"Rise of Domestic Chips" has always been a highly anticipated topic for so many years, but everyone knows that despite the years of experience, the domestic chip industry is still not satisfactory, and the self-sufficiency rate last year was even less than 20%.
But over the years, some Chinese companies have left a strong page in the chip industry. For example, VIA Electronics won half of the world's chipset share at its peak. It was the world's first manufacturer with CPU, GPU, and chipset, with a market value of more than NT$120 billion. Its founder Chen Wenqi once said, I have always had a dream that Chinese people can also make the best chips!
Chen Wenqi and Wang Xuehong
VIA Electronics was first founded in 1987, but it was founded in Silicon Valley Symphony at that time. It was not until 1992 that it moved its headquarters to Taiwan. Chen Wenqi served as general manager and Wang Xuehong served as chairman. This Wang Xuehong was the Wang Xuehong who later founded HTC.
But in fact, the rise of VIA's was after 1999, because in 1999, VIA acquired the right to develop x86 processor through the acquisition of Cyrix and IDT's processor department. In 2000, VIA acquired the S3 graphics department.
So far, VIA has three major capabilities: CPU, GPU, and chipset, which is also the first manufacturer in the world to have three major capabilities. In the chipset field, it has gained half of the world's share. In 2000, VIA Electronics China Company was also established, just in Zhongguancun .
If this routine continues to develop, VIA will really have the ability to PK with Intel , and maybe there will be no AMD later. But the good times don't last long. When the tree is big, it is easy to attract wind. Intel is unhappy. First, he sued VIA for infringement, and later banned some motherboards and manufacturers from using VIA's chipsets, forcing VIA to launch native motherboards by itself.
Finally, Intel and AMD are even more tricks, integrating the North Bridge chipset function into the CPU, no longer opening up third-party chipset authorization, and suppressing the third-party chipset VIA and Nvidia directly to "Game Over".
When VIA and Intel reconciled, but lost the strongest business of chipsets, VIA did not keep up with the pace of intel and AMD in its initial glory on CPU and GPU, and gradually became like "going against the current, if you don't advance, you will retreat."
Since 2005, VIA Electronics has been in a loss and has never turned around again. Even after 2009, it seems that VIA has basically no base X86 architecture development chip.
Fortunately, the X86 license obtained by VIA was finally handed over to Zhaoxin, which is also the reason why Zhaoxin is currently developing chips based on X86 architecture.
