How come only two companies make CPU's?

[Chingylol]

Was wondering... How come only AMD and Intel make CPU's? There's so many other companies like Asus, EVGA, MSI, XFX, Gigabyte, Pnay, etc that make GPU's, mobos, and all other parts, but when it comes to CPU's, only those two companies have products?

Don't those other companies have the money for research and development also?

[Pull My Finger]

I guess it's probably close to impossible to gain a footing in a market that's so relentlessly dominated by two big-ass, far reaching corporations. Suppliers, distributors, retail, and not at least brand trust and loyalty - very very hard to win anyone over, especially without tremendous backing. I guess it just doesn't make sense trying.

It's not too different in the, let's say, gaming console market. Good luck establishing a brand new console. There's just no room left between the incubent top dogs.

[Deleted]

There are multiple other CPU manufacturers, though many have discontinued producing x86 models these days.

AMD doesn't even make its own CPU's anymore, its fabrication plants have been spun off into other companies and the like, but companies like IBM (granted, they are owned by someone else now, I believe) and others such as Hewlett Packard and so on all produce CPU's.

[ComputerNerd]

The GPU's vary little, with the primary part of them - the Chipset made by either AMD or Nvidia.
And when it comes to the CPU, it is down to compatability.
We have enough sockets with Intel and AMD.
Do we really need more ?

[Pull My Finger]

And let's not forget, since we're talking about chip manufacturing - remember that the core raw material is silicon. If you read up a little on the global silicon extraction and market - you'd wanna puke. Highly scandalous, corrupt machinations where human lives mean nothing. Claiming a piece of the cake in this mafia arrangement is no easy task.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Was wondering... How come only AMD and Intel make CPU's? There's so many other companies like Asus, EVGA, MSI, XFX, Gigabyte, Pnay, etc that make GPU's, mobos, and all other parts, but when it comes to CPU's, only those two companies have products?

Don't those other companies have the money for research and development also?

Those companies don't make "GPUs". They take (mostly) pre-fabbed printed circuit boards, solder pre-fabbed chips onto said PCBs and strap a cooler to it. Also, most of the chips on a motherboard are prescribed by Intel or AMD (so the manufacturers like Gigabyte, MSI et al don't have a choice in the matter) and all are sourced externally and soldered to the motherboard PCB.

[Deleted]

Was wondering... How come only AMD and Intel make CPU's?

They are the only ones making x86 CPUs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86

Intel made the x86 instruction set, AMD extended that to 64bit and called it amd64 (alias x86-64). To make x86 chips (32bit) you need a license from Intel, to make x86-64 chips (64bit) you need a license from Intel AND from AMD.

Instead of trying to catch up to decades of R&D, new chipmakers just go for ARM. You know, all of those CPUs and GPUs that are in your phones, tablets and most everything else that is not a desktop or a laptop. Those have only recently become popular, and since it's not a bug filled, patched mess like x86, it's much easier to get into.

[Osmeric]

Huge economies of scale.

[Artorius]

You have a lot of CPU makers, some besides Intel and AMD that are very big and you might know: Samsung and Qualcomm.
NVIDIA, IBM, Motorola, HP, Texas Instruments, Dell, Via, Marvel, Mediatek. Honestly, there are many.

What you are talking about ar x86-64 CPU makers. Then yes, we have Intel and AMD, both companies that helped creating the set of instructions used at the technology.
X86 was made by intel and amd64 by AMD, they're both cross-licensed now and both companies can use them.

All our current PC CPUs are x86-64.

And that's why other companies can't make them, they don't have the license to do it. And nobody is crazy enough to go against Intel. Samsung is the only company in the entire world that could try to do it if they had access to the license, but they're already leading the ARM industry and there's absolutely no reason to enter the x86 market.

[Kagthul]

IBM still also makes Power PC based chips for server and cloud applications, though they are retiring those chips because ARM is a better RISC solution (lower power for similar performance) and getting into ARM as well.

