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Intel Fights for Its Future

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Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#61

Post by TorKlingberg »

aleem wrote: post #18
ternaryoperator wrote: post #4

This article makes it seem that being a major player in mobile is the only way Intel could survive. Mobile is a decelerating market, while cloud and servers, where Intel has a huge lead is an expanding market and profitable. In 2017, Intel's revenue hit an all-time high, as it did the year before, and its stock is an all time high. This is not a company "fighting for its future."

The headline is definitely sensationalist but there are threats and missed opportunities on Intel's horizon and past. The lure of mobile is the upgrade cycle as those are much shorter. The same, short upgrade cycles were a boon for intel in the hey day of desktops/laptops. The bigger threat the article fails to focus on is ARM. Singularity for apps has always hinged on write-once-run-everywhere. Intel hasn't been abl…

> A few months back Microsoft launched windows 10 on ARM -- that's an inflection point.

Microsoft has launched Windows for various non-x86 platforms over the years, including ARM, and it has always petered out. Maybe it will take off this time, but I wouldn't bet too much on it.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#62

Post by erikb »

muyuu wrote: post #57

Not a single company in the field has a 100% guaranteed future. Even Microsoft, completely dominating in the 90s, is now second fiddle to the likes of Google and has their future jeopardised by the emergence of the cloud and mobile platforms. Having said that, Intel are going nowhere overnight.

And even Google feels a little shaky these days, not really knowing what the next big thing could be for them after search+ads. Their mobile and their cloud business are both small compared (if the data didn't change over the last 1-2 years, haven't looked it up for some time).

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#63

Post by ipsum2 »

imtringued wrote: post #44
melling wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is fine as long as ARM doesn’t compete in their core markets. Then it’s a sudden and violent change. I guess you don’t see ARM attaining parity with x86?

Apple is the only manufacturer that actually produces competitive processors. Qualcomm is lagging behind x86 by at least a factor 2 compared to laptop chips and by factor 6 compared to desktop chips. On top of that the arm laptops that have been announced were significantly more expensive than an equivalent x86 laptop and the x86 emulation isn't good enough to count on it.

ARM is looking like it'll be a major competitor in the expandin server market, judging by preliminary benchmarks: https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#64

Post by ipsum2 »

baybal2 wrote: post #25
tanilama wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But as cloud service provider grow stronger, they will begin to make their own chips, like TPU. That is a much bigger threat to Intel. Essentially, as Moore's law is effectively put into an end, people will seek to make their own customized chips, CPU will be marginalized as time goes by.

Except they wouldn't. It took Apple a decade to up their silicon to a level where it is now. For most of that time, their activity was a money sink for them. And even today, even with some of the best talent in IC design one can get in USA (PA Semi and its veteran designers from HP, Sun, Freescale, and whatever else was remaining of American semi industry), their chips are still half outsourced, 70% external IP if yo…

> Yet, what took them at least 5 years, and extremely expensive to make reticule limit chips, was bested by a no-name Chinese fabless that blew TPUs out of the water on power/cost/performance ratio.

I'm not familiar with what company or product you're referring to. What is it?

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#65

Post by mohdmasd »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #61
aleem wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline is definitely sensationalist but there are threats and missed opportunities on Intel's horizon and past. The lure of mobile is the upgrade cycle as those are much shorter. The same, short upgrade cycles were a boon for intel in the hey day of desktops/laptops. The bigger threat the article fails to focus on is ARM. Singularity for apps has always hinged on write-once-run-everywhere. Intel hasn't been abl…

> A few months back Microsoft launched windows 10 on ARM -- that's an inflection point. Microsoft has launched Windows for various non-x86 platforms over the years, including ARM, and it has always petered out. Maybe it will take off this time, but I wouldn't bet too much on it.

But this time it's (almost) full windows, and it can run x86 application.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#66

Post by rosege »

hkmurakami wrote: post #42
IshKebab wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the upgrade cycle won't stay short for long, just like it hasn't for desktops. Give it 10 years and people will be keeping their phones until they break. Also anyone can make an ARM CPU so the margins are thin, whereas with x86 CPUs Intel will basically only ever have one competitor - AMD. They want to find another monopoly.

