Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#151

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

inasio wrote: post #125

baybal2 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of flash makers, way, way more than DRAM makers. And there is tons of flash going to things other than PCs, unlike DRAM. Regular DDR DRAM only goes to high-end desktop PCs, and servers, with few laptops. Everything else has switched to the LP-DDR line even if there is no explicit need for energy saving (LPDDR4 may actually cost you less than regular DDR4 these days, especially given the extra for DIMM/…

Intel was not the first to NAND flash, but they pretty much started the SSD revolution with the first truly revolutionary SSD. I still remember Anand's review of the first X-25M (only 100GB) [0], immediately becoming the standard-bearer for the SSD revolution. [0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/2614

I remember mid 1990's announcements from Intel's research partnership group that non-volatile flash ram drives were about to roll out to the consumer market.

By late 1990s the press releases dropped off and the idea of consumers running solid state drives went pOoF! for another decade.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#152

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #148

jjoonathan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes two to tango.

There is a big difference. The US was led astray due to its economic ideology. There was a concerted effort to move industry to other countries, so that salaries in the US would be depressed for lower income classes and the owners of industry could realize larger profits for a generation. Now the country is finally realizing that this is a losing proposition, while China saw the opportunity and based its economy on i…

Yes, that's what happened. Yes, the US was incredibly stupid and had a big hand (the biggest) in its own downfall. No, that doesn't mean China's hands are clean in the matter. Ultimately, politics are amoral and it doesn't matter, but to the extent that we're interested in making purely academic moral distinctions there's no need to whitewash China's actions. They did us dirty, and if we have the option to do them dirty back, we should take it without the slightest sliver of shame or guilt. Politics is amoral.

In any case, we absolutely should not let our natural inclinations towards an underdog story cloud our judgement. China isn't an underdog anymore.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#153

Post by mathattack » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #113

mathattack wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s natural for large tech companies to enter the harvesting business when they can’t innovate anymore. Look at IBM. They just can’t innovate, so they do all kinds of financial engineering on the back of a robust customer audit program. Eventually that money gets recycled into funding earlier stage companies. (If a company buys back stock, the old investors have to put the money somewhere)

> Look at IBM. They just can’t innovate Indeed. But they shot themselves in the foot when they replaced their experienced, expensive staff with low-wage Indian workers (not to pick specifically on Indians... there are certainly Pakistanis and other Asian cultures represented in that cohort).

That’s consistent with giving up on innovation. And the age discrimination fight they’ve had.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#154

Post by kelnos » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

renw0rp wrote: post #61

conradev wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also, the first T in TSMC stands for Taiwan, which is not China

Not for much longer

Parent is being flippant here, but there's some truth to this. If we get into a Cold War with China (or, worse, a shooting war), China may attempt to forcibly re-unify Taiwan, and they have a pretty good chance of succeeding.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#155

Post by mathattack » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:47 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #106

mathattack wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s natural for large tech companies to enter the harvesting business when they can’t innovate anymore. Look at IBM. They just can’t innovate, so they do all kinds of financial engineering on the back of a robust customer audit program. Eventually that money gets recycled into funding earlier stage companies. (If a company buys back stock, the old investors have to put the money somewhere)

IBM has a full hardware/software stack, cloud computing and consulting services. What is your basis the claim?

Too much time working with them as a partner and vendor.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#156

Post by onepointsixC » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:53 PM UTC

didibus wrote: post #139

javajosh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical manufacturing doesn't matter until the shooting starts.

Why you all worried about war, who'd start it? The US? Right now we're just talking about economies and being able to have a well off society where people don't struggle to make ends meet. And from that point of view, the future of the US as it continues to lose competitive advantage to other countries doesn't look as good as it used too. Are we saying the US plan in case this trend reaches extreme levels is to start…

China would start any prospective war, and it would be over Taiwan. Their rhetoric on the subject has ramped up substantially.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#157

Post by MrBuddyCasino » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

actuator wrote: post #127

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: Intel may be slowly dying, but this is fine and eventually happens to all ageing corporations. Looking at the technical quality of their non-x86 products, most of it was not great, so it is not surprising to see the rot spread.

> Intel may be slowly dying, but this is fine and eventually happens to all ageing corporations. The sad bit is, it will lead to consolidation at the hand of few players which would be worse for customers. Intel used to have good products in flash space.

I think eventually China will catch up and give 'em hell. They have to have a national processor that is competitive with the west out of strategic considerations. After what happened to Huawei they will double their effort.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#158

Post by onepointsixC » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #142

magicsmoke wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently when war starts iPhones will be more important than oil, steel, jets, and ships. Or does China build those for the US military as well? Also, ICBMs fly both ways. But while nobody decides to press the "End Game" button, the US with its self sufficient continent can weather more punches than any other country in any conceivable conventional war scenario.

> Apparently when war starts iPhones will be more important than oil, steel, jets, and ships. Or does China build those for the US military as well? Sure, the US military has maintained low-volume domestic manufacturing capability in those areas to meet peacetime military demand. However, you mentioned WWII. Did the US fight that with just its preexisting military-allocated production capacity? It did not. You had ju…

China is neither food nor energy secure and Russia cannot provide sufficient quantities of either. PLARF would be focused on not continental US, but US forward positions which would allow for US assets to easily strike Mainland China. Fact is that the US could starve out China from a distance if needed.

Furthermore for all the Chinese efforts for self sufficiency, it lacks that in high tech manufacturing.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#159

Post by onepointsixC » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

tharne wrote: post #102

magicsmoke wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is the world power least worried about physical geography and locations if and when the shooting starts. 2 oceans as moats, plenty of oil and natural resources on its home turf, and all potential flashpoints on the other side of the world. I'm sure America would love to give WW2 another run, especially considering how last time it shook them out of the great depression and devastated everyone else's industria…

Oceans are nice, for sure. But if you're reliant on China and others for all of your manufactured goods including semi-conductors, you're in for a world of pain, oceans or not. Likewise, oil and gas aren't all that helpful if you can't get them out of the ground because your equipment is broken and all the replacement parts are made in China. I say this as a patriotic American. Comparisons to WWII are fairly off-base…

You have it backwards, China is deathly dependent on semi-conductor imports. And what replacement parts are you imagining of? Be specific. Because the US has plenty of manufacturing capability for just about anything that comes to mind for Oil and Gas.

Re: Intel exits memory business, sale to Hynix for $9B

#160

Post by junar » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #146

icegreentea2 wrote: post #76

A tinge of sadness. I remember reading reviews of the X-25 like a decade ago and being so excited (it was this anandtech review https://www.anandtech.com/show/2614 ). To me it was the dawn of the "common SSD". Just now I've looked at a bunch of timelines of SSD history, and I suspect the X-25 was similar to many other people. There was certainly a lot of SSD activity prior to the X-25 being released, but it seemed li…

Intel pretty much stopped being relevant to the consumer SSD market as soon as the SSD market as a whole broadened enough to support the development of client/consumer-specific SSD controllers. Once Intel could no longer compete by stripping a few features out of an enterprise SSD design, their consumer SSD products had no real advantage over other brands. (Minor exception: Intel's consumer QLC NVMe drives have consi…

If you mean the 660p/665p, I think even those SSDs are not worth it. The Kingston A2000 uses the same SM2263 controller, is about the same price, but uses TLC NAND instead of QLC.