Why are there only two(three) CPU manufacturers?

[snazzyconnor]

Intel and AMD seem to be the only manufacturers in the industry who have any noticeable market share, there's another company called VIA I have heard of who have negligible amount of share on the market, why is this? I imagine there were several when processors became commercially available and would the market not benefit from more competition as the smartphone market did? same goes for GPU market too, with only nvidia, amd and intel.

 

[iamlegend]

Well they have a strong foundation already.
If you will start a new CPU manufacturing industry you will be needing the top technicians (which will come from intel and AMD) and you yourself should come from either of those companies and has a deep knowledge of both to clearly determine the similarities and difference so that you can make your own.

You should also know business.

 

[Alabalcho]

Don't forget that CPU itself is worth nothing if these is no software to run on it. Intel/AMD have Windows/OSX/Linux to run on it, ARM have pletoria of tablets/phones/routers.

If you start making CPUs (apart from engineers needed to design the actual silicon), what software will run on it so that you will have customers wanting to buy it?

There are other CPU makers as well (Vortex86 comes into my mind), but they go after niche markets like automation. The car you're driving has dozens (if not hundreds) of CPUs you've never heard about as well.

 

[Guest]

In 90's and 80's , there were so many CPU manufacturers . Such as Zilog , Motorola , TI , MOS Tec , Cyrix , IBM and VIA .

 

[snazzyconnor]

would be interesting if more competition entered the market, Intel and AMD seem to only do baby steps with each generation atm, using the smartphone market as an example once more competition came in there was far more innovation

 

[Victorion]

Only AMD and Intel atm have x86 license.

There are lots of other companies that produce processors though. ARM processors comes to mind i.e.

NB. I think AMD and Intel only designs the processors, they probably get manufactored by different company.

 

[snazzyconnor]

Only AMD and Intel atm have x86 license.

There are lots of other companies that produce processors though. ARM processors comes to mind i.e.

NB. I think AMD and Intel only designs the processors, they probably get manufactored by different company.

Yeah meant mainstream consumer processors like x86, will edit the question so it's more clear

 

[Victorion]

Well then it´s quite clear. It´s mainly because AMD and Intel hold the licences. Licenses comes with an expiration date though, so we may see some new players with big pockets.

I wouldn´t be surprised if Samsung, Apple or other major mobile brands would produce some of their own as they have most of the necessary setup already in place.

 

[gamerk316]

At least for X86, the answer is that only AMD and VIA have the rights to use the architecture. VIA makes very few CPUs nowadays (I don't even know if they still manufacture the VIA Nano series anymore), leaving AMD is the only other company that designs X86 CPUs. And at least for consumer level products, X86 reigns supreme; there are currently no other CPU architectures out there that can run Windows, so X86 remains dominant by default.

EDIT

I should note, the X86-64 patents are owned by AMD, so Intel and AMD have a rather robust licence agreement between them that allows them to share the rights to both X86 and X86-64 between them. There are a lot of special agreements in place in case AMD either goes bankrupt or is purchased by another company, but essentially, Intel has permanent rights to use X86-64, and AMD looses the X86 license if it ever goes bankrupt or is acquired by another company.

END EDIT

As for other architectures:

ARM: Pretty much everyone has an ARM license at this point. I think even Intel still has theirs from the StrongARM days...
POWER: IBM
Power PC (Legacy): IBM, Texas Instruments, Motorola
68k: Motorola (Yes, there are still plenty of 68k processors used in embedded systems)
Z80: Zilog

For legacy CPUs, companies like Zilog and Citrx used to make pin-compatible X86 chip designs by reverse engineering, but those days are long gone due to the cost of reverse engineering and designing a new chip from scratch.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Via makes a very few x86 industrial controllers. Intel does fab their own chips, but they're the only ones who completely design in-house as well. Compatibility is the big thing. While PowerPC, Alpha, and SPARC are still used it's only for servers that are already custom-made. Zilog still makes a killing off embedded licenses from their 1976 CPU (TI, we are looking at you now.) This is why China and Russia developing their own parts is silly. They would have to poach U.S. (or U.K) engineers and to get enough someone would notice. So for the foreseeable future, it's going to be a battle between ARM and Intel for the ultrabook/tablet market. AMD is already developing their own ARM chips, so low-power AMD64 from AMD is only going to be here for another year or too.

 

[Alabalcho]

There is a Taiwanese company which makes x86-compatible CPUs, called Vortex, mostly for embedded applications.
Apple' A6/7/8/9 CPUs (iPads, iPhones, AppleTV) are also ARMs.

 

[synphul]

Apple used to have their own, they used powerpc cpu's. Since then they've dumped them for intel. Ibm has been working with global foundaries and samsung on a 7nm chip using something besides typical silcon which is proving to be a limiting factor in current chips. Not sure if it will be an x86 competitor though, it may have other applications.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2946124/ibm-reveals-worlds-first-working-7nm-processor.html

Keeping in mind that companies like ibm, gf and samsung already have decades of foothold in the tech field and at that it's a 5yr long $3 billion project on the part of ibm. Most folks don't have $3B laying around, much less the tech history or background and current tech position even if they had the money.

Sparking a new cpu company doesn't just happen and previous players were either bought up or went bankrupt. Add on top of that the x86 licensing, which intel made available to amd and it's a non transferable license so if amd gets bought out by anyone with deep pockets they would have to re-negotiate. They can't simply buy up amd (if it were for sale) and assume the x86 license amd currently holds.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

It would be like Pfizer... Say Samsung wanted to own AMD. AMD would "buy" Samsung, with the AMD management being replaced by Samsung and the company renamed "Samsung".

 

[gamerk316]

It would be like Pfizer... Say Samsung wanted to own AMD. AMD would "buy" Samsung, with the AMD management being replaced by Samsung and the company renamed "Samsung".

Wouldn't fly with regulators. Never mind that AMD has absolutely nothing Samsung would want anyway.