- - - Updated - - -

Was wondering... How come only AMD and Intel make CPU's? There's so many other companies like Asus, EVGA, MSI, XFX, Gigabyte, Pnay, etc that make GPU's, mobos, and all other parts, but when it comes to CPU's, only those two companies have products?

Don't those other companies have the money for research and development also?

As was said earlier, most of those companies dont create much of anything. Motherboard specifications have to meet the standards of the chipset (Intel says that all Z170 boards have to have the basic chipset and performance metrics) and the amount of stuff they can add is really pretty minimal and is usually things like extra LAN or USB controllers, M.2 compatability, etc.

They also dont make any of that stuff themselves - almost all of those companies use the same 3-4 OEMs in China and Taiwan.

Same goes with GPUs - the GPU core/chip itself is provided by AMD/nVidia (though, again, not actually made by them - just designed by them and then made in TSMC or another OEM's chip foundries) to the company and then they add custom parts to the PCB to differentiate it from their competitors (within certain limits - the Fury Nano, for instance MUST be stock) - like different cooling solutions, better VRMs, that kind of thing.

Again, though, none of that is actually manufactured by the company in question - the same OEMs that produce their motherboards and the like also produce all of those parts.

[Remilia]

Well, VIA actually started making stuff again. Granted it's pretty meh, so take that as what you will. They're pretty much the only company other than AMD and Intel that has both x86 and 64bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Technologies
http://www.viatech.com/en/2015/08/amos-3005-available/
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthre...2442881&page=4

[Hellfury]

There was Cyrix iirc

I had one of the CPU a 133mhz, the shitty part is that is was actualy as good as Pentium 133mhz but the probleam was that everyting though it was a 486 since it lacked some instructions or something...

[Vash The Stampede]

The CPU industry is rather complicated but generally it's because people like being in their comfort zone. As it's been said before AMD/Intel aren't and weren't the only ones who made CPUs. In the past there was Cyrix and IBM, and at some point even Via took making x86 CPUs very serious. In the end we have AMD vs Intel and a lot of people would love to see AMD die leaving Intel as the clear monopolistic x86 winner.

But as it's also been mentioned x86 isn't your only choice for CPUs. You have ARM, MIPS, and PowerPC among a plethora of other choices. PowerPC used to be Apple #1 choice for CPUs before switching to Intel. IBM simply didn't have the capital to make a competitive CPU to Intel so they ended up selling the design and licensing the architecture to other companies, like Microsoft with Xbox 360 and Sony with the PS3. MIPS and ARM have always been about licensing their design and we've seen their CPUs in the past. MIPS was on practically everything from the N64 to the PSP. ARM was even in the original 3DO as well as GameBoy Advance. Nowadays you rarely find MIPS in anything but routers and other cheap devices. ARM evolved into the giant that it is today, rivaling Intel. ARM just has a very different business strategy compared to Intel.

There are computers you can buy that run on PowerPC and ARM but you wouldn't want them. For one they aren't as fast as Intel's, and two because most of everything you do wouldn't be compatible on those architectures. It's not like there's a copy of Windows you can buy for MIPS or PowerPC, though there is for ARM but Microsoft killed it dead. The only effective way to run an OS on non x86 chips is through Linux, and you don't see many people using Linux. On top of that applications have to be written for that CPU as well. Unless it's Java like Minecraft, but not too many applications use Java either.

As for why others don't make x86 CPUs is because Intel won't let them. Intel owns x86 and is being a dick about it. Otherwise you wouldn't see Nvidia making ARM Tegra's but x86 Tegra's if they could. As it is if AMD even so much as sneezes the wrong way Intel could take away their x86 license. Hence why it's called WinTel.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I figured the market wasn't there for them. I mean it'd be cool if more companies tried making CPU but I think it would be a big change.

[dlouhys]

There is a massive investment involved and in the past companies like Cyrix destroyed the market for smaller teams to get in. In fact, AMD probably only exists now because of antitrust laws.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

There is a massive investment involved and in the past companies like Cyrix destroyed the market for smaller teams to get in. In fact, AMD probably only exists now because of antitrust laws.

