Microprocessor Industry: What a Difference a Couple of Years Can Make!

Abstract

Important new trends and developments have emerged in the microprocessor industry since an earlier review at the start of 1992 (PICT Working Paper No. 42). Semiconductor integration passed the 3 million mark with new chips such as the Pentium and the T9000 transputer. Powerful new microprocessor families have entered the competition with DEC introducing the Alpha family and the new IBM/Motorola/ Apple alliance launching its PowerPC. Microsoft Corp., has introduced WindowsNT, a new operating systems which runs not only on Intel Cisc (complex instruction set computing) microprocessors but, also, on the Risc (reduced instruction set computing) chips from MIPS (R4x00), DEC (Alpha), and IBM/Motorola/ Apple (PowerPC). This will open up and intensify the Cisc v/s Risc competition even further, particularly given the emergence of the 'personal workstation' reflecting the collision between the PC and workstation markets. Also a completely new market has emerged, in the form of pen-based personal digital assistants (PDAs), which completely bypasses the issue of software compatibility which has been the corner-stone of Intel's and Cisc's dominance of the microprocessor industry. The paper discusses these technical-commercial developments in terms of the strategies of the different players to gain, defend and/or increase their influence in the development of the microprocessor industry. First examines the concepts of Cisc, Risc and Crisp, and then provides an overview of the present state of the competition in the industry (including the latest chips to enter the market) and of the major technical trends influencing the development of the industry (including semiconductor integration, chip performance and functionality, design process, and systems markets trends). This sets the scene for a detailed analysis of the strategies of key players in the industry both in hardware and software. The concept of sociotechnical constituencies is used to make sense of the rather complex and fast-moving evolution of the microprocessor