211–220 of 289 posts
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I have a Lenovo P920 at Google. Dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6154 CPU @ 3.00GHz for 72 virtual cores. And if I want more cores in the cloud, that's also an option. What does yours look like?
That’s not the normal work station at google. Only the chome, Linux, and maybe android team gets it since they need more cpu and memory to compile their projects.
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Maybe? Intel is in a high-technology field, where research can take a decade to bear fruit. I hope they're already planting the seeds for that growth today, or else that they have plans that will keep them afloat for a very long time.
Do you think they'd be able to hang on for a decade without catching up?
They could lose a lot of market share and then come up with something better in the end, like in the Athlon days.
Not obvious that it will happen, but not impossible.
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…
It's more than process node. Zen 3 now has superior IPC as well; the now unqualified performance lead of AMD devices happens at lower frequency. The process node problem is just the most visible and embarrassing problem Intel has. It is not the only problem. Intel's 10th gen is also still well behind the curve wrt side channel attacks. That gap will persist until Rocket Lake appears.
The rot at Intel is old and runs deep.
The one area that Intel has managed to maintain superiority is quality. Intel is still the thing to buy if you want minimum glitches.
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…
But then a company in The Netherlands solved the extreme ultraviolet generation and optics problem and Intel failed to push their existing process to 10nm allowing TSMC and Samsung to overtake it as a technology leader. And Intel now has to deal with a situation that it had no experience for the last 40 years when the company was a technology leader.
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…
INTC deserves that 9 P/E ratio
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That may work for people who constantly move around like sales people or managers. Interestingly managers keep their offices even though they rarely use them. For people like engineers i think it’s super important to have a steady work environment.
Managing people involves intimate conversations that are suboptimal in open environments.
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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.
Apple marketing always reminded me of how for decades, Rolls-Royce advertisements never would explicitly say things like the engine horsepower and displacement-- just "ample."
Now it will be that much easier to dodge performance questions. "Our machines are not built to run (mainstream software or game), so of course the performance is sketchy in the emulation penalty box. Just run the seven pieces of native MacOS software and it really flies."
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> They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips. With the ARM transition, Apple has perfect compatibility with the iPhone which is arguable more important for Apple than Intel compatibility. Apple is already investing tons of money in CPU design, they are just doing it via proxy with Intel building the chips for them. Bringing it in-h…
" With the ARM transition, Apple has perfect compatibility with the iPhone which is arguable more important for Apple than Intel compatibility." You can as much emulate x86 on arm than you can emulate arm on x86, so the point is moot
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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 youn…