I dont see how anyone can say Office is overpriced. 100.00 for something that can be used for years?? You have to be kidding me. Nearly everyone has a smartphone, the data plan for that can easily be 100 dollars per month. Also, cable/internet, another 100.00 per month. Go out to dinner a couple of times for 2 people, 100.00. Compared to any of these expenses, office is a bargain.
There's quite a few people still stuck in the good ol' days where software was much cheaper (without accounting for inflation) or still believe that open source is the solution to everything.
Quite honestly, software is cheap, and nowadays I've been finding it cheaper. Anyone with a MSDNAA or similar account can get Windows for dirt cheap or free. It's just about big corporations being evil or something like that.
The MSDNAA at my college gives you nearly every other piece of Microsoft software except Microsoft Office for free. :|There's quite a few people still stuck in the good ol' days where software was much cheaper (without accounting for inflation) or still believe that open source is the solution to everything.
Quite honestly, software is cheap, and nowadays I've been finding it cheaper. Anyone with a MSDNAA or similar account can get Windows for dirt cheap or free. It's just about big corporations being evil or something like that.
The MSDNAA at my college gives you nearly every other piece of Microsoft software except Microsoft Office for free. :|
You know... it's hard to tell whether prices would rise or fall in a monopoly scenario.
I'm thinking that Intel might actually leave the bottom prices alone for volume in poor markets and raise quads and such up a bit.
Only those with money&interest/job related reasons buy the high end anyway. 10% more for a processor won't break the bank, even if the consumer doesn't exactly like their new price.
Surely prices would rise? There would be a limit on how far they could rise because Intel will always be competing against its own previously-sold (previous generation) products (and against any still-existent AMD products still out there). But prices will always be higher in a monopoly situation than in one with competitors.
But at the same time, there is no driver for massive advancements.
They won't swap their shrink schedule, but there is no reason to introduce a 50% IPC increase (just an example) in one generation when that can be carved in to 3 generations.
Advancement will continue as it has, but don't expect any major breakthroughs.
20 years ago, DOS the equivalent OS at the time was $25 while Windows for small OEM's was around ~$50.
But at the same time, there is no driver for massive advancements.
They won't swap their shrink schedule, but there is no reason to introduce a 50% IPC increase (just an example) in one generation when that can be carved in to 3 generations.
Advancement will continue as it has, but don't expect any major breakthroughs.
A 20% increase in gross margins doesn't mean a 20% increase in ASP, because gross margin is the delta between ASP and cost (not exactly, but close enough), so a 20% increase in the delta would require an increase in the ASP that was less than 20%. Probably around 15%
DOS was never $25. The cheapest I remember it was around $60, and then the cost of Windows on top of that.
Overall, A Windows 7 license is less costly today than DOS + Windows in the past.
If they don't obsolete their own products then their revenues will decline as units shipped declines.
That is the difference between having a monopoly on a consumable good versus a durable good.
Now this could change if Intel went to a model in which they intentionally engineered a degradation mechanism into their products which ensured a limited usable lifespan that effectively reclassified their products from durable goods to consumable goods such that the customer had little choice but to buy a replacement CPU simply because their existing one ceases to function.
But not even Microsoft was willing to tempt the fate of the FTC and DOJ with that one, look how long they supported Windows XP even after Vista and Windows 7 came out.
The bottom line is that these are reasonable people who are savvy enough to know the bounds of reason when it comes to what they can and cannot do with their monopolies if they wish to survive as a monopoly.
The doom-and-gloom scenarios don't actually make sense because it turns a symbiotic relationship into a host/parasite relationship between the supplier and the consumer and in the end it kills the parasite.
To be sure more competition would be better, Intel operating at 40% GM instead of 60% GM would be more economical for the customer, no question, but it isn't the calamity for the consumers that people think it could become either.
If Intel pursued any of those avenues it would be their own undoing, so either way the consumers will be fine - if we weren't then we should question why we pay taxes to support the existence of the FTC and DoJ in the first place
IPC doesn't matter so much anymore. Perf/watt is where it's at.
They will increase performance if they can find a way to majorly improve IPC or clock speed, while staying energy efficient, but those seem to be at their end for current silicon and x86.
They're facing the ARM onslaught too. Any breakthrough would benefit them greatly now.
DOS was never $25. The cheapest I remember it was around $60, and then the cost of Windows on top of that.
Overall, A Windows 7 license is less costly today than DOS + Windows in the past.
If Intel's gross margins were depressed like AMD's then I'd expect them to raise prices over time just to get their gross margins up to the desired target value of 60%.
But they are already there, at +60%, because Intel has effectively had a monopoly for the past decade anyways. Even when AMD was king of the performance ladder they still weren't king of the gross margins ladder nor the marketshare ladder.
I suspect that at most, at the absolute top-end of greed that Intel could pursue without getting themselves busted up like RCA and AT&T, they could increase prices such that their gross margins hit ~80%, the same as microsoft managed to achieve without getting busted up as a monopoly.
