Microprocessor Bubble: Tick, Tock

Whilst my parents and I were playing Lineage II a saying hopping into my mouth: “If you can’t find a game to play, you’re not looking.”

Pre-macroeconomicshrink/shirk, I heard that applied to the valiant task of job hunting. It was true. I fell into work with very little effort. Now the attitude of employers is different – they have the pick of the litter. If we don’t like how we’re being treated, someone else hankering for a pay cheque will take our place.

It’s a bitter taste that my industry was narrowed dramatically by mobile computing. Desktop computing is not a dead market, but it is much smaller than it was in 2010. Schooling does not ensure work. In my experience only one thing does: Connections. Hardly fair, right?

Not exactly. That’s life. We’re social creatures, so it’s what I’d call ‘par for the course’.

Technology is, however, lost in itself. Wouldn’t be the first time an industry has generated too much product for its own good. We are awash in microprocessors – and we just don’t know what went wrong. How can it all have become so affordable?

I’m not suggesting the industry will self-correct. I’m saying that it’s the next big bubble.

That’s right. The last diflucan no prescription tech bubble was hinged on the availability of bandwidth. Nowadays free downloads are a becoming a charity cause. “Please sir, spare some bandwidth?”

Intel, AMD and IBM are desperate to sell mircoprocessors. Intel is toying with ATOM, its ARM competitor, touting the ultra-efficient chips as the next logical step. Is it good-bye x86? Not any time soon, and certainly not as long as they can squeeze another 2-5% of – well – anything out of the architecture.

AMD is already manufacturing boards with ARM technology, and has other alliances to ensure it’s future. While the budget market shrinks, don’t believe AMD is going away. Where there are Nikes, there are house brand shoes of better than 70% mark-up. Take your pick.

IBM’s PowerPC technology survives because it is so scalable. While it may not offer flashy clock speeds, it can do things most of us don’t have a use for. You’d be surprised what a demand for that there is.

To put it simply: The computer industry is so busy selling us the next product, they aren’t addressing the needs of every potential user. The market is far too small for it to survive.

  • March 4, 2013