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Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

semiaccurate.com

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Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#2
An unusually unfavourable article, even by the standards of semiaccurate.com. Can this new processor family be interpreted as something less terrible than "palpable desperation" and effectively giving up on the 10nm process? For example, prices might be aggressively low.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#3

An unusually unfavourable article, even by the standards of semiaccurate.com. Can this new processor family be interpreted as something less terrible than "palpable desperation" and effectively giving up on the 10nm process? For example, prices might be aggressively low.

> For example, prices might be aggressively low.

Although this is possible, it would be a huge hit to Intel's image.

I think one can state that Zen 3 is higher performing than any Intel's architecture/model across the board. What happens when they'll release Rocket Lake? They'll introduce a new(er), slower architecture, to tackle... the budget segment?

I think that, from an engineering point of view, Intel is going to be in deep for a few years, with the hope that they'll manage to pull a new architecture in 3/4 years.

On the other hand, I've specifically written "engineering", because Intel still has copious amounts of "green persuasion", which shouldn't be underestimated.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#4
Is there good coverage of how Intel became so uncompetitive? My instinct is to say this is just the natural result of the presence of MBAs who are trained to focus _exclusively_ on this quarter's results so ignore R&D investment and also shit on employees by doing gimmicks like hotdesking to pinch pennies.

I'm willing to bet my intuition is wrong, especially given my extremely deep bias against MBAs and 'this quarter' thinking. Any great sources on the full story?

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#5
My main question would be why Intel would even bother releasing Rocket Lake if, balancing between higher IPC and lower clocks, the performance would be _lower_ than the 10 series chips. So I disagree with the article that this will be an unqualified disaster. It's quite likely that they will be a little faster, at least core for core. But it also seems like these are notebook chips hacked into a desktop socket and limited to just 8 cores.

That means the best case scenario for Intel would be (barely) scraping back their "single threaded gaming performance" crown while completely giving up against the multi-threaded performance of AMD's higher core count Zen 3 chips. The only way Rocket Lake would make any sense in the market would be if these are priced less than $400 (probably a lot less), and so Intel's margins will be much lower on what is likely to be a much larger die with more transistors.

I don't think it's possible to call this anything other than a pure desperation move.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#6

An unusually unfavourable article, even by the standards of semiaccurate.com. Can this new processor family be interpreted as something less terrible than "palpable desperation" and effectively giving up on the 10nm process? For example, prices might be aggressively low.

This is one of the more oddly axe-grindy articles I've seen in a while. Poorly edited English and writing what feels like angrily about some pieces of silicon--is this just the house style for this site?

Maybe somebody can provide some context.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#7
post #4

Is there good coverage of how Intel became so uncompetitive? My instinct is to say this is just the natural result of the presence of MBAs who are trained to focus _exclusively_ on this quarter's results so ignore R&D investment and also shit on employees by doing gimmicks like hotdesking to pinch pennies. I'm willing to bet my intuition is wrong, especially given my extremely deep bias against MBAs and 'this quarter…

Here are a couple good articles explaining it.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/227720-how-intel-lost-10...

https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/intel/28919...

The TL;DR is that Intel has always been a vertically integrated shop (meaning that they usually fab and design their own chips), and that is starting to bite them because pure-play foundries are improving their tech at a faster rate.

Intel has been unable to keep up with process advancements in their foundries, and that has led to pure-play foundries like TSMC taking massive market share. As chips get smaller and smaller, Intel has failed to keep up. They can only do 10nm for their mobile stuff and 14nm for their desktop stuff, whereas fabs like TSMC have been in 7nm territory for a while now and are moving into 5nm territory.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#8

My main question would be why Intel would even bother releasing Rocket Lake if, balancing between higher IPC and lower clocks, the performance would be _lower_ than the 10 series chips. So I disagree with the article that this will be an unqualified disaster. It's quite likely that they will be a little faster, at least core for core. But it also seems like these are notebook chips hacked into a desktop socket and li…

I think one reason is that they need to release a desktop CPU with PCIe Gen4. And if they can't do it in 10nm, they have to backport it to 14nm just to stay competitive.

Amd has had Gen4 out in desktop CPUs for over a year now.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#9
post #4

Is there good coverage of how Intel became so uncompetitive? My instinct is to say this is just the natural result of the presence of MBAs who are trained to focus _exclusively_ on this quarter's results so ignore R&D investment and also shit on employees by doing gimmicks like hotdesking to pinch pennies. I'm willing to bet my intuition is wrong, especially given my extremely deep bias against MBAs and 'this quarter…

Giving Jim Keller the boot is probably on Intel's list of regrets.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#10
post #6

An unusually unfavourable article, even by the standards of semiaccurate.com. Can this new processor family be interpreted as something less terrible than "palpable desperation" and effectively giving up on the 10nm process? For example, prices might be aggressively low.

This is one of the more oddly axe-grindy articles I've seen in a while. Poorly edited English and writing what feels like angrily about some pieces of silicon--is this just the house style for this site? Maybe somebody can provide some context.

Why does “poorly edited English” matter when the content seems to be on point? Not everyone on the Internet is a “native” English speaker. Content matters, not who and how they wrote it.
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