Having watched Intel have no competition for many years, due to AMD's decision to replace Phenom with Bulldozer/Piledriver, and now seeing "no competition" in the form of consumers having to pay through the nose because there are only two foundries — both of which are trying to produce all sorts of chips that have nothing to do with GPUs (and CPUs for personal computing/"console" products), it seems like we should do a bit more on our end to help ourselves.
Waiting around for adequate competition to happen hasn't worked. Now that AMD finally has competitive parts we can't buy them at sane prices. Two players in any market isn't enough. That is clearly demonstrated with the foundry situation and with the way AMD and Intel have not been able to provide us with enough choice for many many many years.
Here are a few off-the-cuff ideas:
1. Use the chiplet design strategy to make a GPU that's big, in terms of the die, but affordable to produce on cheaper foundry nodes (like GF's 12nm). When I say use, I mean a company other than Intel, AMD, and "Intel". (I put Intel in quotes because the company still isn't competing seriously in the GPU space and hasn't for forever).
2. Crowdsource a GPU company. If we can put crazy money into Star Citizen and lots of money into recycleware like the Civilization series, why can't we fund a company that will give us an affordable GPU?
3. Lobby to have anti-trust laws work properly. Duopoly isn't working, at all, for the consumer. (That includes Google, which (with Microsoft's help) owns Internet search. DDG is no real alternative, either.)
If we don't help ourselves no one is going to help us with anything other than the faster emptying of our wallets.
Waiting around for adequate competition to happen hasn't worked. Now that AMD finally has competitive parts we can't buy them at sane prices. Two players in any market isn't enough. That is clearly demonstrated with the foundry situation and with the way AMD and Intel have not been able to provide us with enough choice for many many many years.
Here are a few off-the-cuff ideas:
1. Use the chiplet design strategy to make a GPU that's big, in terms of the die, but affordable to produce on cheaper foundry nodes (like GF's 12nm). When I say use, I mean a company other than Intel, AMD, and "Intel". (I put Intel in quotes because the company still isn't competing seriously in the GPU space and hasn't for forever).
2. Crowdsource a GPU company. If we can put crazy money into Star Citizen and lots of money into recycleware like the Civilization series, why can't we fund a company that will give us an affordable GPU?
3. Lobby to have anti-trust laws work properly. Duopoly isn't working, at all, for the consumer. (That includes Google, which (with Microsoft's help) owns Internet search. DDG is no real alternative, either.)
If we don't help ourselves no one is going to help us with anything other than the faster emptying of our wallets.