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

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

#251

Post by yourapostasy » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #143

hinkley wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there an electric generator evolution scenario here Intel should be watching for?

Back in the day before the electric grid really caught on, hydro- and coal-powered electric generators could be found in businesses large and small that had needs that went well beyond the limited voltage and amperage requirements of the meager electrified buildings at the time. It made sense for a business to have its own power plant engineering department to just feed and maintain the beasties if the productivity from thirsty electrically-powered machines far outweighed the enormous cost of an in-house power plant, consumables and staffing. As the grid evolved though, this need went away, and only really heavy industry these days exceed the delivery capabilities of the grid will run their own on-site power plant (more often they just try to "peer" co-locate next to a "real" power plant, kind of like HFT's with exchanges). Power plant manufacturing is now a heavily-specialized industry with margins much lower than Intel has become accustomed to.

Could the "grid" of the Net, cloud and mobile devices evolve to the point where the existing PC and server markets retreats in relative scale into "heavy industrial" applications like cloud infrastructure, and shift out Intel's cash flow from under them? Under such a scenario, the PC and server markets don't shrink as much as grow dramatically slower on a relative basis to B2C-grade gear and infrastructure that explodes in growth comparatively. Intel will still be plenty profitable if well-run, and still be mighty, but won't grab all the headlines, and evolve into a GE-like "mainstream" business.

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

#252

Post by nolok » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

desertrider12 wrote: post #227

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but many people would say (and that's my opinion as well) that they achieved that by resting on what was already working and minor/logical improvement of prviously mapped steps, and that that would be caught like a deer in headlight by the need to perform a massive change to adapt.

They're extremly good (better than most) at keeping the machine well oiled and maintained to ensure it performs as best as possible, but when the machine won't be able to do the job anymore they will have a hard time foreseeing it or finding the new solution.

Just like what is happening at Intel.

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

#253

Post by nolok » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

hakfoo wrote: post #224

wmf wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

> And how exactly would that have competed with five hundred other brands that didn't pull that trick?

I think I agree with the point you're making but I still feel obligated to point out that cheaper and better printer (like the brother laser pointed in the other thread) isn't stopping HP from making huge bank with their ink scam for decades.

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

#254

Post by solarkraft » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

The_rationalist wrote: post #184

ogre_codes wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Except emulation has a good bit of a performance penalty.

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

#255

Post by nolok » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

Teever wrote: post #82

dragontamer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: the I/O chip on AMD Zen 2 / Zen 3 is a 14nm GloFo chip. Only the CPU-cores ("Zepplin" maybe, or whatever they call them now) are 7nm TSMC. So AMD's strategy also leads to lower fabrication costs: because they can make a far cheaper 14nm chip to handle the slower portions of I/O (talking to RAM, or PCIe), while the expensive 7nm parts of TSMC are used only for the cores / L1 cache / L2 cache / L3 cache.

Is there any indication that Intel will move to this chiplet design? It seems like it's a no brainer and it's been proven to work by AMD. What's keeping Intel from adopting this same practice? is it IP?

For better or worse AMD has always been much more willing to quickly throw everything out to go with a completely new design paradigm. Something it was a massive bust like X2 or Bulldozer. Sometimes it's the Athlon or the Zen.

The only time Intel really did that was with the end of the P4 and frankly even then they waited as long as they could before doing it. The rest of the time it's all carefully planned stepped increase and safe design change.

Both have their advantages, but for your question it means Intel will have to take a leap they clearly don't like taking.

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

#256

Post by nolok » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

Schiendelman wrote: post #242

Microsoft turned this around in 2009-2010 with one decision: Give everyone in engineering a 10-15% raise to keep up with competition. Intel’s fallen far behind on pay, so they have a brain drain problem and a morale problem. They won’t fix it until they pay people more. I think Intel’s more than 15% behind - they may need to bump by 25% or more.

Depending on which branch of the company you're talking of (fab design, chip design, ...), and based on what info you can actually get on it which is less fact and more "large amount of anecdotical evidence", Intel's is between more and a lot of than 15% behind.

And while I agree with your proposed first step of the solution, and the urgency to do it given the delay between that and any impact on results, their tendency to look only for short term gains and benefits will probably impede them.

They've learned to love easy money, and they didn't need to really pay their people well because there was no serious competition, not in fab, not in chips. Now they're fallen behind on both, as easily predicted, but for a short while they extracted massive amount of money from their margin.

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

#257

Post by webmaven » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #157

UncleOxidant wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes on both counts. I was contacted a couple years back about a machine learning contracting gig. When I asked what the hourly rate was the recruiter said $45/hour. I laughed and said that the going rate for that kind of skill set is like $120+/hour. That has not been an isolated incident.

$120 is about a third of what my accountant charges per hour.

> $120 is about a third of what my accountant charges per hour.

Some professions typically require both a related degree and one or more certifications or licenses. Accounting is one of those (CPA, CMA, CFA, CISA, CIA, EA) and this ends up being reflected in the hourly rate.

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

#258

Post by nolok » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 3:21 PM UTC

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.

AMD has the 5950X too

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

#259

Post by nolok » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

corty wrote: post #78

rasz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Taiwan let TSMC move its operations away and thus weaken Taiwans U.S. Defense Guarantees?

It can be a mutually beneficial arrangement, perhaps letting TSMC US produce some defence-relevant silicon and providing a safe haven and nest-egg for Taiwans elites in case of invasion/unification.

That is not a beneficial arrangement for the Taiwanese population, compared to "if Taiwan fall this capability is lost, defending the island is absolutely necessary".

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

#260

Post by rasz » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #237

bnt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does “poorly edited English” matter when the content seems to be on point? Not everyone on the Internet is a “native” English speaker. Content matters, not who and how they wrote it.

For me the overly agressive tone was detrimental while reading the article. I kept thinking: "Is this really necessary?" It reminds me of the rethoric that we've seen in politics in the last four years.

Your reaction reminds me of what Aamer Rahman describes at 2 minute mark in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKICKcMU3MU

Just a reminder. Intel bribed, intimidated and blackmailed hardware manufacturers to alienate AMD while AMD was offering better product. Intel was fined record 1 Billion Euro. Intel hasnt paid a single cent of that fine to this day.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-intel-antitrust/intel-...