Re:Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel
by pjc50 on Tuesday December 11, 2018 @04:30AM
(#18654131)
US government (and other major purchaser) "second sourcing" regulations are a longstanding attempt to keep a competitive market in situations where it would otherwise collapse into a monopoly. That's how Intel came to share x86 with AMD in the first place.
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Yes, but I'm not sure it's still as influential as it was in the 80's and 90's
I'm not sure what you mean. We wouldn't have AMD now, and the utterly non-competitive x86 CPU market would look entirely different than it does now. Despite AMD not being competitive on performance in the past ~10ish years, they were still an alternative if Intel ever really dropped the ball or went off the rails on exploitative business practices. Without that counterweight, there would've been no limit to what Intel could've done.
More needs to be done to ensure proprietary silos like Apple, but second sourcing has, largely, done its job.