"Don't try, do it or don't do it, don't try it."
Unlike the three heroes of the CPU market, the pattern of the independent GPU field is much clearer: there is a total of one stone in the world, NVIDIA monopolizes six buckets, AMD has three buckets and five buckets, and the rest of the manufacturers get half a bucket.
In fact, in this field, AMD \ Nvidia, the "red and green two factories" of the world has been divided for more than a decade, the monopoly barrier seems insurmountable, even if it is as powerful as Apple has not shown obvious interest in this market.
This is very similar to the console market in the 80s and early 90s of the last century, Nintendo is alone, sega harvesting the remaining market pattern is also seemingly unshakable. However, in December 1994, Sony took the PlayStation halfway out, and after entering the new century, Microsoft also joined the battle with the Xbox. Today, the console market has become a situation in which Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are divided into three worlds, Nintendo no longer has the strength of "commanding the world, dare not follow", and Sega has completely withdrawn from the competition.
The GPU field has also ushered in spoilers this year.
In August last year, CPU giant Intel announced that it would enter the high-performance graphics market, and on March 30, they released the Arc series of mobile display for laptops, which are ready to enter the market. In addition, in China, which is eager to grasp the autonomy of chips, there are also a large number of companies that have invested in GPU research and development.
The pattern of the GPU market has never been more interesting than it is today.
Is it too late for Intel to enter the game?
The landscape of today's discrete graphics market is clear, and there's no doubt that Intel has clearly missed the best time.
But the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, followed by now. Since they dare to enter the game at this time, they must have enough confidence in their technical reserves. So, compared with those competitors who have been deeply involved in the market for many years, what are Intel's advantages and characteristics?
Nowadays, ray tracing has become a standard feature of high-end graphics cards, and compared with Nvidia and AMD products, Intel graphics has fewer ray tracing units, so it is difficult to form its own unique advantage in this regard.
AI may become Intel's breakthrough. With the blessing of AI, Intel Arc Graphics implements a technology called XeSS, which is simply a super sampling technology that can improve the performance of game frames.
According to Intel, this technology can achieve 2 times the frame rate performance of the game without sacrificing the picture quality of the game. In contrast, whether it is Nvidia's DLSS or AMD's Super Resolution, although it can achieve the effect of increasing the frame rate, it is not as dependent on AI technology as Intel.
However, at least for now, AI can only be regarded as a "feature" of Intel graphics rather than an "advantage" in the true sense. What can help Intel quickly seize the market may be capacity.
Chip production can be simply divided into three steps of design, manufacturing and packaging, Nvidia and AMD have chip design capabilities, but the manufacture and packaging of chips are handed over to TSMC, Samsung and other foundries to complete. The efficiency and quality of this model have been proven in the past, but after the outbreak of the epidemic, chip production capacity has been hit hard, and foundries still need to meet the needs of multiple customers, which naturally caused a shortage of supply.
In this environment, having a complete and autonomous supply chain is undoubtedly of great help to chip companies. Intel is the only chip company that can independently master the whole process from design to packaging. Therefore, in terms of production capacity, Intel does not need to look at the face of the foundry at all. In terms of cost, fewer circulation links and "middlemen" also mean that their costs are more controllable, and they have a better chance of forming a price advantage.
When players generally complain that NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards are inflated and "airy", even if Intel does not take the cost-effective route, as long as the price of the graphics card is worthy of quality and can guarantee the supply, then there is a good chance to quickly penetrate the market. "You have the ability to sell goods", is the common rule in this crazy graphics card market.
Therefore, even if the market position of Nvidia and AMD is already very strong, Intel has a great opportunity to win in an uncertain market environment and overtake in curves.
The road to breakthrough for Chinese enterprises
For Intel, doing GPUs may be a "unnecessary" problem, but for the pursuit of full autonomy in China's semiconductor industry, there is no need for either CPU or GPU, and we should think more about how to break through.
Previously, the focus of domestic enterprises was concentrated in the CPU field, and in recent years, with the popularity of cloud games, meta-universes and other industries, some Chinese figures have also begun to appear in the GPU field.
On November 16 last year, Jingjiawei said that the self-developed JM9 series chips have completed the work of tapeout, packaging, preliminary testing, etc., and will begin debugging and optimization. A day later, Chip Technology also released its self-developed GPU chip "Fenghua No. 1", equipped with the industry's most advanced GDDR6X video memory.
At the end of March this year, Moore Thread, founded by zhang Jianzhong, former general manager of NVIDIA China, released a full-featured GPU "Su Di", which supports output of up to 8K screens. On April 1, Biling Technology announced the successful lighting of the BR100 series of general-purpose GPU chips, which are completely independently developed by the company.
It can be seen that domestic GPU manufacturers have successively come up with research results, but the more critical question is, how to gain a firm foothold in the market after the mass production and listing?
For the new faces of these industries, surviving is the most important thing. Therefore, whether from the perspective of product performance or brand recognition, it is certainly not wise to compete directly with the existing market and international giants such as the game and the entire C-end. Manufacturers are clearly aware of this, so when promoting their products, they invariably focus on commercial areas such as data centers, cloud games, autonomous driving, and smart cities.
The development of the mainland in these areas is at the leading level in the world, so the related needs will be more, and local GPU manufacturers are more able to communicate with these customers, so as to create some customized products for them to better meet the needs. By serving B-side customers, domestic GPU manufacturers can also obtain a relatively stable source of funds in the initial stage, and accumulate more valuable experience in the process of cooperation and continuously optimize their own products.
At the same time, GPU manufacturers will not forget to show the potential of their own products in the game when demonstrating, so it can also be determined that the C-end market will be the ultimate goal of their efforts. If domestic manufacturers can gain a firm foothold in the B-end market, then with the technology and experience accumulated in this process, they can also have a greater grasp when entering the C-end market.
It must be admitted that in the GPU field, there is still a gap of several years or even decades between domestic enterprises and American companies, and chips are an industry with high investment and slow returns, so for domestic manufacturers, there is no "test of water" in the development of GPUs, once this step is taken, there is no way back. But since domestic manufacturers have launched an offensive against this high wall of technology built by American manufacturers, we have the hope of breaking through the technology monopoly and mastering the core technology. I believe that one day, players will also include domestic graphics cards in their own consideration when installing the machine, in addition to the three major American manufacturers of "red, green and blue".