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Intel Fights for Its Future

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121–130 of 198 posts

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an iPhone 6S - I'd say OS updates do slow the phone down, but they also tend to be really buggy and generally rubbish for a while. I think it's probably more bad engineering and software quality than anything nefarious.

Apple is intentionally slowing down phones with every OS upgrade to "preserve the battery" [1].

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/technology/apple-slows-down-...

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The C236 chipset is old as hell (2015) - they're holding back on adding PCI-E lanes, because they can.

My hope is that Ryzen 2 shakes things up / Xeon 'Entry' offers a decent board.

The Xeon D chips are a total frigging racket.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#123
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?

As a Verizon customer:

- Devices that support Verizon's bands & CDMA are mostly only sold as Verizon branded devices. (CDMA is less important every year but I still occasionally need 3g)

- ~All Verizon phones have locked bootloaders and no official way to unlock them.

- Manufacturers don't make the easy mistakes which let you unlock their bootloaders anymore.

I will not be a Verizon customer for much longer.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#124
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You do realize that David Patterson is heading up Google's hardware efforts, right? Hardly clueless and inexperienced... And what Chinese fabless was that?

To clarify, Dave doesn't head the hardware efforts (I doubt he wants the management headache!). Norm Jouppi was the lead of the TPU efforts. But Dave absolutely is part of it, he just doesn't have to herd the cats. :p

To the previous parent, the TPU didn't take five years - I don't know where you got that. But, in any event, I'd argue the key innovation in TPUv1 wasn't actually the design of a specific optimized processor: It was seeing the need for a year or two before anyone else in industry did!

Also - I think translation problem, what's "reticule limit"? In any event, if you're comparing what someone produced today with TPUv1, that's a bit of a weird comparison considering that the v2 is live and available in beta. :)

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#125
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…

In a similar vein, we pitched Microsoft Ventures on a developer tool we were building. One of their chief concerns was that we were targeting C# developers. (Why not JS? Is C# even that popular?)

This helped drill home the intuition that large companies are not a single entity, but an amalgamation of different groups and individuals each with a potentially different motivation.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#126
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…

Maybe the intention of the fund was to diversify - i.e., hedge their huge exposure to the CPU market by investing into totally different things, i.e., not you!

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#127
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that David Patterson is heading up Google's hardware efforts, right? Hardly clueless and inexperienced... And what Chinese fabless was that?

To clarify, Dave doesn't head the hardware efforts (I doubt he wants the management headache!). Norm Jouppi was the lead of the TPU efforts. But Dave absolutely is part of it, he just doesn't have to herd the cats. :p To the previous parent, the TPU didn't take five years - I don't know where you got that. But, in any event, I'd argue the key innovation in TPUv1 wasn't actually the design of a specific optimized proc…

>what's "reticule limit"?

The maximum area a stepper can expose at the time. Effectively the limit of how big you can make a single microchip.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#128
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...

Here's a list of Ryzen motherboards that people have tried and succeeded in using ECC with: http://www.overclock.net/forum/11-amd-motherboards/1629642-r...

Additionally, you can check the QVL for each motherboard, and then test it by hand.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#129

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. Although, Qualcomm is also investing in cloud and servers market and if they get successful (rather arm in general) could hit intel hard.

What are your thoughts on that?

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#130
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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...

Switch to LineageOS. The Moto G series is well supported up to Nougat. It will not be any slower either.
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