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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

#101

Post by formercoder »

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…

Hi, MBA here, not sure what "training" you're referring to. Certainly nothing I learned in school taught me to focus on quarterly results and ignore R&D. I learned to attempt to push ROIC above WACC in order to ensure firms are generating economic profits, I learned that we probably should capitalize R&D and include it in ROIC to show that it does impact value, among other things

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

#102

Post by AnthonyMouse »

013a wrote: post #47
ethbr0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 interesting question is which company it makes the most sense to try to save. Intel seems to be plagued by various mismanagement and doesn't have a strong record as a contract fab for the other companies that may need a competitor to TSMC. If you're going to save somebody it may make as much sense to try to get one of the other players back into the state of the art game, like GlobalFoundries, which also operates several good (but not as good as TSMC) contract fabs in the US.

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

#103

Post by Torkel »

formercoder wrote: post #101
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…

Hi, MBA here, not sure what "training" you're referring to. Certainly nothing I learned in school taught me to focus on quarterly results and ignore R&D. I learned to attempt to push ROIC above WACC in order to ensure firms are generating economic profits, I learned that we probably should capitalize R&D and include it in ROIC to show that it does impact value, among other things

ROIC: return on invested capital

WACC: weighted average cost of capital

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

#104

Post by m_mueller »

somethoughts wrote: post #96
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…

The interesting one I think about is if the current CEO is basically their version of Steve Ballmer at Microsoft. Not highly loved by tech, media or finance, but basically held the ship together long enough to enable Microsoft to figure out how to transition away from the sinking ship that was Microsoft Windows and into new markets. Basically he just needs to keep it afloat long enough for Intel to be able to find it…

The examples you cite are people with operational excellence that were built up internally over many years. As an outsider I have no trust that Intel still has such talent, it seems they are fully run by bean counters now. Who says it's a Microsoft and not a Kodak? Microsoft had the immeasurable advantage of two big markets cornered for themselves: enterprise software and home computers software. Intel meanwhile is a market leader that is getting outplayed on every market, the only thing in their favor is missing volume by their competitors - that's not an advantage that is going to last long.

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

#105

Post by sadness2 »

For gamers, I expect these will be priced such that Intel will offer a better price-to-performance ratio than AMD. I've seen so many industry pundits talking about the defeat of Intel for the last 2 generations, but gamers just quietly look the frames-per-second to $ ratio and keep buying Intel and the cheaper Intel-based motherboards. I think Rocket Lake will allow this trend to continue while Intel prepares Alder Lake.

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

#106

Post by tpxl »

varispeed wrote: post #89
ChuckMcM wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask: "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?" My understanding from the article is that the answer to that question is that Intel is unable to produce any quantity of chips at 10nm that makes (enough) money. The author surmises that rather than go a year with AMD essentially unchallenged in the…

Why Intel couldn't rent TMSC facility to produce their processors? Too proud?

The designs are fab specific.

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

#107

Post by toast0 »

totalZero wrote: post #49
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…

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…

> My perspective is that every process node is so critical that missing the mark on 10nm had far-reaching ramifications.

The problem with Intel missing on 10 nm is not so much that 10 nm is critical, but that it is critical to their roadmap. Large CPU design is heavily pipelined (like large CPUs), so you miss on the process node, you've still got a team building the refined next release for the year after, and a third team working on the more refined release for the following year.

Then you have decision making; it's hard to get a sense for if you need to go back and make a good new design on 14 nm, if 10 nm is going to be ready enough soon (but it's been several years now of not ready enough), splitting design resources.

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

#108

Post by PragmaticPulp »

icelancer wrote: post #77
UncleOxidant wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes on both counts. I was contacted a couple years back about a machine learning contracting gig. When I asked what the hourly rate was the recruiter said $45/hour. I laughed and said that the going rate for that kind of skill set is like $120+/hour. That has not been an isolated incident.

>> $120+/hour Even this would be a substantial discount for most qualified people.

Given the company, it's usually long-term contracts that more closely resemble full-time employment. The location is also usually outside of the biggest, most expensive cities.

$120/hr * 40 hrs/wk * 50 wks/yr = $240K before self-employment taxes and paying for insurance. Ends up being comparable to typical compensation in cities that aren't SF, Seattle, or other top-tier markets.

Now if someone was doing more typical ad-hoc freelance work on a project basis, $120/hr might be too low for typical work. However, $90-120/hr as a contractor with a long-term contract and stable pay over 12-18 months is not uncommon.

Unless someone has a lot of new, small contracts knocking at their door nonstop, it can make more financial sense to take a $120/hr long-term contract over sporadic $200+/hr work that changes month to month.

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

#109

Post by nurspouse »

edoceo wrote: post #99
nurspouse wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Several of the engineers I worked with a few years ago left Intel (for the company I work at) after they switched to hotdesking to save money on facilities. Throwaway account as I work there, but I'd like to make some minor corrections to this: I don't think most of Intel ever switched to hotdesking. It was a trial program. In my building it was on one or two floors. I can't speak for all the locations, but most of…

It's a symptom of the sickness.

Using cubicles a symptom of a sickness would mean that Google and FB are sicker. Intel has better workstations.

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

#110

Post by Devils-Avocado »

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…

H1B migrant workers building empires inside the company instead of delivering good products.
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