Intel Haswell processor design may cause motherboard players to exit market

[xelosia]

Monica Chen, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES [Thursday 27 September 2012]
Intel is already set to launch its next-generation Haswell-based processors, comprehensively designed for IT products such as tablets, notebooks, ultrabooks, desktops and servers, in the second quarter of 2013; however, since Haswell is designed to integrate functions such as power phase control, which is mainly used for overclocking, into the CPU, sources from motherboard players are concerned that the new processor and weakening desktop market demand will cause several second-tier motherboard players to exit the market in late 2013.
Although Intel will adopt a system on chip (SoC) form factor for Haswell processors used in ultrabooks, the Haswell processors for the desktop segment will not adopt the same strategy until 2014; instead, Intel will gradually integrate more chipset functions into the processor and such a move could cause motherboard designs to become less differentiated.
Motherboard players have already turned their focuses to added functions such as USB and Thunderbolt interfaces as well as BIOS firmware features and new software applications to differentiate their products.
However, some motherboard players are still optimistic about the motherboard industry's future and believe Intel's work in integrating northbridge and southbridge functions will create a strong challenge in yield rates. Meanwhile, they also believe Intel is unlikely to look to destroy the motherboard industry and should leave some room for motherboard players to survive over the next 3-5 years.




Intel Haswell processor design may cause motherboard players to exit market

[Drdeath]

Good read. Motherboard manufacturers will concede that CPU performance will be essentially the same on every motherboard thus enforcing this has some validity but companies like Asus always stay on top of the technology adding more lanes to thier boards via ASmedia controllers and others use the PLX chip on some boards for PCIe lanes. Although the second manufacturers may not do these little things that may make a difference to some, their pricing is usually under Asus, Gigabyte and ASRock. So, the competition for each segment budget/ mainstream / performance really hasn't changed but you have also seen MSI and Biostar step up their game. I do think economic conditions make it tougher for the second tier companies and this would IMO maybe see some drop namely ECS and Sapphire but Sapphire has great revenue from their GPU division.