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

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

#201

Post by epicureanideal » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #178

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.

Think on decades time scale, electron based turing machines are asymptoting in design, there isn’t much space for someone to be ahead until we start making optical computers.

Apple has a huge war chest. Let's hope they use it to advance the state of the art.

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

#202

Post by wmf » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #150

m_mueller wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's mash this up with the evil HP business model that's on the front page. Kodak could have sold digital cameras that required Kodak DRMed flash cards that you would have to pay to erase and reuse. And maybe the photos could be further DRMed so you'd have to take the flash card to a certified Kodak lab.

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

#203

Post by octoberfranklin » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #178

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.

Think on decades time scale, electron based turing machines are asymptoting in design, there isn’t much space for someone to be ahead until we start making optical computers.

Keep dreaming. Electrons interact with each other, photons don't.

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

#204

Post by wmf » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 4:53 AM UTC

Pet_Ant wrote: post #74

CountSessine wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the case with every foundry, though. It’s the reason GloFo isn’t competitive anymore, for example. What’s more interesting is the physics reason that they tripped up the last generation - what did TSMC do right that Intel did wrong? What bets were made? Which ones paid off?

I believe the issue was that Intel was leaning harder on EUV trying to make it and burying the competition instead of a more cautious approach by TSMC. Zen 3 is finally using some EUV layers whereas I believe Intel already wanted to use EUV heavily in their "10"nm process.

Nope, Intel 10nm does not use EUV. Zen 3 is made on TSMC N7 (not N7+ as rumored) which also does not use EUV.

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

#205

Post by ethbr0 » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 4:53 AM UTC

CountSessine wrote: post #59

ethbr0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The balance likely comes down to volume. Specifically, total global chip sales. If Intel builds Intel (I believe their contract fabing is a rounding error?), then they're directly tied to Intel chip sales. This sets up a potential death spiral. Intel misses a process node deadline, Intel's products are uncompetitive, Intel sales decrease, less demand for Intel fab, less money for Intel fab improvement. Intel can temp…

This is the case with every foundry, though. It’s the reason GloFo isn’t competitive anymore, for example. What’s more interesting is the physics reason that they tripped up the last generation - what did TSMC do right that Intel did wrong? What bets were made? Which ones paid off?

I feel like the business models are slightly different when you're a contract foundry vs integrated though.

The latter depends on your market share. The former only depends on the total market.

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

#206

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:00 AM UTC

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.

The industry is different. Cloud is a huge force and the mega tech companies literally have more money than they can spend.

We’re going to move towards AWS, Microsoft, Apple chips. It’s really hard for a company like Intel or AMD to serve hyper scale customers.

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

#207

Post by lazzlazzlazz » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

dwheeler wrote: post #196

ekianjo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most CEO are MBAs.

A CEO who has only a non-technical education (such as an MBA) is VERY unusual for hardware or software companies that are successful . Often the CEO of this kind of company has at least some technical education, and usually the CEO has lots of it. After all, most of the decisions in such firms will have a technology component to them. A few examples: * Lisa Su (CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)): BS, MS, and PhD in…

I don't think it's a coincidence that the two least inspired, lowest quality CEOs on this list (Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook) are exactly the two who have MBAs.

I think you've made the point extremely clearly.

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

#208

Post by mjevans » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

ndesaulniers wrote: post #151

usrusr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't look for a change: their position was worse in the days of the Netburst dead-end and back then the company was just lucky that a second, independent path had been followed in the Haifa office to target a niche market (yes, laptops were niche in that age). So has there been organizational dysfunction for decades? I think not: there are things Intel has always been doing very well and post-Netburst improvements a…

> whatever forgettable AMD had been building between the Athlon glory days and those of Ryzen Phenom II! I had six cores, 7 years ago! They were dog slow, but there were six of them (and that's all I could afford).

They weren't even that slow. Seven years ago they didn't win in __single threaded__ applications, but for any multi-threaded workload they were great.

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

#209

Post by pengaru » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #163

intelisdead wrote: post #154

Here are benchmarks of the top processors from each competitor: Single Core: AMD 5900X - 3643 points (+15% faster) Intel 10900K - 3178 points Multicore AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX - 88673 points (+130% faster) Intel Xeon Gold 6248R @ 3.00GHz - 38521 points By the way, 5900X is not only faster than 10900K, but also consumes less power.

What's the comparison when it comes to mobile chipsets? I would love to have a laptop (12"-14", light and thin) with an AMD CPU and an actually decent GPU, but they seem to be incredibly uncommon.

Does the lenovo X13 AMD model not qualify?

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

#210

Post by dougmwne » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

formercoder wrote: post #181

kelnos wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> capitalize R&D That's the problem with "MBA thinking". You can't put a dollar value on R&D. You just can't. Anything you do will be a gross approximation, and because the number is so fuzzy, you'll be encouraged (even subconsciously) to fudge it around to make other things look better, which will undoubtedly lead you to undervalue R&D to the point where it negatively impacts your business, but you have no idea why,…

What? Sure I can. It’s on the income statement. Then I can show that some firms see more of a return on that R&D spending than others, and that impacts how valuable they are. It’s the same as how some firms get more return out of spending the same amount on factories as others. They are better factories.

I have to say, you're really walking right into this one. Your approach, that everything about the business can be quantified and then optimized is exactly why MBAs kill companies. The relationship between the employees and the company and the customers and the product is fundamentally emotional and therefore beyond quantification. R&D is fundamentally hopeful and creative and that future potential cannot be quantified either. Accounting is a fine management tool, especially for optimization of companies and products that already have the magic. Don't let those nice cognitive tools turn you into a paperclip maximizer.