Microprocessor and GPU Manafacturers

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tlowr4

tlowr4

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Pure curiosity and learning curve question here. :)

So we all know Intel, and AMD. Both of which are very common manufacturers of CPU's used in the computers we see today. However, do any other brands exist? Dosen't matter if they are industrial or consumer level, I'm just chasing some other brands (for reasearch).

Same goes for Video cards. We know of nVidia, and ATI (now bought out by AMD, basically what's keeping them from not going bankrupt :P), but are there other brands? Once again, consumer or industrial (I know nVidia make their Quattro series for 3D modellers and 3D rendering, both industrial and consumer grade).

Cheers. :)
 
Well there are many ARM CPU manufacturers such as Qualcomm. As for PC CPU manufacturers there's companies like VIA but very few others. Pretty much all the existing players in the market have either left the industry, gone bust or been bought by AMD or Intel.

GPU manufacturers like S3 Graphics and Matrox still exist but are for very niche applications. Processor development is way to expensive for more than a handful of companies to exist.
 
Broadcom and Atmel are two microprocessor manufacturers that spring to mind, probably Texas Instruments and NXP too, but I can't think of any more off the top of my head. None of these are 'proper' computer CPUs, though, but your definition is quite broad. You could make a computer with any microprocessor if you give it some memory, take the recent Raspberry Pi for example, it's a Linux computer about the size of a credit card which uses a Broadcom CPU, and I'm sure people have made Arduino-based computers which use an 8-bit Atmel ATMega microprocessor.
 
CPUs:
Intel
AMD
SUN
VIA
Qualcomm
NEC
And thousands of that died during the early years of console games.
 
Wow, yeah. There's a lot more than I thought.

It's just curiosity that sparked me, I Googled and couldn't find anything, so I went to the second best place to gather info.

I remember a year or so ago finding a company that made their own CPU's, Motherboards, RAM...basically everything possible. They were around the same price point as AMD, but of very very poor quality and performance...just can't remember the name.
 
If you're talking about x86, the only manufacturers still in the game are Intel, AMD and a very small amount of VIA. Will probably be only Intel within 3-5 years.

There are probably 100s of ARM manufacturers now.

For GPUs you obviously have AMD and Nvidia, Matrox/PowerVR are also seen in specialised applications. I don't think SiS make graphics chipsets any more, I haven't seen one in a very long time.
 
If we are also talking about defunct manufacturers one which is worthy of mention is Motorola who did many CPU's for all sorts of manufacturers most notably Apple before they went Intel. They also were integral to many machines right from the birth of personal computing.

Freescale Semiconductor which is a descendant of Motorola's CPU business still exists.
 
Casio
...Will probably be only Intel within 3-5 years.
...
Click to expand...

Dear god I hope not. I'm not paying $100 for a bloody dual core when I can get a similar one from AMD that'll do kinda the same job. Not to mention, the increase in motherboard prices because Intel whack a huge tag on their chipsets.

If AMD dies, many businesses will cease to exist, and many people will go without decent computers.
 
Up until recently, Motorolla were quite big.

*edit*

Missed Robins post!

AMD will kind of do the same job, but not at the same price. AMD is cheaper for a reason.
 
^^ That's what I'm getting at. AMD have hit the nail on the head for budget chips, with their Athlon II range, and now with the A4, A6, and A8 APU's, saving even more money and having better graphics than the cheapest Intel chip.

Sure Bulldozer put a sizeable dent in their marketshare (1.75 Billion I'm lead to believe), but that was due to the fact that they hyped the crap out of it, I think they learned their lesson.

Better to understate it and surprise people, than overstate it and disappoint them.
 

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