Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel's disruption is now complete

jamesallworth.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 638 posts

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#81

Post by mark-r »

baq wrote: post #17

There’s just one missing detail here: intel was terribly, terribly bad at executing its plan. Tiger lake was supposed to be here on 10++nm or 7nm or whatever much improved process, which would make it extremely competitive if not the absolute best. Intel very well knew they’re in trouble if the expected process upgrades don’t work and they didn’t. It’s not like folks there don’t know how to plot that core vs Apple si…

What's interesting is that Apple apparently plotted that graph too. They knew exactly when that crossover was going to occur, for years now.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#82

Post by gabereiser »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #69
agumonkey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somehow incredible how this infiltrates even the most advanced classes of company in terms of technical knowledge. You'd expect a bit more objectivity

The thing about the top tech companies, particularly Intel and other chip companies where postgraduate degrees are more or less required to do anything interesting, is that people there have literally gone though over a decade of intense competition in the educational system to qualify to get their foot in the door. And then, to stay there and rise through the ranks is another decade or more of intense competition, b…

Recipe for a toxic work culture from day one. Your team should never be your competition. Your company should never be your competition. Meritocracy works only in certain markets. Knowledge-based work isn’t one of them.

I really feel for people who are in these companies. Who put in 6+ years of university/higher education and think that “if I could only fight my peers for the top spot” when “top” is relative.

To someone else’s point, I totally acknowledge that there are certain industries that you have to have a degree to do anything meaningful. I also know there’s tons of companies out there that need bright minds to create the next big thing.

I used to think that I was in competition with my coworkers for that promotion, for that top spot, to basically prove to myself that I could and prove to others I should. I stopped wasting time trying to prove what I already know and now focus on what I don’t.

Office politics sucks and I refuse to play the game. If I get passed up for promotion or if I’m unhappy I leverage my rights under my states at-will work laws and go find somewhere else to work.

The best places I’ve worked where this wasn’t a thing (the elite competition for who’s right) were places that acknowledged your contributions, explained why you did/didn’t get the promotion, laid out plans for you to achieve that (or have you on that list for when it opens up) and then actually honors that promise.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#83

Post by skohan »

Someone1234 wrote: post #18
skohan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem really out of character for Apple to make a move in the server space.

Or heck even just the general purpose chip space in general. Apple's current ARM offerings are strictly locked to their own hardware, and there's been no hints that they may move into the ARM-PC space selling general purpose chips and letting other vendors produce board. I'd expect to see that first before an Apple silicon powered server.

Yeah Apple's never been a component company, they're all about vertical integration. Still it's hard to imagine if they actually do end up producing the best price/performance processors that these would be relegated to consumer products given the massive opportunity it would represent in the server space for cloud-based companies to bring down costs.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#84

Post by gabereiser »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #73
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about the top tech companies, particularly Intel and other chip companies where postgraduate degrees are more or less required to do anything interesting, is that people there have literally gone though over a decade of intense competition in the educational system to qualify to get their foot in the door. And then, to stay there and rise through the ranks is another decade or more of intense competition, b…

> people there have literally gone though over a decade of intense competition in the educational system to qualify to get their foot in the door. And then, to stay there and rise through the ranks is another decade or more of intense competition Two decades of requisite grunt work will also encourage your best junior talent to seek out start-up opportunities.

Bingo! After a few tries one will always look inward (healthily or not) and seek out other opportunities.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#85

Post by sidewndr46 »

DeRock wrote: post #65
frogblast wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s core is very wide. But wide usually means very high power consumption. M1 apparently has much lower power consumption. So something else is going on other than “Apple is willing to spend more to make cores wider”.

That, in part, comes from x86 vs arm. x86, with its variable length instructions, means your logic gets increasingly complex as you widen. Meanwhile with arm, you have constant instruction size (other than thumb, but that’s more straightforward than variable size), that lets Apple do things like an 8-bit wide decode block (vs. 4-bit for Intel) and a humongous 630 OOB (almost double Intel’s deepest cores).

For the uneducated, what is an "OOB" here?

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#86

Post by skohan »

kube-system wrote: post #63
usrusr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely for themselves, or also for entering the cloud infrastructure market. In this day and age if you are big enough (Apple surely is) and happen to have superior server hardware it wouldn't really make sense to sell that hardware, you'd rather keep it and rent it out.

The question is whether you can make a competitive cloud infrastructure service without x86. Imagine that would be a nonstarter for a lot of the market, at least now.

arm in the cloud is already a thing. A lot of companies have been moving towards server-less infrastructure in the past few years, and I can't imagine it makes any difference at all for a large set of use-cases whether you're executing your 50-line go lambdas on x86 or arm.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#87

Post by baybal2 »

eecc wrote: post #74
baybal2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And after 30+ years of this, I also don' think there's anything new or revolutionary in silicon fabrication on the horizon. Why so? Few more material, and device generations are on the way. Litho has went through more generation changes in the last 1 decade, than in any previous one. Whole new device classes are on the way: optics on silicon, new memory, logic in the backend, and logic on package. Semiconductor eng…

> Semiconductor engineering is still a career suicide though, that haven't changed in the last few decades. Wow, so I need to thank myself for accidentally bumbling towards ops and dev? Meh, for me it’s just that in EU there’s a total dearth of opportunities in the industry

People making WordPress websites are making more than PhD research scientists in Taiwan, and Korea.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#88

Post by sounds »

DeRock wrote: post #65
frogblast wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s core is very wide. But wide usually means very high power consumption. M1 apparently has much lower power consumption. So something else is going on other than “Apple is willing to spend more to make cores wider”.

That, in part, comes from x86 vs arm. x86, with its variable length instructions, means your logic gets increasingly complex as you widen. Meanwhile with arm, you have constant instruction size (other than thumb, but that’s more straightforward than variable size), that lets Apple do things like an 8-bit wide decode block (vs. 4-bit for Intel) and a humongous 630 OOB (almost double Intel’s deepest cores).

AnandTech's analysis corroborates what DeRock is saying here about the x86 variable length instructions being the limiting factor on how wide the decode stage can be.

The other factor is Apple is using a "better" process node (TSMC 5nm). I put it in quotes because Intel's 10nm and upcoming nodes may be competitive, but Intel's 14nm is what Apple gets to compete against today, right now.

Intel has been defeated in detail.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#89

Post by streetcat1 »

dboreham wrote: post #2

What's the real reason Apple can design a higher performance device? Better fab process? ARM ISA is fundamentally faster? Graph conveniently omits AMD who now beat Intel using the same ISA but different process.

My understanding is that there were a lots of bugs in the current processors. It was quality issues.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#90

Post by skohan »

reaperducer wrote: post #23
skohan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem really out of character for Apple to make a move in the server space.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve Apple’s Xserves were awesome. Not cheap. Only marginally competitive. But a joy to work with because of all the nice little details like a FireWire port on the front so you could boot it off of an iPod.

Yeah I remember Xserve! But if anything it seems like it was evidence that Apple wasn't really able to "get" the server market, where hardware is a commodity and price and compatibility are basically the only concern. Not to say that couldn't change, especially if their own processors had a big advantage in price/performance, but there hasn't been a whole lot of evidence that they have what it takes to succeed in this space.
Post reply on HN