In The Olden Days™ I remember that there were multiple manufacturers of x86 compatible consumer-oriented processors. There was Intel and AMD, but also Cyrix and VIA and probably others I haven’t heard about. But eventually they abandoned the market and today only Intel and AMD remain.
However even after that happened there were still other manufacturers for motherboard chipsets. VIA and nVidia continued their lines all throughout the 2000’s, and motherboards based on them were commonly available at all retailers. But today I suddenly realized that for a long while I haven’t heard of any chipsets that have been manufactured by someone other than AMD and Intel themselves. A quick look at the websites of some of the largest motherboard manufacturers confirms this.
So I’m curios – is this it then? Both the CPUs and the motherboard chipsets are now provided only by Intel and AMD themselves? Or is there still some other manufacturer out there that makes chipsets for Intel or AMD motherboards?
Note that I’m primarily asking about consumer-grade products, however a glimpse into the workstation/server market would also be interesting. Things are often different there.
