Mcleod, 22nd March: Intel is a well-known manufacturer of desktop and laptop processors. You may recognize them from your school’s computer, where their logo is prominently displayed on each machine. It’s possible that when you turn on your laptop, you’ll see this logo with an “Intel Inside” video. They had long dominated the CPU market, and none of their competitors could match their sales volume. Apart from recent AMD and Apple silicon pushes, no one can compete with them in their field. This is set to change, as Intel recognizes the threat posed by growing Chinese CPU manufacturers. They calculated that Chinese CPU makers may seriously threaten its dominance in less than five years.

How serious is the threat? Bogdan Solca, Senior Tech Writer of notebookcheck.net, said “China is among the largest Intel revenue contributors with more than 25% in 2021, but Intel is aware that this could change in 3 to 5 years, as emerging local CPU makers begin to threaten Team Blue’s position and eventually take over other foreign markets.”

Despite being in the hub of the COVID pandemic, China’s economy and population continue to grow gradually. The rise appears to have been accelerated by US trade penalties, but the symptoms were evident years ago when Chinese smartphone manufacturers dominated the worldwide market. At the moment, China is attempting to reduce its reliance on external markets, particularly those in the United States, and computer processors and transistor fabrication capacity remain among the sectors in need of significant improvement in order to compete with the established companies in the West.

However, according to a new DigiTimes report, citing Intel China Chair Rui Wang’s statements, Chinese CPU producers might begin to pose a challenge to Intel’s position in just 3-5 years if current trends continue.

The latest article includes critical quotes from a Guancha.cn interview with Intel Corp’s SVP Rui Chang, who said that “so far, no local startups have been able to deal a significant challenge to Intel.” Local enterprises, on the other hand, will emerge as strong rivals in 3-5 years.” According to DigiTimes, China currently accounts for more than 25% of Intel’s revenue. In the next years, Wang expects strong competition, but Intel will “exert its power to compete fairly” and maintain control.

While China’s transistor fabrication sector is still catching up to Intel and TSMC’s advanced technologies, the country has a number of capable CPU manufacturers that are extensively sponsored by the government. These are divided into three categories by DigiTimes:

• Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor and Hygon are two businesses that have licensed AMD’s X86 core technology.
• HiSilicon Kunpeng CPU and Phytium Technology in Tianjin license the ARM instruction set architecture but create their own CPU cores.
• Sunway Microelectronic and Loongson develop unique instruction set architectures and IP cores.

The last of the three groups appear to have the potential to become a major danger to Intel, but this will require sophisticated transistor fabrication technologies.

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