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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

#121

Post by artisanspam »

graton wrote: post #50
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 they have lost a lot of their best employees because their pay is not that great. They aimed for paying at the 50th percentile in wages and the top companies come in and can offer double or more their current pay. Doesn't help they switched from large cubes with five-foot high cubicle walls which did a good job on minimizing noise and visual distractions to having cubicle walls with a height of about 3-4 feet…

Intel employee. Can confirm all of the above.

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

#122

Post by seanmclo »

hinkley wrote: post #120
dweekly wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay at Intel is about half of FAANG, can confirm. They seem weirdly proud of this and then weirdly confused and disappointed when great people leave.

So did Apple just sashay in and poach half of the best people?

Yes. In PDX, Azure recently had a big hiring frenzy and there was a lot of attrition as well.

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

#123

Post by hinkley »

klelatti wrote: post #69
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 generat…

Are there any industries where high-end manufacturing doesn't subsidize low-end and low-middle products substantially?

Are we saying this all started to unravel when most of the money moved to mobile and Intel still, after 20 years of warning shots, didn't have a compelling strategy there?

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

#124

Post by HandstandMick »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #25
nxc18 wrote: post #12

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. Basically the concept was instead of engineers having an assigned office or desk, the office would have a large field of unassigned desks and generic equipment. Every day you would come in, reserve a desk, take any belongings from a locker, and set up shop. At th…

That’s the ultimate sign of disrespect for workers as human beings. Cubes and open office are bad enough but hotdesking is the next step. I would be miserable in such an environment. I need my keyboard and screens in a certain layout. Books need to be in a certain place. If that was taken away from me I don’t think I could live with that.

There are a lot of negative comments in this thread relating to hot desking. The perspective is interesting. From my own experience at first I felt the same, but soon after add noise cancellation headphones (almost everyone has), less cords eg Bluetooth, usb-c monitors, and ability to shift adhoc into smaller teams and groups when required I find it becomes such a winner. A lot of people seem setup or mark a desk as theirs, with books or custom Sun Station or whatever, and most people seem to respect this and get others needs. Hot desking obviously works differently for different types of work and or personalities.

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

#125

Post by hinkley »

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.

I wonder if the migration from "tick-tock" to every third iteration is a case of believing your own PR. "Everything is fine" is what they should have been telling us, while internally it was flashing red lights and klaxons.

Or maybe this started even earlier, with the generations of hardware that gave us Spectre. The target became unreachable, they used smoke and mirrors, and when that blew up they just sort of gave up. Maybe the intervention should have come back then but didn't (cite the "MBAs took over" comment elsewhere in the thread)

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

#126

Post by baloney1 »

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 CEO is, literally, one of these MBA types and he has recursively applied this thinking throughout the whole organization.

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

#127

Post by causality0 »

I'd be interested in an x86-64 processor that took the 1+3+4 approach of the Snapdragon 875. One big core with a super high clock rate and massive IPC, three smaller ones, and four that are smaller still. A desktop CPU with a single-core performance equal to half a normal 8-core chip would be an absolutely incredible tool for IPC-constrained applications like game console emulation.

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

#128

Post by breakfastduck »

vbezhenar wrote: post #87
ogre_codes wrote: post #53

This is just bad all around. Not just for intel, but for the entire industry. I always prefer companies doing well because their products are successful, not because their competitors fall down. More and more, Apple's timing on their switch to in-house ARM designs seems perfectly timed.

Apple should have switched to AMD instead. They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips. Now they either need to halt some Mac lines or develop all kinds of CPUs, from mobile (which they probably can do, because they should be similar enough to iPhones) to server-grade (which they have no experience at all). And there's no way Mac Pr…

They shouldn't.

The main point of switching to their own silicon is to unify their entire product range onto the same architecture.

Investing in a switch to AMD would be doing literally the opposite of what they're trying to achieve. Plus the shift of the big cloud players moving onto their own ARM chips means they're going to abandon x86 and move into a space that's already gaining traction in server grade.

'Now' they don't need to do anything but build the products. You act as if they only started working on the mac chips after they announced it. They'll have been planning this since the first A processors started performing really, really well.

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

#129

Post by BostonEnginerd »

dweekly wrote: post #114
graton wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they have lost a lot of their best employees because their pay is not that great. They aimed for paying at the 50th percentile in wages and the top companies come in and can offer double or more their current pay. Doesn't help they switched from large cubes with five-foot high cubicle walls which did a good job on minimizing noise and visual distractions to having cubicle walls with a height of about 3-4 feet…

Pay at Intel is about half of FAANG, can confirm. They seem weirdly proud of this and then weirdly confused and disappointed when great people leave.

This is a routine issue in the semiconductor industry. Payscales haven't keep up with software across that whole industry. The trade organizations are aware of this, but I haven't seen a lot of push to level the playing field. It's unfortunate, as there are lots of really fascinating problems to solve on the materials and integration side.

The industry trade organization did make a snazzy movie to try to attract young graduates into the industry.

https://yourewelcome.org/en/

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

#130

Post by selectodude »

agumonkey wrote: post #73
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…

Not to be pro-intel but I think they suffered from being too far ahead. They picked a path for 10nm when nobody else could even care. They got stuck in it for too long.. they're so invested and now there's a flocking of competition that can leverage faux-7nm processes that actually sells. If they can get back on track it will be a massive business success.

Definitely seemed to be a first movers disadvantage where their competitors could see where they went wrong and leapfrog them.
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