have let us down in this area. I believe Intel, AMD or NVidia could do it but they’re afraid of hurting their core business, especially Intel with their confusing and wildly overpriced laptop chipsets.
These guys don’t have a player in that game – they have the benefit of starting from scratch. Also, we have seen in the past that Japanese companies can actually collaborate smoothly without infighting, patent fights, and lawyers in-general to muck things up.
Go for it boys!
I loved the CPU/GPU wars of the 90s. I always pulled for the underdog. My first 3 decent computers were:
AMD K6-2 800MHz with a Voodoo2 (the one with extra ram)
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with a Kyro II 64MB AGP card
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ with a Gainward “Golden Sample” overclocked GeForce3 of some kind.
Then, I was able to afford an Intel machine. I still really want to like the underdog in this kind of situation, but my computing needs can’t suffer.
Cool. Good luck to them.
I LIke that…we need more competetion and more advanced fast technology.Intel is dooing good but not good enough.AMD is way behind,and now its time for faster and efficient GPU.
Ironically, the processor intended to give tough competition to Intel’s processors will be designed on computers running on Intel processors. ;).
I wish this group of companies the best and may they succeed in introducing some decent competition in this area.
This isn’t really a Intel competitor, more a competitor to ARM and RISC chips used in CE devices.
The x86 architecture is long in the tooth, and the PC chip market has razor-thin profitability. These chips will be the in your TV, camera, cars, and DVD/Blu-ray players. Stuff those companies make.