As Speed Gains Taper, CPUs Look To Do More

I’ve written before about how CPU gains in improved speed have slowed down over the last decade. No longer are CPU manufacturers able to simply increase clock speeds (the GHz of the chip) to get big performance gains.

The primary way chips are improving in performance today is through parallel computing. I’ve also written about that before to provide background to reader’s of this blog (here and here).

In addition to parallel computing trends, CPU manufacturers are looking to find other valuable features to put into the CPU that have little to do with computation. First, several years ago both Intel and AMD started integrating graphics features directly into the CPU. The CPU can now drive a monitor and handle the graphics loads for everyday computer use.

A few years ago, a friend in our market predicted to me that Intel would also subsume the networking chips directly into the CPU. There would no longer be a separate chip to handle the internet. The CPU would do it directly.

Today I saw an announcement of Intel’s plans that follow through on my friend’s predictions. Intel plans to pull networking into Xeon and Xeon Phi.

In some respects, graphics chip makers and networking chip makers are facing a platform risk similar to what startups face on a smaller scale. The CPU is the center piece of a computer and when it absorbs features, many ancillary components can become redundant or unneeded. Those ancillary components lose market share and have to fight to validate their value harder than in the past.

What are your thoughts about Intel’s move? How do you deal with platform risk in your startup?

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