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Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

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

#61

Post by derivagral »

djrogers wrote: post #56
newen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same problem comes up with open offices. Some ass from another department constantly talking on the phone 9 to 5. I developed a Pavlovian twitch every time his phone rang.

> Some ass from another department constantly talking on the phone 9 to 5. Dude, that guy's job probably relied on him being on the phone all day - he's just doing it. It's not his fault that you can hear him, it's your office manager/designer. Some of us really do have to spend a huge chunk of our day talking to other people on the phone, zoom, etc. There's n other way to get our jobs done, and if they don't give us…

The counter-anecdote is my first job out of college where a VP would conduct personal calls in the open space office... loudly and emotionally.

Open offices usually at least have quieter spots if you get in early enough, in my experience.

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

#62

Post by rwmj »

lostlogin wrote: post #58
rwmj wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part of hot-desking in my experience is you always seem to end up next to some guy from marketing who is on their phone all day, and as a result you get absolutely no thinking time.

This sounds like hell. Was there a reason it wasn’t split by department - eg sales, accounting, engineering etc?

That's the point of hot-desking, there's a single big room and you pick a free desk.

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

#63

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rwmj wrote: post #62
lostlogin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like hell. Was there a reason it wasn’t split by department - eg sales, accounting, engineering etc?

That's the point of hot-desking, there's a single big room and you pick a free desk.

Got to wonder - why are you there at all? How is this one particle better from working at home? Clearly you're not there because of the environment (proximity to folks on your team etc)

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

#64

Post by rasz »

api wrote: post #39

The US needs to do whatever it takes to get TSMC to build not only top-tier fabs but centers of excellence here. As it stands TSMC on Taiwan, which is threatened by China, has damn near a monopoly on competitive fabrication. A single hit on Taiwan could terminally stall the entire global supply chain for top-tier chips.

Why would Taiwan let TSMC move its operations away and thus weaken Taiwans U.S. Defense Guarantees?

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

#65

Post by tyingq »

ethbr0 wrote: post #33
tyingq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Chip architecture isn't current Intel's problem, process architecture is. There's some overlap between the 2, but 100% of Intel's current struggles can be chalked up to dysfunction on their process side. Given the lead time of chip arch (2-3 years?), the chip side of the house is arriving at manufacturing start day, and the process and specs they'd been optimizing for just aren't available. Until Intel's process catc…

Chiplets would have alleviated some of it.

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

#66

Post by hooch »

nxc18 wrote: 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…

I recall Intel intentionally took the foot off the accelerator in the midst of the GFC, and forfeited or skipped some next development to wait things out a while.

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

#68

Post by ip26 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #52
013a wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and that's my biggest fear. The process side of this industry is in a really scary spot right now. TSMC is killing it. Nvidia is using Samsung to fab the RTX 3xxx chips, and there's some rumblings that low yields are a reason why those are in such short supply (not to mention, whenever Samsung releases a new phone only some regions get the Exynos chips, because historically they couldn't produce enough of them…

The geopolitical angle is not to be forgotten either. TSMC is majority-based in a country whose land and government is claimed by another, nearby, much larger country. A country willing to leverage international economic options to further that claim. TSMC's global importance has direct implications on the world's appetite for intervening or preemptively selling arms against a hypothetical Taiwan Strait invasion.

Which in turn, I figure, makes keeping TSMC one of the best in the world an absolute top priority of the ROC.

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

#69

Post by klelatti »

nxc18 wrote: 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…

I think we've all taken the ability to reliably introduce process node improvements for granted to some extent. Intel has clearly been caught out by its inability to get 10nm - which I understand was overambitious - to work and pretty much everything else follows on from there.

At the same time AMD has been fortunate that TSMC has been able to continue with its node shrinks - supported by demand from and cash generated by high end mobile devices.

None of which is to say that Intel has been well run (cough McAfee cough) or that your criticisms aren't valid to some extent.

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

#70

Post by klelatti »

solarkraft wrote: post #54
totalZero wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective is that every process node is so critical that missing the mark on 10nm had far-reaching ramifications. This kind of technology has gargantuan inertia. The entire hardware ecosystem is strongly interconnected between different firms, and each firm's future technology depends strongly on its past execution. Failure to deliver on 10nm not only jeopardized the smooth rollout of the subsequent process node…

AMD seems to be doing well on x86 - they could've gone with them and saved themselves a somewhat painful ecosystem breakage. It's not just Intel's failure. They must think their chips are competitive against AMD's as well (or they're all in on iOS apps on Macs).

I think its partly their desire to add their own IP (use of Apple Silicon as the name is probably revealing of how they think of the new chips) was probably decisive in making the move from x86.

Plus probably still cheaper than any x86 alternative.

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