Even today I see an increasing number of friends moving from 2 years cycles to 3 year cycles. The "killer app" for smartphone refresh rates staying low are (1) battery degradation and (2) forced OS updates for app updates, which in turn slows the phone down to compel an update[1]. [1] I'm actually curious if OS updates slow down older phones these days. This was the case 5 years ago but perhaps things have changed/

for me the camera is one major reason to upgrade every 1.5-2 years. But I buy a phone(asus) that is at least 50% cheaper than most of the high end phones so I figure I'm coming out ahead. They probably have better cameras but mine has been good enough until the next refresh cycle

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#67

Post by dbcooper »

A key point missed in this discussion is that Intel needs high volume through its fabs to pay for their high capital investment requirements.

If it doesn't have the consumer CPU volumes (notebook, desktop, mobile) then production costs for server chips will be much higher, and it won't have those nice margins.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#68

Post by ZenoArrow »

baybal2 wrote: post #49
tanilama wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't be so certain. An ASIC/FPGA chip that accelerates specific Database operation is already a reality. The problem is the cost effect ratio. BTW, cloud provider already making tons of customized hardware themselves. And talking like Amazon/Google/Microsoft only have talents for web programming is short sighted and simply not sure. https://datacenterfrontier.com/amazon-building-custom-asic-c...

>And talking like Amazon/Google/Microsoft only have talents for web programming is short sighted and simply not sure. Well, I am saying that they do obviously spend an ennormous effort trying to do so. To better formulate what I said, the fact that they did acquire some hardware/semi expertise in house, does not mean that this expertise drives them as a company. If tomorrow 2 engineers, one from semi side, and one fr…

> "If tomorrow 2 engineers, one from semi side, and one fromwebdev, will knock at the door of CEO with "I found a way to do things A and B 250 times better, but you have to scrap half of your business plan," a webdev will be heard, and semi guys not."

What are you basing this assumption on? Have you worked for one of these companies? Do you know anyone that does?

Also, regarding Microsoft, any suggestion that they're focused on acquiring web devs is clearly short sighted. If you want a better idea of its priorities, I'd suggest taking a look at which sectors it earns its main revenue in, as well as taking a look at the work being done at Microsoft Research.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#69

Post by SlowBro »

mohdmasd wrote: post #65
TorKlingberg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A few months back Microsoft launched windows 10 on ARM -- that's an inflection point. Microsoft has launched Windows for various non-x86 platforms over the years, including ARM, and it has always petered out. Maybe it will take off this time, but I wouldn't bet too much on it.

But this time it's (almost) full windows, and it can run x86 application.

Clarification: Only 32 but apps. Not 64 bit apps, which the Windows world has almost fully moved to. And I’m sure they would run at reduced performance as well.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#70

Post by simonh »

IshKebab wrote: post #38
aleem wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline is definitely sensationalist but there are threats and missed opportunities on Intel's horizon and past. The lure of mobile is the upgrade cycle as those are much shorter. The same, short upgrade cycles were a boon for intel in the hey day of desktops/laptops. The bigger threat the article fails to focus on is ARM. Singularity for apps has always hinged on write-once-run-everywhere. Intel hasn't been abl…

Yeah but the upgrade cycle won't stay short for long, just like it hasn't for desktops. Give it 10 years and people will be keeping their phones until they break. Also anyone can make an ARM CPU so the margins are thin, whereas with x86 CPUs Intel will basically only ever have one competitor - AMD. They want to find another monopoly.

We’re already keeping phones until they break, by handing them down through the family. I’ve bought 5 iPhones and all but 2 of them are still in use. In fact the second one, a 3GS, was only fully retired at the beginning of last year.

The upgrade cycle has really just been a process of filling up the market. In fact I’d argue there are still a lot of old devices still in use beyond an ideal lifespan. There’s still going to be a much quicker refresh cycle than desktops for a while, but they’re likely to converge gradually.

What we might see is high end users keeping their flagship for longer, and refresh phones ‘downstream’ in the family to more recent midrange devices rather than passing on their own device and getting a new flagship. In fact, that’s what I just did for my teenage daughters.

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