Tech Hardware Supply Chain - Gazhoo

Bhavin Shah
(852) 2800-8538
bhavin.a.shah@jpmorgan.com
40
Asia Pacific Equity Research
20 April 2009
(optional). HP’s ultra-slim Pavillion dv2 is the first to use it. The single-core Athlon
Neo chip runs at 1.6GHz and sports a 512KB L2 cache.
NVIDIA Tegra
In June 2008 NVIDIA introduced a line of ARM11-based media processors aimed at
bringing 3D graphics capabilities to a variety of handhelds, from smartphones to
mobile internet devices (MIDs). Tegra is single-chip computer capable of the rich
high definition and internet experiences on small pocket type devices. NVIDIA
Tegra features a GPU, media processor, system memory, peripherals and a CPU all
in one ultra-low power chip. It combines an 800 MHz ARM CPU, GeForce CPU,
image processor, HD video processor.
Processor market
According to Mercury Research estimates, PC processor unit shipments were 324.7
million units in 2008, up 13% from 2007. An analysis of market share of the
processor manufacturers shows a fall in Intel’s market share and a simultaneous
increase in AMD’s market share over 2-3 years until 2006. But Intel regained its
market in 2007 and maintained its leadership position with 80.4% market share in
2008, well above the competition.
Table 23: x86 microprocessor shipments and market shares (2005-2008)
‘000s
2005 2006 2007 2008
Company Units Market Units Market Units Market Units Market
share
share
share
share
Intel 190,294 80.2% 188,664 74.5% 220,964 77.1% 261,202 80.4%
AMD 43,145 18.2% 58,078 22.9% 63,232 22.1% 60,010 18.5%
Via 3,380 1.4% 6,644 2.6% 2,250 0.8% 3,469 1.1%
Others 423 0.2% 23 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
Total 237,242 100.0% 253,409 100.0% 286,446 100.0% 324,681 100.0%
Source: Mercury Research, 1Q09 update.
Chipsets
The chipset is a collection of chips (hence, its name) on the motherboard that
controls the flow of data between the CPU and other important devices such as the
memory. On the first PCs, the motherboard used discrete integrated circuits. So, a lot
of chips were needed to create all the necessary circuitry to make the computer work.
After some time, the chip manufacturers started to integrate several chips into larger
chips. So, instead of requiring dozens of small chips, a motherboard could now be
built using only half a dozen big chips. The integration continued and around the
mid-1990s, motherboards using only two or even one big chip could be built.
Usually, motherboards have two big chips—north bridge and south bridge.
North bridge
The north bridge chip, also called memory controller hub (MCH), is connected
directly to the CPU and functions as memory controller, AGP bus controller and PCI
express controller and also ensures an interface for data transfer with south bridge.
South bridge
The south bridge chip, also called ICH (I/O controller hub) is connected to the north
bridge and mainly controls I/O devices and on-board devices such as hard disk drive
ports (parallel and serial ATA ports), USB ports, on-board audio, on-board LAN,
PCI bus, PCI express lanes, real time clock (RTC), CMOS memory.