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Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

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Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#101
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly it. The same performance isn't (that much) cheaper, and it's actually difficult to find any sort of high performance laptop (for cheep). Plus, the last few laptops I've purchased all seem to die JUST after the warranties (extended or otherwise) expire. Are they finally at least putting 1080p+ screens on these as a standard thing, or is everyone still stick on that crummy 1366x768 regression?

> and it's actually difficult to find any sort of high performance laptop (for cheep). I went to a computer store recently, and told them that I was interested in dropping about 2k on a laptop, and I brought a list of specs (at least 16gb ram, lots of cores, etc.). He suggested I should get a gaming laptop and never gave any suggestions from his store. It will be interesting to see what the future holds, because they…

128 cores?

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#103
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my friends expressed similar concerns, for what it's worth.

Not trying to be condescending, but legitimately not much. Anecdotes don't really help us here.

Jobs created: "Yay! The economy is growing! The economy created xxx,xxx jobs last month! This is a great sign!"

Jobs destroyed: "This can't be a sign of anything. Anecdotes don't help us."

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#104
post #66

I'm not sure how much of an effect this would have, but from a consumer's point of view, there isn't as much of a reason to buy a new PC every few years anymore. The laptop I'm using right now was purchased in 2011, and the prices in stores now are very comparable to what I paid back then. I've made up my mind to buy a new one a few times, but then when I go to the store, it just isn't worth it.

That's exactly it. The same performance isn't (that much) cheaper, and it's actually difficult to find any sort of high performance laptop (for cheep). Plus, the last few laptops I've purchased all seem to die JUST after the warranties (extended or otherwise) expire. Are they finally at least putting 1080p+ screens on these as a standard thing, or is everyone still stick on that crummy 1366x768 regression?

Even if you get a high-performance processor in there, it's going to get seriously thermal throttled during any longer periods of serious work. I tried to do large-scale C++ on an ultrabook, but doing long compiles was super annoying. Not only did Qt take forever to compile, the whole machine was crawling while it was happening.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#105
post #98
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been following the current earnings season? We are witnessing horrible earnings while stocks keep going up and up. All the losses in August 2015/February 2016 have virtually disappeared after the oil price recovery.

oil is a leading indicator of demand. The fact that it picked up is a sign that demand picked up. stocks are continuing to rise because investors see the current drop in earnings as a blip, not as a market catastrophe.

no, oil has been spiking up due to incessant rumors of production cuts. even though the latest talk about a production cut was a no go, oil spiked a bit earlier this week due to kuwaiti oil worker strike.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#107
post #41

I think if there's any time Apple would switch to their own ARM designed chips for Macs, it's now. This along with Intel slowing down from their Tick-Tock schedule will probably do it.

Why? The POWER->x86 jump was made largely because of the need to have more performance from the chips (raw power) and better performance per watt (for laptops). Intel wooed Apple on what they had available at the time as well as the impressive roadmap of where the they going. I often get 10 hours of battery life on my Macbook pro, so they did something right! I totally think Apple will go to ARM, but I can't see Appl…

I think it's obvious why and you've stated part of it. Apple's designs are rapidly approaching the level of Intel's and Intel is stretching out their R&D and reducing their investment in this area. So Apple will be asking themselves, why give away all that margin to Intel when we can do it ourselves and keep it? (Intel's gross margin is 62%, no idea what it is for their consumer processors specifically).

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#108
post #39

So Intel is cutting 11% of its workforce, Goldman Sachs just reported a 56% drop in profits, Morgan Stanley had a 50% drop in profits, Netflix missed subscriber growth estimates etc... yet, the Dow just hit a 9-Month high, and the S&P500 is now above 2100. The whole market is overvalued, not just the tech unicorns.

>The whole market is overvalued, not just the tech unicorns.

Who is it overvalued by, and how is the "true" value determined?

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#109

I'm not sure how much of an effect this would have, but from a consumer's point of view, there isn't as much of a reason to buy a new PC every few years anymore. The laptop I'm using right now was purchased in 2011, and the prices in stores now are very comparable to what I paid back then. I've made up my mind to buy a new one a few times, but then when I go to the store, it just isn't worth it.

Exactly the tech industry has been incapable of coming out with new functionality that really requires more power.

The only thing I can see which is going to benefit a lot from CPU power is more advance AI or machine learning built in. But we are only seeing very gradual moves in this area now.

VR and Games are also candidates of course, but most people aren't hard core gamers. They are fine with Angry Birds ;-)

And with the bandwidth we got today, it wouldn't necessarily be a big problem to offload much of that processing to servers and do it as a service instead. In many ways we might be heading back to the dumb clients of old where the majority of processing happens on a remote server.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#110

One must understand that this is re-structuring. Intel is probably letting go of some divisions it no longer intends to pursue. In the not-so-distant past, Microsoft did an internal re-structuring when Satya Nadella became the CEO. It isn't as bad as it is portrayed to be as most people end up getting re-hired in other groups or take the severance and join a new company.

News like this out of the blue is strange. I was pretty sure that the post-PC era was a sham. It still is, right?

To me, it's more that Moore's law is over and that observable speedups are much less obvious to the non gaming consumers
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