After 50 years of chip wars, why can't Intel kill AMD?

In 1957, there was a "mutiny" in the laboratory of Shockley, the father of the transistor and nobel laureate in physics.

The eight scholars could not stand Shockley's scholarly management and decided to set up their own portals.

The "Eight Traitors" obtained the investment of Fairchild Company and established Fairchild Semiconductor, which was a scientific genius, who pioneered the use of silicon to make transistors and invented integrated circuits, which made Fairchild Semiconductor develop rapidly, and by 1967, the turnover reached 200 million US dollars.

However, Fairchild's major shareholder (Fairchild Photographic Equipment) continued to transfer profits to the East Coast to support the development of the unprofitable photographic equipment business.

Fairchild employees witnessed this, but they were powerless to do anything about it, and they ran away to start a business, and Fairchild Semiconductor also declined.

However, Fairchild has cultivated countless technical and management talents for Silicon Valley, and the engineers and technicians who fled from Fairchild have founded hundreds of companies in Silicon Valley, which are called Fairchild's Children.

Among them, Intel, founded by Neuss, Moore, Grove and others, has embarked on the route of technology flow, developing the most advanced memory chips.

AMD, founded by Fairchild Sales Sanders, is market-oriented.

Our story officially begins.

In terms of strategic positioning, Intel and AMD are strategic complementary, and it is said that Noyce and Sanders' personal relationship is also good.

In the early 1980s, with the rise of Japanese and Korean semiconductor companies, Intel declined in the storage field and faced a crisis.

It happened at this time that a revolution in microcomputers gave Intel a glimmer of hope.

In 1981, as a latecomer to microcomputers, in order to quickly launch products, Blue Giant IBM used an open architecture for the first time and adopted an outsourcing strategy for the two core components of PCs, the operating system and microprocessors.

Intel and AMD teamed up to take over the CPU supply rights of IBM PCs, and since then they have soared with the development of personal computers.

The honeymoon between the two sides did not last long, and in 1982, AMD's Am286 processor based on the 80286 was launched, which was much more frequent and inexpensive than Intel's own chip of the same type.

Feeling threatened, Intel stopped doing it, and he decided to cancel the license and monopolize the CPU of his personal computer.

It was a lengthy lawsuit involving nearly a hundred witnesses, thousands of pieces of physical evidence, tens of thousands of pages of paperwork, and it wasn't until 1992 that AMD won.

Despite this, Intel took various measures to delay the execution of the judgment until two years later.

The lawsuit was won, but AMD missed the golden age of the PC market forever.

On November 1, 1995, Intel released the Pentium Pro, the most important chip in the company's history

AMD did not sink here, in 1996, AMD released the first independent production of x86-level CPU K5, followed by the introduction of K6, K6-2, with its high performance, compatibility, cheap and other advantages to win the market.

The leading Intel made frequent mistakes, first from the Socket 7 interface to the Slot 1 failed, and then because of the Pentium 3 problem large-scale recall, it was hit hard.

In 1999, AMD went a step further, pioneering the introduction of a 1G Hz Athlon processor.

The big trick is the 64-bit processor, Intel has invested hundreds of millions of dollars, if successful, AMD and Cyrix and other manufacturers will be fatally hit!

In 2003, AMD introduced the X86-compatible 64-bit microprocessor Athlon64. In the history of more than 30 years of competition, AMD broke the image of technology followers and imitators for the first time, and proved its technical strength with a 64-bit processor.

Watching AMD lead twice and gaining higher and higher market share, Intel finally couldn't sit still and released a big move: "Tick-Tock".

The Pendulum Program has developed a timeline for Updates to Intel's Processor Microarchitecture and Chip Process, Tick's Annual Update production process, and Tock's Annual Update to Its Microarchitecture.

In July 2006, Intel's new generation processor Core 2 was launched, using a 65-nanometer process process, intel claimed that it would have a 40% increase in performance, while reducing power consumption by 40%.

This time, AMD's CPU advantage is completely lost.

The implementation of the pendulum plan and the launch of Core have left AMD in a state of defeat.

Intel, which has no competitors, began to think of making no progress and became a well-known toothpaste factory in the industry.

In 2014, AMD, who was struggling to support, finally ushered in a "savior": Su Ma (Su Zifeng)

But AMD has been losing money for 6 consecutive quarters, continuing to lose blood and running out of funds, and Su Zifeng has turned its attention to China.

AMD, which returned more than $600 million, began to climb the hill, and successively released a series of products such as Ryzen™ processors, EPYC 7000, and Radeon E9170, which were greatly welcomed by users.

Since then, AMD has caught up in all business lines, and once again threatened Intel's position with strong products

AMD's revenue has grown rapidly, and the stock price is even more impressive, from less than $3 when Su Ma took over, to more than $100 now! The market capitalization surpassed Intel at the beginning of the year.

In February 2022, AMD announced the completion of an all-stock acquisition of Xilinx, an FPGA company, valued at $49.8 billion (about 316.5 billion yuan)

From the establishment of AMD and Intel in the late 1960s to the present, it has been more than 50 years, most of which is Intel leading the development of CPU, although Intel continues to suppress AMD, but AMD is still tenacious survival, constantly threatening Intel's supremacy.

With amd re-emerging, two old rivals are about to embark on a new journey. What the future holds, we'll see.

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