The company Centaur Technology, which is a subsidiary of VIA Technology (which is not a very known incorporated, ill admit) has recently demoed (via benchmarks) the capability of its brand new upcoming x86 architecture processor to rival AMD and Intel directly.

VIA's Isaiah II x86 Architecture Allegedly Sweeps the Floor with AMD and Intel

Now the benchmarks we received appear to get the upper hand on both Intel and AMD processors alike, but since there are some very serious points of contention, we shall approach that in a minute. Now the x86 architecture codenamed Isaiah II is basically being developed by Centaur Technology and will be revealed in approximately two months. You can find the exact countdown over here. Now the x86 processors made from this architecture will be targetted to the same market sector that is currently housing AMD's Kabini and Intel's Bay Trail processors. So we are looking at a low end product primarily for embedded uses and maybe some very low-end Dekstops.

Now the benchmark we received shows the Isaiah II not only holding its own, but actually beating Intel's Bay Trail and AMD's Athlon processors as well. However like I said before there are some points of contention. For one thing, on the TDP is not mentioned and this is one factor that can make one helluva difference between results. It is because of this that the Atom Z3770 which is superior to the Athlon 5350 efficiency wise appears to be worse off until you notice the TDP ( don't fall for the SDP given by Intel, thats mostly a marketing gimmick). However though all processors are 64 bit, the Bay Trail is the least modern one with SSE4.2, then the Kabini die and finally the Iasiah II processors with AVX 2.0 Instruction set. Now the engineering sample tested was a quad core with a max frequency of 2 Ghz. And though we have no idea how much juice it is sipping, it is clearly performing better than its counterparts.

(Caution: Opinion) Though conventional wisdom dictates that competition of any kind is good news, to be honest, I was a little alarmed by this development. The market seems to be shifting towards the low end and the entry barriers that were there before are slowly being dissolved. If nearly every other company is starting to enter the x86 market with low end processors, this would be very bad news for the PC Market. The new entrants would not have the capital to invest in R&D off actual high end products but would still cut a fair share of the revenue of the actual giants. This would mean that the only two players of the consumer Industry, namely AMD and Intel, would have slightly less to invest and the vicious cycle will continue until a game change occurs with the giants possibly quitting for good. Ofcourse that is a worst case scnenario far off into the future and assuming more companies get encouraged as well, but still, a very scary notion.