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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

#221

Post by rossjudson »

artisanspam wrote: post #121
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…

Intel employee. Can confirm all of the above.

I bet executive pay is great.

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

#222

Post by elihu »

jp42 wrote: post #91
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…

This is so true. I have friends whose managers told them - "the only way to get more pay is to leave intel", "our hands are tied, we cant give more pay or promo", " to get more pay and promotion, one option is to leave intel and then come back"...all of these folks are in FAANG now.

There is another option, it's just a lot harder than leaving and rarely said out loud. Which is to organize.

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

#223

Post by guardiangod »

eropple wrote: post #6
HelloNurse wrote: post #2

An unusually unfavourable article, even by the standards of semiaccurate.com. Can this new processor family be interpreted as something less terrible than "palpable desperation" and effectively giving up on the 10nm process? For example, prices might be aggressively low.

This is one of the more oddly axe-grindy articles I've seen in a while. Poorly edited English and writing what feels like angrily about some pieces of silicon--is this just the house style for this site? Maybe somebody can provide some context.

Back in early 2000s Charlie was a beat reporter for The Inquirer. The Inquirer was written like a British tabloid (in fact they were split from The Register.)

As for his grudge, it probably stem from Intel's underhanded tactics. AMD had the Athlon XP that buried Intel's Pentium 4 in every measure.

Intel made some very backhanded and immoral moves- * Bribed Dell to not use AMD * Threatened Taiwanese mobo manufacturers to not build Athlon mobo by withholding North bridge chips * Blackmailed the said manufacturers to not even show up for product conventions held by AMD * Forced RAMBUS down everyone's throat until Athlon forced them to release the i815 chipset (finally supports DDR1!)

As a result AMD never managed to grow their revenue to a level that can sustain their R&D. When the Intel's Core arch arrived 4 years later it was over for AMD.

The Inquirer had a lot of contacts that suffered greatly, and it must have left quite an impression on Charlie. I remember that one of his reports was that during a trade show, a Taiwanese mobo rep had to meet Charlie in secret in a hotel room to talk about AMD, in fear of Intel catching wind and retaliate.

BTW Charlie also has a grudge against Nvidia for similar reasons, but Nvidia has been competent enough for the last decade that Charlie couldn't find anything to complain about.

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

#224

Post by hakfoo »

wmf wrote: post #202
mark-r wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And how exactly would that have competed with five hundred other brands that didn't pull that trick? The market eventually rejected even the soft-lockin of nonstandard memory cards (think of the 12 slots nobody ever uses that come with every SD/CompactFlash reader)

I'm not even sure it was the first wave of digital cameras that did them in-- people bought boatloads of digital Kodaks in the 2000s. I recall they were very big on dock ecosystems-- drop the camera on a base to charge it, and I think they had some printer docks. That should have helped to differentiate them from cheap Olympus/Nikon/Canon/etc. point-and-shoot cameras.

Yeah, there wasn't the residual income but there was a fair bit of an upgrade cycle for a few years to make up for it, which could have bought them time to find a solid place in the market.

I think the problem was the second wave: the point-and-shoot consumer camera disappeared (outside of novelties like Instax). After 2015 or so, you're either looking at interchangeable lens systems or other prosumer/pro-level kit, or you're using a phone. Kodak never made much of an inroad in the pro-level digital market, and I'm not sure they had a business adaptable to cameraphone sales-- I don't think they made their own sensors or optics, so a licensing or subcontracting business would have nothing to offer.

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

#225

Post by tehlike »

Devils-Avocado wrote: post #110
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.

Hah, likely true.

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

#226

Post by kayoone »

ashtonkem wrote: post #220
BostonEnginerd wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pay disparity is something that you’ve gotta fix early on. If you wait until the results of losing top level talent are finally being felt by everyone, then chances are your business might not have enough cash left to rectify the problem.

This is generally true however Intel still has and makes tons of cash, especially compared to AMD. It will take them some time to recover from this though, in this industry it can easily mean 5+ years.

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

#227

Post by desertrider12 »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #207
dwheeler wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While CEO, Pinchai's and Cook's companies increased in value by 2.7x and 8.6x respectively, so they must be doing a very high quality job at what they were selected for.

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

#228

Post by klelatti »

topspin wrote: post #213
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…

> 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. 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 p…

Not disagreeing that Intel has deep problems but doesn't greater transistor density support more sophisticated architectures and hence superior IPC? Also the failure to get 10nm working has presumably been problematic for the architecture team who have to design for two processes at the same time rather than focus on just 10nm?

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

#229

Post by ksec »

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…

>Is there good coverage

There are lots of moving parts with an enormous organisation like Intel.

But if you ask me there is one thing to point the finger to, it would be ex-Intel Chairman Andy Bryant ( He retired earlier this year ). Raised to CFO in 90s. Promoted to CAO in 00s. And later head the process and manufacturing operations while forced out Patrick Gelsinger. That was I think in 2009. The Otellini and Bryant era.

Paul Otellini retired in 2012, and BK ( Brian Krzanich ) was picked ( by Andy Bryant ) as Otellini's successor.

There seems to be lots of power play within Intel that we will never know.

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

#230

Post by klelatti »

hakfoo wrote: post #218
klelatti wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's probably also a great way to avoid head-to-head competition. 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 e…

They have some history with this with PowerPC but it really doesn't explain why they would make such a move now as they are already using x86 (if it is superior) - makes no sense to put themselves at a disadvantage just to be able to dodge performance questions.
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