Intel Fights for Its Future • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#151

Post by intrasight » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #128

karpodiem wrote: post #110

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...

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.

To me that overclock post was just further demonstration of the sad state of affairs re. ECC

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#152

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

lev99 wrote: post #140

scarface74 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With the new anti-theft systems on smart phones I can imagine laptops experience theft more frequently than smartphones.

In aggregate? There are far more smartphones in use world wide than laptops.

Even if not, most phones being sold worldwide are cheap Android phones that don't have sophisticated anti-theft technology.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#153

Post by inetknght » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

josiahpeters wrote: post #136

sitepodmatt wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

/s Some people might consider that a blessing in disguise with Slack. I'm not sure what the behavior is, maybe best case Slack crashes and restarts itself. You could almost call that behavior a feature of 32bit Slack: "automatic garbage collection"

Garbage collection isn't strong enough: it doesn't collect the garbage generator which is Slack

/s

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#154

Post by alyandon » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

HankB99 wrote: post #120

hkmurakami wrote: post #42

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 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…

I had a 5X that I recently replaced due to the common boot loop failure.

Towards the end of its life its performance had degraded to the same point you experienced. Multiple seconds for the home screen to populate, camera lag, etc. It's crazy that a cell phone with 2GB of ram is incapable of running recent versions of Android with decent performance and even crazier when I'd open up a task manager and see mandatory things like Google Play Services consuming almost 60% of the ram on the device.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#155

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #70

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.

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 go…

Problem with mobile devices is they long outlast their manufacturer's software support. My iPad, for instance. The first device was announced in 2010, and software support ended with 5.1.1 in 2012. Two measly years of updates. This thing has not had an official update (including security updates) in nearly 6 years. Your 3GS hasn't been supported for 4 years. Whereas, I can keep a desktop computer for 20 years and update its software throughout that time.

We should be able to keep our devices until they die, but without regular software updates, you're playing with fire.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#156

Post by zdfjkhiuj » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #139

This article misses that Intel has really missed the boat when it comes to GPUs; the company that it needs to beat is NVIDIA which actually is producing a rapidly improving product. Intel integrated GPUs have no place at all in deep learning. They are perfectly good for emulating the 2001 Gamecube and playing classics like Doom and Quake, but they have a bad enough reputation among gamers that if and when they do com…

The company they need to beat is AMD. AMD's integrated GPU's are thoroughly trouncing Intel's and are good enough for light gaming. Their weak integrated graphics hurt their core business of CPU sales.

They certainly want to compete in the discrete GPU space, but I think they should be much more scared of losing CPU market share.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#157

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

Zardoz84 wrote: post #150

pjmlp wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "native languages close to the metal ... BASIC" WHAT?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there used to be lots Basic compilers for doing systems programming in Z80, 68000, VAX, 80x86 ....

In fact, they still exist for micro-controlers, https://www.mikroe.com/mikrobasic.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#158

Post by macintux » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

user5454 wrote: post #121

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

That's not at all what they said.

The said that as the battery degrades, they limit CPU spikiness that can abruptly kill the device even with a non-trivial amount of juice left.

That's not nearly the same as "slowing down the phone with every upgrade".

Often people have reported better performance after an OS upgrade, although obviously results may vary, and subjective impressions are always, well, subjective.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#159

Post by LifeLiverTransp » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 3:01 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."

Take mobile devices- add a new type of battery, allowing for true decentralized servers- and intels seemingly value in the serverspace evaporates in a cloud of smoke.

Add to that, a new generation of envelop layer in the making (Augmented Reality) - that will replace desktops and workstations, and intels huge castle seems truely build upon sand.

In addition they also failed on the other big market- massive parallelization (Neuronal Nets, Cryptocurrencys, etc.) - it just seems that intel lost its ability to innovate quite a while ago- and was just kept upright by its ability to monopolize markets.

Im sure steam-engine companys had great share-value, until the day they had not.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#160

Post by hugs » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

dmichulke wrote: post #126

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…

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!

Quite possible!