In the past two days, the news about Intel's actions to hurt the feelings of Chinese people has been overwhelming, and domestic public opinion has been in an uproar.
I will not repeat the details of the incident here, after all, the major media have rushed to report, which probably means that Intel has published a statement about its suppliers on its official website, saying: "Our investors and customers have asked Intel whether it purchases products or services from China's Xinjiang region." Governments in many countries and regions have imposed restrictions on products from the Xinjiang region. Therefore, Intel needs to ensure that our supply chain does not use any labor, procurement products or services from the Xinjiang region. ”
Something similar has happened more than once to large multinational companies in Western countries, such as some clothing brands that were scolded to remove statements and boycotted some time ago.
And this time Intel stood up to say that it was completely in the case of having learned from the past, and the Chinese market is Intel's largest market in the world, but it still has no fear, which can be described as arrogant. Why does Intel dare to be the head bird at such a sensitive moment? The answer, of course, is that he is not afraid of being beaten, or that he knows that no one has hit it.
According to the latest data released by Omdia, the authoritative semiconductor market research department in the United Kingdom, in the third quarter of 2021, intel ranked second in the world, second only to Samsung, and the chips it sold accounted for 12.3% of the global market, which showed its influence in the semiconductor field (Omdia's comprehensive ranking does not include semiconductor foundry sales, so semiconductor foundry giants such as TSMC did not appear in the list).
The reason why Intel occupies such a large share of the global chip market is that everyone knows that Intel mainly sells the most core chips in the computer - the CPU is the cpu, that is, the central processing unit. Specifically, in the first quarter of 2021, for example, more than half of Intel's revenue came from personal computer (such as laptops, desktop computers, etc.) CPUs, and nearly half came from data center server CPUs. The sum of the revenue of the two is basically 100%, and other sources of income are basically negligible.
Let's take a look at the global market share of Intel's two major businesses. In 2020, Intel's market share in notebook CPU market reached 81%, desktop CPU market share reached 80.7%, both monopolizing the entire market, and the remaining share was basically occupied by another American company, AMD.
In the server CPU market, Intel's share is even higher to the point of horror. In 2020, 94% of the world's server CPUs use Intel chips, and the remaining small share is still occupied by its old rival AMD (the bar chart below is 91% at the beginning, don't be misled).
The reason why Intel is the only one in the CPU market and AMD is leftovers is mainly due to the fact that the current global computer server CPU industry chain is built around a chip underlying architecture called x86.
The patent owner of the x86 architecture is Intel. Due to a series of inexplicable historical reasons and chaotic lawsuits, AMD is one of two companies in the world that have obtained the license of Intel x86 (the other is the now unknown VIA), and have survived the competition with Intel, retaining a certain market.
Unlike ARM, which specializes in ARM chip architecture, the main source of revenue is to sell ARM architecture to major chip manufacturers, because Intel itself makes CPU chips, so Intel will hardly sell the x86 architecture to any other competitor.
Therefore, this has led to the status quo that almost only two companies in the world have the strength and ability to produce high-performance CPU chips. If a third company wants to step in, buying x86 from Intel is basically not feasible (but it can be obtained from the other two, as will be discussed later). Unless the company uses a new chip architecture to design the CPU, the key will have to be acceptable to the global computer industry chain, which is as difficult as a company to come forward and design a new operating system to replace Windows and let software developers around the world redevelop software for it.
Or simply put, the global computer industry has been built on Intel's x86 foundation for so many years, and it is needless to say how difficult it is to reopen the block to rebuild the industrial chain. Therefore, Intel naturally knows its own status, China or any other country in the world (except the United States), it is basically unlikely to stand up to resist Intel, which is much more difficult than boycotting a clothing brand.
If you choose to invest in the AMD camp, on the one hand, Intel chips are irreplaceable in many segments, on the other hand, AMD has also issued an unnamed statement, to put it bluntly, it is what people have to do in their hearts, but I don't want to understand it.
So does China really have nothing to play in the CPU field? Although China does not have a high-performance CPU factory like Intel and AMD, it is currently in the stage of sparks everywhere.
There are three main types of enterprises involved in CPU research and development in China, the first is the easy model: direct use of x86 architecture, as mentioned earlier, Intel x86 does not take out, but there are two companies in China that have obtained x86 authorization in various ways, namely Mega Core, which is licensed from VIA, and Haiguang, which is licensed from AMD. Although the use of x86 architecture for CPU research and development has a high starting point, because it uses pure American technology, the core technology basically cannot be obtained in its own hands, and the risk is extremely high, and everyone understands.
The second category is the ordinary model: the ARM architecture used in the mobile phone CPU monopoly market to engage in computers, server CPU, on behalf of the enterprise is Huawei, so the advantage is that the ARM architecture can be fully authorized (after all, people are selling this), free development, the disadvantage is that ARM is not very suitable for the non-mobile device market, and ARM also has the risk of being cut off.
The third category is Hardmode: using the self-developed chip architecture entirely, tearing down the foundation and starting over. The representative enterprise is Loongson, which is about to be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. Due to a series of chaotic intellectual property lawsuits in the early stage, LoongArch has made up its mind to fully switch to CPU product research and development based on its self-developed chip architecture LoongArch from 2021, and has successfully developed a number of LOONGArch-based CPU products.
Therefore, although Loongson has taken one of the most difficult roads, it is a difficult and relatively safe road.
However, although Loongson has its own intellectual property chip architecture, it is still a simple chip design company, that is, like Huawei HiSilicon, it still has to be stuck in the chip manufacturing field.
In addition, Loongson is also facing the problem of industrial chain support, after all, no computer or server manufacturer dares to use the CPU of the new architecture as its core, not to mention that its performance and Intel, AMD still have a huge gap, and can not support mainstream operating systems and software.
However, in the current complex situation, no matter how difficult it is, it is necessary to engage in self-research.
In the past few years, there have been serious diplomatic conflicts between Japan and South Korea, and the two sides have been tense, but after Japan directly cut off the supply of a variety of high-end semiconductor materials to South Korea, South Korea instantly became soft, and the United States intervened to mediate. And when technology companies like Intel stand up one by one and clamor, China also needs technology companies that can help the state to counter, and this kind of hard-hitting technology companies will inevitably experience a difficult growth process, after all, the key core technologies are not coming, buying, and begging, which has become the way that Chinese technology companies must go out of the current situation.