Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by userbinator » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #12

jjtheblunt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hotdesking?

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…

At the end of the day, you would tear down, lock up, and leave.

...so you would never be able to have a computer on for more than the length of your workday? That sounds insane --- I could never get any real work done that way, because so much time would be spent on "restoring state" to the way it was at the end of the previous day. I wouldn't call that efficient at all.

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

#142

Post by baskire » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

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…

They also focused on diversity hiring vs focusing on hiring top talent.

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

#143

Post by wmf » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #123

klelatti wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For Intel I think ~90% of the PC market plus ~90% of the server market provides enough volume to easily cover their R&D. The rest of the industry may have needed to pivot to mobile to fill their fabs but that's not Intel's problem.

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

#144

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

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).

From what I've seen, they aren't. At the same node, and same wattage per core, a Ryzen low-power core has better performance per watt and leagues more I/O. That was back in the iPhone X days, I don't think it's gotten any better since

Personally, I'm very skeptical on Apple beating AMD.

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

#145

Post by wmf » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #125

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…

> 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 g…

AFAIK Spectre/Meltdown come from the 1990s.

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

#146

Post by gotfork » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:27 AM UTC

k__ wrote: post #138

baloney1 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"received a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University at Buffalo School of Management in 1983 and his MBA from Binghamton University in 1985." "January 31, 2019, Swan transitioned from his role as CFO and interim CEO" They got what they paid for, I guess...

To be fair, most of the 10 nm problems were already in place when BK was still the CEO.

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

#147

Post by mark-r » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #107

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…

> 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 thir…

Moore's Law was literally created at Intel. It's painful to see them stumble like this.

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

#148

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #127

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.

[deleted]

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

#149

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

baskire wrote: post #142

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…

They also focused on diversity hiring vs focusing on hiring top talent.

[deleted]

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

#150

Post by mark-r » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #104

somethoughts wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Kodak gets unfairly picked on. They built their business by taking a cut from every single picture taken. There was nothing in the digital camera model that could replicate that revenue stream.