A 20% increase in gross margins doesn't mean a 20% increase in ASP, because gross margin is the delta between ASP and cost (not exactly, but close enough), so a 20% increase in the delta would require an increase in the ASP that was less than 20%. Probably around 15%.
A 15% increase in the average selling price would not be catastrophic. We'd bitch about it, for sure, for maybe 15 minutes and then we'd move on with our lives by noting we pay more than that in taxes and shipping costs alone just to get the CPU into our hands from the reseller.
If Intel raises its ASPs such that its gross margins exceed 80% then you, and they, can expect the FTC to bust them apart. And that is not in the best interest of the shareholders, so Intel won't set upon themselves a path that involves >80% gross margins.
Instead they will pursue exactly what they have pursued in the past 10yrs of being an effective monopoly - make decisions which continue to enable and support a gross margin floor of 60% while at the same time expanding the annual revenue and profit of the company.
80% gross margin on $5B revenue is not as enticing as 60% gross margin on $10B revenue. Literally everyone in the business chain understands this, from shareholders to the BoD to the FTC to the decision makers at Intel.
They aren't about to do anything that would jeopardize their ability to continue making tens of billions of profit at 60% GM, and getting the company busted up would be something they have been, and will continue to be, keen to avoid.
This also speaks to the claims that Intel would slow-down their node-cadence. If they did that then their expenses would drop and their gross margins would rocket upwards, inviting the FTC and DOJ to come in and bust them up. Something pretty much everyone can agree Intel would do anything to avoid.
So their expenses will rise so as to keep the gross margins in check (but not for the false implied cause-and-effect of that ordering). They will keep on the Moore's law bandwagon because they can afford to and because they can't afford not too. (if they elected to reduce spending then they'd actually need to reduce ASP and reduce revenue to keep their gross margins below the 80% danger level)
Actually it is quite the opposite. Gross margin is the division between Gross profits and Revenues, so for each extra point in gross margins you want you need a proportional increase in revenues or a proportional decrease in COGS, not a linear increase or decrease.
Let's use a very simple example to show this:
A given company has 500 in revenues, 200 in COGS. That's 300 in gross profits, and 60% gross margins.
But what if we want to go for 80% in gross revenues? Assumming a constant COGS, they would need 1,000 in revenues to get to a 800 gross profits and 80% in gross margins.
But what if you can't move revenues to 1,000? Then you have to halve COGS, that way 500 in revenues and 100 in COGS equals to 400, with 80% in gross margins.
Honestly I would be happy if the markets would implode and put such practices to a swift end. There is nothing like seeing the top 1-3% that own 40-60% of the wealth of any country find them selves just as poor as the people whom they made destitute. Also such practices are only good in the short term but may harm the companies long term future but knowing human nature there is always some VP or exec that would slowly drain millions from off the company and no one notice.
For small oem's it was. I have first hand knowledge.
And then your answer becomes readily self-evident: $$$
The current method of manufacturing discrete GPU video cards came to exist because it is the lowest-cost pathway to creating graphics performance.
Moving ram on-package will surely improve performance, that is why off-die sram caches came to be integrated on-die with our CPUs...but at a cost and it required the process technology to evolve to enable it.
I have no doubt that in time on-package dram will become commonplace (IBM uses it now as does a few consoles) but when it does it will also become commonplace for discrete GPUs as well, so it is not a technology that is going to preferentially elevate iGPU performance while the rest of the market stands still.
The iGPU market exists solely because it is the lowest cost alternative to buying a discrete GPU. You give the iGPU away for free as a benefit of having bought the CPU, and you have it re-purpose the system's ram as a very poor man's graphics ram.
Anything you would do to eliminate those performance deficiencies will raise price, eliminating the entire motivation the market has for buying the iGPU product from the supplier.
While iGPU will not supersede the dGPU completely, as the iGPU grows in size and power they might heavily affect the economics of the dGPU products.
The dGPU market changed a lot in the last few years, mostly because Nvidia and ATi don't have the bottom market to dilute R&D costs so ASPs went up. Nvidia solution of "we'll just field a more powerful chip" is becoming "we'll have to field a bigger chip", and this is where economic fundamentals start to bite them.
There will be a time that Intel graphics will get the critical mass necessary to make a discrete chip just a small jump, which will spell trouble to Nvidia and ATi business.
You're considerably younger than I thought you were. If Intel does what you describe, it will be their second foray into the world of discrete graphics cards: https://www.google.com/search?q=Int...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a If I remember correctly, the Intel 740 was the fastest card you could buy on it's release day
........ This also speaks to the claims that Intel would slow-down their node-cadence. If they did that then their expenses would drop and their gross margins would rocket upwards, inviting the FTC and DOJ to come in and bust them up. Something pretty much everyone can agree Intel would do anything to avoid.
So their expenses will rise so as to keep the gross margins in check (but not for the false implied cause-and-effect of that ordering). They will keep on the Moore's law bandwagon because they can afford to and because they can't afford not too. (if they elected to reduce spending then they'd actually need to reduce ASP and reduce revenue to keep their gross margins below the 80% danger level)