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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

#351

Post by mark-r »

noir_lord wrote: post #223
mark-r wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moore's law may become irrelevant long before it becomes invalid. Without rapid increases in usable computing power, the reasons for upgrading have largely disappeared. In particular the chips at the top of the profit margin curve, where Intel loves to play, are much less compelling. Intel might eventually find itself in the same shoes Kodak did - when your primary business dries up, there's unlikely to be a follow-o…

I'm not convinced that moores law has ended (using the processing power doubles not transistor count doubles). We've hit the physical limits of our current processes but we haven't remotely hit the physical limits of..well physics. It's possible that we are on the flat before the next curve starts whether that curve will reach the consumer space I don't know but at the top end of computing (supercomputers) there is s…

It doesn't matter if Moore's law still holds or not, it's become irrelevant for most of the PC market. That's the point I was trying to make.

There are always good uses for more computing power, but not on the desktop where the big volumes are.

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

#352

Post by matwood »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #37
anilshanbhag wrote: post #20

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?

Out of the blue? There have been articles for a long time about the internal mess at Intel as they try to figure out mobile and IoT. One of the latest ones just last week:

http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-leaked-memo-murthy-rend...

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

#353

Post by azaxacavaba »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #304
tomohawk wrote: post #300

H1B use is up, though. http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/19/intel-lays-off-12000-peopl...

Last I checked they were the #1 sponsor for EEs/Computer Engineers. It's appalling that Congress looks the other way when abuse is clearly evident.

When you pay the exact amount of money and benefits and sometimes even more as joining bonus and stocks awards for a H1B employee, how can this be an abuse of the system?

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

#354

Post by coldtea »

hueving wrote: post #348
coldtea wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless these folks had degrees in Working At Intel, losing a job is not the same as becoming permanently unemployable. A 50 year old Intel employee might find it quite difficult to get a new job any time soon. Not to mention that where they live they'll have some other thousands ex-colleagues recently fired looking for similar type of jobs. We're talking about thousands of people -- few of them will be highly sough…

You paint a contrived scenario and then lament it. What is the purpose? Where do you have stats showing all of these job cuts will happen in the same location? Where are the stats that show when a person loses their job, their spouse is also likely to lose their job?

The "contrived" scenario is something that has been played again and again. as opposed to the "no worries" attitude.

As for the same location: typically companies have so-called offices in a few locations --not individual people equally distributed around the country.

Plus, who said that their spouse is "equally likely to lose their job"? It's just an example of a thing that can happen, and does happen, not something that anyone claimed inevitable or "as likely"...

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

#355

Post by rtpg »

twoodfin wrote: post #308
nsxwolf wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A relative few Silicon Valley elites living like kings while everyone else lives in a tiny box trying to raise their families on their meager Basic Income stipend doesn't sound like a utopia to me.

How does that work? If I have a meager income I'm not buying an iPhone or a desirable target for ads from Instagram.

Pedantic but an iphone is probably a way better purchase than most things if you are low income.

For $400 you get a device that will let you watch movies, play games, check email, get phone calls, etc.

Granted you could also get a cheaper phone but this replaces your TV and computer! Smartphones are really high-value!

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

#356

Post by YZF »

criley2 wrote: post #214
cft wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stimuls mode is a permanent regime now. It's good in the short term, but I do not know if anybody understood mid- and long-term consequences of this new permanent mode.

"The stimulus mode is a permanent regime now" As a general FYI to those reading -- please fact check before commenting. The Federal Reserve's quantitative easing program ended on Oct 29th, 2014 (538 days ago!) It is difficult to assert that a program which ended over 500 days ago is permanent. Additionally, one may be willing to assert that "ZIRP is permanent regime now" too, to tack onto the culture that central ban…

What they ended is increasing their balance sheet. They are still rotating into new debt as old debt is maturing so they have not actually rolled back their old QE programs- they just have not increased them.

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

#358

Post by codeonfire »

tostitos1979 wrote: post #247
noir_lord wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me as well, I built an i5-2500K system backend 2010(ish), it's still my main home desktop, 32GB RAM and an SSD and it's as fast as the machine at work that is two generations newer (or more correct it's imperceptibly slower). Things have really levelled out for average loads even developer loads (mostly do web dev, run vagrant machines that kind of thing). I can't see me upgrading til this thing dies tbh.

What you folks are saying is mostly true. VR and 4K are the drivers for a whole new compute cycle in the home. I think the current core counts for Xeon are good enough for cloud (by this I mean that I think CPU isn't the bottleneck for the average EC2, Google Compute, Azure instance). Any one care to comment?

Good point except facebook is targeting 6k per eye. People are definitely going to buy hardware, but maybe not in huge numbers.

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

#359

Post by Deusdies »

eyeareque wrote: post #340
ta_04192016 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people fired don't have the right skills. They hire with H1B because the domestic labor market doesn't have enough people with these skills.

Really, not because they are cheaper and wear handcuffs to their desk so-to-say since they'd have to go back home if they lose their job?

No, not because of that. In case you did not know, the companies are obligated to pay H1b employees more than the prevailing wage for that position in that county. This is something controlled by the Department of Labor.

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

#360

Post by prewett »

noir_lord wrote: post #223
mark-r wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moore's law may become irrelevant long before it becomes invalid. Without rapid increases in usable computing power, the reasons for upgrading have largely disappeared. In particular the chips at the top of the profit margin curve, where Intel loves to play, are much less compelling. Intel might eventually find itself in the same shoes Kodak did - when your primary business dries up, there's unlikely to be a follow-o…

I'm not convinced that moores law has ended (using the processing power doubles not transistor count doubles). We've hit the physical limits of our current processes but we haven't remotely hit the physical limits of..well physics. It's possible that we are on the flat before the next curve starts whether that curve will reach the consumer space I don't know but at the top end of computing (supercomputers) there is s…

What makes you think we haven't started to hit physical limits of physics? A 4nm transistor is 7 atoms wide. Obviously, a one atom transistor is pretty much the absolute smallest possible, which would be about .5nm. Anything less than 7nm experiences quantum tunneling, which is going to really mess things up, and will get worse the smaller the size. [1] I imagine the interference between transistors will be fun...

Next, how exactly are you going to make these atom-sized objects in quantity? You can't be manually placing atoms. But lithography has a hard physical diffraction limit, forcing the use of higher frequency light. The higher the frequency, the greater the energy. Etching single-atom features will require hard x-rays, which we may not even have technology to generate. Even if we do, focusing x-rays is not trivial, as you can't just slap in a glass lens. Plus, the focal lengths may be rather long. And what kind of photoresist do you use? Hard x-rays are likely to blast pretty much anything, and the etching characteristics are probably not neat little troughs. How do you ensure you have your one atom stay put when everything around it is being blasted by high-energy x-rays?

I think the physical limits are looming pretty large.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer

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