AMD, Intel enter Long Night of the Soul

[Alpine]

Analysis Whoa oh, Conroe, AM2 have fun

WE'VE BEEN HERE before. In the Arctic Circle it's nearly day all night, and in OEM land the penguins and system integrators are on no summer holiday but are working out what they're going to do when they launch new products ready for the back to school period.

While the world+dog appears to enter a period of lethargy in July and August in the northern hemisphere, the situation is as usual far different. OEMs and integrators fire up legions of little leprechauns with their little silver fine tuned hammers to make products that will cause us all to swoon when we see just how fast they are.

And all credit to the hardware vendors: let us laud their praises. To Intel and to AMD, who have both created world beating microprocessors now; to Nvidia and ATI, for pushing graphics chips to show us all the eyecandy from Microsoft that still hasn't tipped up yet; to Seagate, and to Samsung, to Corsair and to Kingston. But a curse be on the heads of the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps.

With all this computing power available to many people at a fraction of the price it was even four or five years ago, it is time yet again to mention that software applications lag so far behind hardware that no one would blame you for believing that the two main sets of people that determine your computer's use are living on two planets in separate solar systems light years away.

We've noticed over the years that there's been a worrying trend amongst software firms to use the word innovation as an excuse to not invent or create anything new at all.

Meanwhile we notice that while software firms continue to attract huge margins, the continued expertise of the hardware vendors means their margins get slimmer and slimmer and slimmer. Chipset and motherboard vendors are despairing that they will have businesses in two to three years. That writing was always on the wall, but the computer industry has for a long time compared itself to the automotive business. And we note that just like most Chinese people don't wear Mao suits these days, cars sell through differences and extras.

Perhaps it's time for a punk-style revolution in computers, so that we don't all have to use the same designs produced by a handful of Taiwanese ODMs, or be shackled to software that began with legacy and in legacy it ends.

Maybe Warren Buffett could come up with some top software ideas, now he's got time on his hands and no reason to worry about money anymore?



The INQuirer