And the amd-x64 license.

[Chingylol]

Thanks for the replies, was a good read.

[Evildeffy]

As for why others don't make x86 CPUs is because Intel won't let them. Intel owns x86 and is being a dick about it. Otherwise you wouldn't see Nvidia making ARM Tegra's but x86 Tegra's if they could. As it is if AMD even so much as sneezes the wrong way Intel could take away their x86 license. Hence why it's called WinTel.

Actually Intel tried this and failed enormously hard, they lost the law suit and the x86 license is now allowed to be used by AMD to create x86 CPUs with any fab.
(Provided on the condition that AMD forces the fab to sign an NDA and returns all designs for the x86 to AMD when done and the fab doesn't attempt to copy the design, either way in case of the last bit AMD is in the clear if the contract is there so that's more robust then you think)

However... Intel is actually under far more dangerous licensing agreements than AMD.
Considering the fact that AMD licenses the following technology to Intel:
Multi-Core CPU technology
Integrated Memory Controller on CPU die
Integrated GPU on CPU die
AMD64 license
Among others...

In essence if Intel violates the agreement in any way with AMD (which I don't see them doing really) you will be flung back to the Pentium 4 era with Intel.

It is in fact AMD which has the dominant IP-licensing in hand vs. Intel... if you read up on the 2009 - 2010 lawsuit regarding GlobalFoundries and AMD and see what went wrong for Intel in so many ways .. well... yeah

[Cows For Life]

Because it's a rich man's game. If you're poor, you will not be able to compete.

Intel spends $11,500,000,000 on R&D each year. 11 BILLION. PER YEAR. The next closest rival (Qualcomm) spent less than half of that on R&D ($5,500,000,000). Samsung rounds out the top 3 of chip makers with under $3,000,000,000. Intel apparently accounts for 20% of all worldwide investment in semiconductor R&D.

Factories cost billions to build and need to be constantly upgraded. You need lots of factories if you hope to sustain the required volumes to stay in business.

You need lots of customers and marketshare to be able to amortize the costs within a reasonable period of time otherwise your stuff will be too expensive and you won't be able to pay back your loans and you'll go bankrupt.

BTW costs are actually going up instead of going down with smaller chip sizes because we're running into science problems.

I repeat it's a rich man's game.

[Vash The Stampede]

I repeat it's a rich man's game.

Eh, not really. Right now it's a licensing man's game. Going back to Nvidia, If they could license the technology from Intel and make their own chips, they would. The x86 is so dominant that game consoles use this architecture instead of PowerPC or ARM. Why? Cause developers know how to code on that hardware. Technically ARM is superior to x86 but nobody has the interest to create a destkop or server class version of an ARM cpu, because even if you had a fast ARM chip you might as well have a box with blinking lights without software. While porting applications over might seem like a small step, for developers it's a big deal. Blizzard maybe dumping Mac OSX due to OpenGL and Metal support, which is less trivial than converting an entire application over to ARM.

ARM currently sells their designs and licensing to whomever wants to make a CPU. Apple makes a CPU. Samsung makes a CPU. If Kellogg's wanted to they could make a CPU and include one in every box of cereal, cause it's that cheap right now. Hence why there's also Mediatek and Allwinner chips that are found in the dirtiest cheapest of tablets and phones. Why do you see so many of their chips come with Mali-400 graphics? Cause Mali is a graphics design made by ARM as well. A few guys in China just buy the license and hand the design over to a shop in someones backyard and start pumping out these chips like it's nothing for them. Qualcomm, Samsung, and Apple I believe make their own ARM design but you don't have to obviously.

If we had a better software solution to bringing over x86 applications to other architectures without needing emulation and performance degradation, you would see the market turn around and Intel would flop. The only way for that to happen is if software developers released their source code cause I'm sure many people would take the time to port it over to ARM or PowerPC. There aren't a lot of John Carmacks in the industry that do that sorta thing.

The CPU industry is a software man's game.