Source of Consumer Benefit

[dealcorn]

Competition helps both consumers and the market leaders. Victory in a competitive market fosters a deeper, more durable appreciation of customer preferences. However, in the PC space, does anyone seriously believe that competition has created even a tenth of the benefit that flows pretty directly from Moore's Law. Cheaper, better transistors are profoundly enabling. Even ARM likely needs more transistors than the 8086 had going for it?

Intel wears many hats and the one that says "Research Lab" is important. Over there, the mantra is don't let Intel fall off the cutting edge of Moore's Law on your watch. Better stuff keeps coming as long as better, cheaper transistors are there. In the big picture, it does not matter who is on the dance floor.

 

[sm625]

In the PC market, competition has done wonders for prices. Unfortunately it was all about competing to find the cheapest source of foreign labor. In the x86 CPU market I dont think competition has brought us anything but stagnation. Neither of these companies truly innovate. We'd be better off with a single Intel which would then grow fat and bloated to the point where it just fell over when kicked by something like a transmeta. I believe it was competition from AMD that prevented Intel from being totally blindsided by a transmeta type innovation. (Sort of like how democrats and republicans shield each other to prevent the rise of a 3rd party...)

 

[CTho9305]

In the PC market, competition has done wonders for prices. Unfortunately it was all about competing to find the cheapest source of foreign labor.

Huh? As far as I know, the vast majority of "interesting" design for Intel and AMD takes place in the US (and Israel for Intel). Chip fabrication is also done around the world (inculding the US... Arizona, Oregon, California), and Global Foundries (which spun out of AMD) is building their next chip fab in New York.

 

[Martimus]

Competition helps both consumers and the market leaders. Victory in a competitive market fosters a deeper, more durable appreciation of customer preferences. However, in the PC space, does anyone seriously believe that competition has created even a tenth of the benefit that flows pretty directly from Moore's Law. Cheaper, better transistors are profoundly enabling. Even ARM likely needs more transistors than the 8086 had going for it?

Intel wears many hats and the one that says "Research Lab" is important. Over there, the mantra is don't let Intel fall off the cutting edge of Moore's Law on your watch. Better stuff keeps coming as long as better, cheaper transistors are there. In the big picture, it does not matter who is on the dance floor.

I believe it 100%. Why would Intel or AMD work to try to continue along Moores Law without any competition to spur them to do it? Even if they did, what would make them create faster, more powerful processors, when they could just create smaller, cheaper, more power efficient processors that wear out after a few years forcing you to buy a new one?

EDIT: What I am trying to say is that even though your point is the that primary reason for chip advancement is the work that foundries are putting into continuing Moores law, my position is that the work going into continuing Moores law is only done because of stiff competition.