Intel Fights for Its Future • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#111

Post by engi_nerd » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #91

yrro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a grumpy Moto G 3 owner, I would love for an OS update that slowed my phone down. Short support cycles seriously dent the feasibility of keeping the same phone for even two years...

I assume aftermarket ROMs are a non-option for you?

Depending on your device, installing an aftermarket ROM can range from "easily accomplished from initial query in a search engine to ROM installed within 1 hour" to "I am stuck in a nightmare of poorly written, contradictory forum posts written in a mishmash of languages with lots of instructions that say 'this is easy, but WARNING COULD BRICK YOUR DEVICE'." Who has the time or patience for such confusion?

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#112

Post by wslh » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

hugs wrote: post #105

Years ago, during a fund-raising tour of Silicon Valley VC firms for my previous company, we also pitched Intel Capital (their in-house VC arm). Their feedback to our pitch was that our SaaS service was "too compute intensive" and therefore they passed..... Intel thought we used too many CPUs?! ..... All these years later, I'm still in disbelief. I do realize that VCs often are uncomfortable giving the real reason th…

Intel Capital is another branch and not known as a leading VC firm. I don't think you can connect their achievements with Intel itself.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#113

Post by brian_herman » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

karpodiem wrote: post #110

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…

All I want is a single socket CPU and a motherboard that supports ECC/isn't total garbage. AMD has said it's on the motherboard manufacturers, and I haven't been able to get a straight answer as to whether ECC works as it should on motherboards that support Ryzen - https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/80wpd1/ryzen_2_ecc_sup...

Why not buy a server board? Edit: Its on the motherboard manufacturers not really the chip makers.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#114

Post by hugs » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #112

hugs wrote: post #105

Years ago, during a fund-raising tour of Silicon Valley VC firms for my previous company, we also pitched Intel Capital (their in-house VC arm). Their feedback to our pitch was that our SaaS service was "too compute intensive" and therefore they passed..... Intel thought we used too many CPUs?! ..... All these years later, I'm still in disbelief. I do realize that VCs often are uncomfortable giving the real reason th…

Intel Capital is another branch and not known as a leading VC firm. I don't think you can connect their achievements with Intel itself.

Another possibility is that they were indeed, correct -- we did use many CPUs to perform the work, even though it is the nature of the work (running end-to-end tests on browsers, simulators, and devices).

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#115

Post by flamedoge » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:45 PM UTC

sitepodmatt wrote: post #107

gruez wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most non-compute intensive programs still are compiled for 32-bit, or have 32 bit versions available. also, visual studio still defaults to 32 bit when creating a new c++ project.

You can even get Slack for Windows in 32-bit, although I suspect you'd hit the nasty 4gb limitation pretty quickly

I thought it was odd that a single application would even hit the limit. Then I realized Electron.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#116

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:46 PM UTC

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."

Mobile may be "decelerating", but the replacement cycle is shorter and even the poorest people in the world who will never buy PCs are already buying phones. The market is much bigger.

Being in mobile also has the effect of being in IOT.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#117

Post by flamedoge » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #96

golergka wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Singularity for apps has always hinged on write-once-run-everywhere. From app developer perspective, processor architecture is low on the list of the problems you have to solve to run anywhere. User-facing apps aren't written in C or anything that close to metal anymore; I suspect that most of the Java, Kotlin and Swift code is completely architecture agnostic: add new capability to the compiler, change the build c…

Even native languages close to the metal (Ada, Pascal, Basic, ...) don't have any big issue switching processors, unless inline Assembly is used. C and its derivatives (C++ and Objective-C) are the outliers thanks to implementation defined numeric types, the abuse in pointer tricks and casts.

a lot of compiler works to enable.. C spec mandates fixed width numerics afaik.. try imagining 64bit division using 32bit.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#118

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

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.

How many times have you had to replace a PC because you dropped it, left it in a cab, etc.?

I haven't broken a phone yet, but I doubt I could keep using a phone for 10 years anytime soon.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#119

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

ttul wrote: post #14

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."

Yes. I must say I chuckled a bit when I saw the headline. Intel is still churning out 63% gross margins. On semiconductors. That is exceptional. Intel is not fighting for its life by any stretch of the imagination.

RIM was at its most profitable three years after the iPhone came out....

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#120

Post by HankB99 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

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/

I have a Nexus 5X that was 2 years old late last year. At that time I git it's last major OS upgrade. (It will continue to get security updates for another year or so.) This is as good as it gets in the Android world.

It was hobbled at the outset with 2GB RAM. At introduction performance was adequate. It has degraded since then. There are times when I exit an app and it takes several seconds before the home screen is populated. Navigation normally runs in the background but if I open a different app, it may get bumped and disappears from notifications. I listen to podcasts frequently and its background process (the part that keeps audio going if I open other apps) gets bumped.

These are not related to processor horsepower but I believe are symptoms of insufficient RAM. It could also result from additional installed applications, but I have uninstalled more than I have added and it seems not to improve.

Maybe it's time to look at third party ROMs.