How did the semiconductor manufacturer's AMD rise and settle down?

It is now the only rival against Intel which continues to secure overwhelming share in PC CPU market and reigns as absolute championAdvanced Micro Devices (AMD)Has been sluggish in recent years, and recently it is in a state where rumors that a major IT company will be bought will disappear. As to how AMD was born, grew up, challenged Intel against the battle, upgraded to a threatening existence, and broke down,HackadayI am thinking about it.

Echo of the Bunnymen: How AMD Won, Then Lost | Hackaday
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/09/echo-of-the-bunnymen-how-amd-won-then-lost/

AMD was founded in 1969 by Jerry Saunders and others from Fairchild Semiconductor. Incidentally, it was one of the founders of Intel that founded Fairchild SemiconductorGordon MooreAfter that, Moore left the Fairchild Semiconductor and founded Intel in 1968, so AMD seems to be maximizing and being the same gatekeeper as the strongest rival Intel.

At that time, AMD began manufacturing chips as second-source manufacturers of semiconductors with dozens of companies. At that time, customers who demanded that substitutes for semiconductor chips are easy to obtain are substitutes for original processors and chipsSecond sourceThere was an emphasis on the existence of it. For example, IBM has requested Intel, which provides CPU for the manufacture and sale of its own PC, as an "insurance" for stable supply of CPU, such as requiring a second source contract with another company, Demand for seasonal semiconductor chips is surely present, and as a second source maker that manufactures this substitute, AMD has produced a reputation.

AMD in 1974Intel 8080Replaceable chip made by reverse engineering "Am 9080Released. Originally it was not licensed from Intel, so AMD was selling chips without permission, but such a second source manufacturer was not unusual at that time. AMD is officially licensed from Intel for manufacture and sale of Am 9080 later.


Even after that, AMD, which gained power by manufacturing the second source of Intel CPU, also succeeded in developing chips with performance superior to Intel chips for specific functions. As Intel manufactures the second source of the chip "Am9511" developed by AMD, we will surely increase its presence in the semiconductor market. And in 1982, Intel and AMD requested Intel the second source of semiconductors IBM installed in PC as described aboveIntel 8088We have signed a second source contract for chip and agreed to exchange manufacturing technology and product design with each other for 10 years.

AMD has an alliance with Intel, and originalIntel 80286(286) or faster "Am 80286We will sweep the 286 processor substitute market by releasing such as. But IntelIntel 80386(386) or later, since the second source was abolished AMDCyrixSemiconductor manufacturers such as semiconductor manufacturers will independently develop products that can compatible with Intel chips, AMD is compatible with Intel's 386 processor "Am 386"It is a great success by achieving an overwhelming low price while having high speed performance almost equal to that of the Intel 486 processor.


But in 1987 Intel approached AMD on 386 licenses, in 1988 on 286 microcode usage patent infringement etc. AMD will be involved in legal battle with Intel. And according to the terms of settlement of the lawsuit with Intel, we ceased developing alternatives replacing Intel processors, and in 1999 we made ourselves a proprietary product that is not compatible with Intel processors at all "AthlonProcessor released. In Intel's low price CPU · Celeron series, such as hitting "Duron" series, in the 2000sVIAAMD will survive and establish the position as the only CPU maker that can compete with Intel even as rival makers such as rival manufacturers are dropping one after another.

As Athlon reached the 1 GHz clock ahead of Intel, AMD CPUs with price performance exceeding Intel gradually adopted by PC makers such as Dell and Gateway, AMD gradually increased CPU market share I will continue. In addition, Intel was ahead of Intel competition in the penetration of 64-bit CPU, succeeded also in the server market. In the middle of the 2000s, it increased its share to 25% and became a threat to Intel.


However, as a result of AMD's breakthrough, Intel will appear on promotional activities without pretense. From 2003 to 2006 PC manufacturer Dell took out sales incentives of 1 billion dollars (about 100 billion yen) in return for not adopting AMD CPU, or for defensive defense against bulk purchase of Intel CPUs Or perform a strategy of breaking down AMD. And since 2006Pentium 4In order to recapture the performance advantage lost inIntel CoreWhen we introduce the series, we decided to keep AMD at a stroke.

Furthermore, unlike AMD, Intel has a superior compiler development department, not just a semiconductor maker, it will have a significant meaning on the AMD strategy. In 2005, when AMD sued Intel for anti-monopoly law violation,"We can recognize that Intel's compiler is running on AMD processors, and in that case it will cause code to degrade performance or cause crashes to run."Did. By this time the CPUSSEYaIA-32As typified byInstruction set, And the compiler had a great influence on the execution speed of the CPU.

As a result, the Intel compiler has a program that makes Intel CPU advantageous. As a result, in benchmark software for measuring CPU performance and image editing software, AMD CPUs can not draw out capabilities compared to Intel CPUs I will. According to Hackaday, this Intel compiler's trick began to be known since around 2005, but Intel has taken a decisive role in recovering market share. It became difficult to appeal that price performance exceeded Intel which we had been good at AMD, and furthermore it will be impossible to compete with Intel's high-performance CPU following Intel Core series to Intel Core 2 series, Intel Core i series, and AMD We dropped the share rapidly.


Rumors have been raised that AMD, which burned $ 197 million (about 24 billion yen) in the third quarter results in 2015, already breathing, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Apple etc. I will not fail. Meanwhile, Intel anticipates the survival of AMD as if it hopes for the status of not killing like the current AMD as it is like the current AMD, since the troublesome problem of the antitrust law will arise if stopping the breath of AMD There are also voices. The SoC division where chips are adopted in PS4 and Xbox One has strength in graphics performance such as securing surplus It is a fact that AMD still has the technical power to surpass Intel with respect to GPU with built-in CPU. The next generation x86 CPU "Zen" expected to be released in 2016 and the ARM CPU "K 12" saves AMD from the plight and attracts attention as to whether it will become a processor of the death-rebirth challenge again to Intel's stronghold.