Microprocessor Startup Apocalypse?

This past week, I was a participant in the annual Hot Chips symposium at Stanford University. As part of the organizing committee, I help the conference with PR, including press and analysts. The conference is a mix of academic and commercial presentations, but the general leaning of the conference is more commercial – especially after the demise of the Microprocessor Forum.

This year’s attendance was up sharply from 2009 and pretty much matched 2007 and 2008. That’s a healthy sign for the business – companies are spending money to send people to conferences. But there’s a dark side to this year’s conference – paper submissions was down. Many of the papers this year came from stalwarts AMD, IBM, and Intel. There were a few new companies, but one presenter’s company (Tier Logic) had already been declared dead by Microprocessor Report (July 19th edition - $$)

And on the same day the conference kicked off, Jim Turley, editor in chief of Microprocessor Report, released an editorial on the futility of new microprocessor startups. With a title of “How to Blow $100 Million,” the editorial goes on to develop a rule of thumb that a new microprocessor start-up needs about $100 million in order to fully launch the company. After the idea rattled off a few people, the general consensus that if the new microprocessor requires extensive tools support (compilers, debuggers, etc), that $100 million is not ridiculously high.

And there is the problem – how can you raise a $100 million form VCs these days, when the risks are high, the returns questionable, and many other “sexier” markets (like green tech, social media, location aware services) are out there. A look at recent microprocessor start-up is not encouraging: Raza Micro (where a spent a few months) was sold to Net Logic, PA Semi was sold to Apple, Intrinsity was also sold to Apple, Montalvo was shuttered, Stream Processor Inc. (SPI) is no more, and the list goes on.
I find it sad and disheartening that the microprocessor business is undergoing such major consolidations and innovative new architectures will likely not get funded. The next new architecture may come from the emerging powers such as China. We saw the Chine “Godson” processor evolve rapidly until now we see a are talking about a processor with a wide SIMD unit, running over 1GHz that soon could be the foundation of a major supercomputer. They even talk about an x86 emulations software layer supported by special instructions. With the support of the government and access to a competitive foundry, I wouldn’t underestimate where there program could be a few more years.

I was reading AMD's Pat Moorehead's blog post on mini-notebooks (Netbooks in Intel-speak; research companies are using the mini-notebook name). Pat's become Mr. Gadget for AMD, which is funny considering AMD is not really in the gadget business.

Back to mini-notes - Pat divides the use model into two types: at home and away from home. Pat's ideal "at-home" mini-note is really just a small notebook like a MacBook Air. The "away-from-home" mini-note is also overkill. I kinda agree with the 1024x768 display, but actually I'd like 1280x768 like my dear departed Crusoe-based Fujitsu P2110 (I still have the parts; I tried to figure out why it died, but couldn't diagnose the reason it wouldn't power up for more than a second or two). I like having a solid state drive because it make the mini-note more rugged to use - like a remote control or a handheld game console. If the content is going to be stored in the cloud or my home network storage - I don't need a large drive. I would like the same amount as an iPOD Touch - 16-32GB. To get to the aggressive price point- there are compromises that must be made. But it clear that consumers won't pay a premium for small size.

Looking over at my gadget collection, you can see that I own the original ASUS Eee PC 701 with the Linux OS and have used it. It's just to difficult to use on a regular basis. I'm planning to keep our wine list on it and it's still useful for casual browsing or chat.

I'm holding out for a mini-note with NVIDIA graphics :-)

As I've thought more about Larrabee, I have some additional observations:
I'd like to clarify my point about the x86 instruction set. It's not innately bad, but it doesn't progress the architecture. The x86 ISA has too few registers, an irregular instruction length, and highly irregular instruction decoding - none of which help with architectural efficiency. It's just all the work and R&D put into software for the x86 architecture that compensates for its shortcomings. But if given a clean slate, few would chose the x86 ISA for maximum performance or efficiency. My point is that x86 is largely irrelevant for a GPU. The x86 will help Intel in the HPC market.

With regard to the wide SIMD (SSE) structure - we'll have to see how effective Intel is in packing useful operations. It seems that the width was chosen in order to hit certain theoretical performance metrics, not for realistic workloads. The same ambition infected the Cell processor and we're still waiting for software to approach those highly promoted peak numbers.

I remain convinced that Intel doesn't have the formula to produce a world class GPU. I see no sign they have the specialized talents to make it succeed. At best, it will be a reasonably sized die with mediocre performance, but it will have Intel's brand name behind it. That will sell some units, but I hope Intel is ready for the realities of GPU ASPs in the mainstream of the market. At least it should be better than the existing Extreme (-ly bad) Graphics they have today.

I also realized that most PC buyers have no idea how bad Intel's integrated graphics really is. The gamer sites never test Intel graphics because they know how bad it is and it's not even worth the effort. But the mainstream consumers don't know how bad it is because NO ONE TELLS THEM! Both ATI and NVIDIA are guilty here because we still have to work with the Intel chipset group and neither company has been willing to take Intel on directly. Shame on us. It's also not a topic that consumer publications make a big point about, as many in the industry consider it common knowledge - its not new news to them. So Intel gets a free ride. I was waiting for AMD to push it's platform strategy and call out Intel graphics, but I haven't seem it yet. Maybe when its new DX10 chipset ships in Q1.

With regard to Larrabee's supposed process advantage, I find it difficult to image Intel will use the leading edge process for Larrabee. I expect the chip and its successors will be 6 months to a year behind the leading edge of the process. If that's the case, then TSMC will be very competitive. In addition, our design process is great at turning around designs quickly, Intel's process is geared more toward die optimizations with its custom circuit design. Intel will likely make Larrabee coherent so that multi-chip scaling will allow Intel to make the one die and still create multiple graphics card solutions. We tend toward multiple design solutions with one die optimized for a specific price point. AMD may also be moving to the same idea as Intel. We'll have to follow that development closely.


So, if anyone else would like to comment, please add your voice. I do moderate the comments, but I promise to publish any reasonable response.

Hi Ho Everybody, I'm back. I haven't had a lot of time with the Eee PC, but it's still reasonably nice. I'll like it a lot better when ASUS increases the screen resolution. It would also be nice to move up to a Core 2 processor with real power management, but these are the trade-offs you make when its only $400.

I've been in the middle of thinking about AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA as we all do this dance around the ring - its like a three-way fight where we take turns helping and hurting each other. I'd call us the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (I'd let you all decide who is who, but I know my choices).

On the topic of ASUS, I'm beginning to wonder about the quality of their motherboards. Both my stepson and I have problems with the motherboards not booting properly and these are two completely different motherboards. How hard can that be to get right?

One project I recently completed was taking video at the memorial for the mother of my wife's brother in-law. I used Pinnacle Studio 10.5 and found it pretty easy to use and create a good basic video with fades and titles. I want to do more work with it over the holidays.