x86 getting crowded...

everyone wants a piece of the x86 pie now... i'm totally confused now.. i
dunno who to root for.. should i root for Intel/AMD/VIA/NV??

it's not a very big pie to begin with... the x86 has the desktop pretty much
conquered.. however, the desktop marketplace isn't growing at the stellar
rates it used to.. in fact, it's hardly even growing much more... the only
places that do not have desktops are emerging markets... and with the likes
of china trying to get into the business of developing their own desktops,
there's even more competition there... there are bigger markets out there
(granted, with smaller margins) but still bigger and growing, especially in
the embedded market...

but this fight isn't about money... this fight is about survival... with the
recent acquisition of ATI by AMD, the rules have changed... the business of
discrete graphics is going the way of the dodo... so, for NV, it's either
innovate or die... and with the wads of cash that they have in the bank,
they're not going to die just yet... so, they're planning to build a CPU+GPU
combo... and to address their existing market, the CPU will be an x86 one..

personally, i don't think that route is the right one though... the x86 arena
is a legal minefield... and having Intel/AMD fighting there, it isn't wise to
enter the arena with a competing product... there's a malay saying "when two
elephants duel, the deer dies in the middle"... not a good idea at all...
however, NV might see that they've been forced to do so, in order to hold on
to their market... both AMD+Intel are now developing CPU+GPU combos as well..

NV has actually an opportunity to go a different way... it could develop an
alternative desktop CPU... this is exactly what the government of china is
trying to do... it's developing a desktop CPU based on the MIPS
architecture... granted, it won't run windows, but the desktop OS market is a
dying one anyway... in the future, it wouldn't really matter which OS is used
as everything will run off the interweb anyway...

NV could have courted the chinese government with such a project, and ensured
a customer... one may think that this is a big risk, seeing that they'd have
to essentially give up a field of battle in order to open up another one...
however, trying to do the x86, they will end up opening up a legal minefield
that will sink them... the lawyers from all sides may just point their
turrets at NV instead of each other for a while..

scary times indeed for NV... it faces extinction due to the move by AMD.. oh
my.. does that make AMD evil now?? this just complicates matters... oh well,
i guess i could still root for VIA... hehe...