Intel's disruption is now complete • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#151

Post by rwx » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #20

As someone who worked on Intel's phone chip: we definitely didn't win it. We fucked it up twelve ways to Sunday. Why: giant egos. There were turf wars between Austin, Santa Clara and Israel over who would design it, and the team that won out had long since lost its best principle engineers and had no clue how to spin the architecture to meet the design win. Otellini's hindsight hedge is pure spin: we knew the landing…

Why: giant egos. There were turf wars

Ex-Intel engineer here that worked in R&D- I saw the exact same situations during my time and was one of the reasons I left. The way that teams in the same org with the same goals couldn't or wouldn't work together was incredibly frustrating and such a massive waste of effort. At the time I thought it was a unique situation with our group, but it's sad to see that it's more of a systemic issue that still hasn't been corrected.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#152

Post by CountSessine » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #28

voodootrucker wrote: post #5

Thank goodness. They haven't innovated in decades and x86 is a mess. I can't wait until RISC-V does the same to ARM. It's super frustrating to see America, which used to be innovative become the complacent corrupt incumbent.

I guess you didn't read about their Xeon Phi bi-directional ring architecture that achieved dozens of terrabytes/sec of bandwidth, their 512b vector-processor ISA, or, heck, just for giggles, the industry's first FinFet (and high-k dielectric) on p1270, p1272, and p1274. But, please, do go on.

Xeon Phi bi-directional ring architecture that achieved dozens of terrabytes/sec of bandwidth

...and yet, was it any better than a midrange GPU in compute?

Intel is the new IBM. IBM at the end of the 80’s was filled with smart people innovating piecemeal technologies that couldn’t be brought together to create compelling products. And the products that they were selling were expensive and technologically moribund.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#153

Post by hyperpallium2 » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

That chart is not of competing technologies, but of market demand and one technology. The classic disruptive chart shows two technologies improving in parallel, but the performance customers demand doesn't increase as fast, so eventually the disruptive technology is "good enough" for those customers (even though the incumbent technology is better still: it "overshoots") and has other desired qualities (like battery efficiency), so customers all switch to it.

Here, of course, Apple is unlikely to sell its chips to other manufacturers... so any disruption will be at the product level: affecting wintel laptops, desktops... and eventually perhaps game consoles and linux servers. Everything.

BTW I really enjoy his theories, but let us note that Christensen himself assessed the iphone as non-disruptive.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#154

Post by wmf » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

jibcage wrote: post #3

I’m curious to see if Apple will bring anything similarly disruptive to the server market. So far servers haven’t been their strong suit, but a chip this attractive could change things.

Nuvia is basically the server version.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#155

Post by skohan » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #131

skohan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

While most of your points are true, I will quibble with this: there hasn't been a whole lot of evidence that they have what it takes to succeed in this space. Does it matter? In 2006 and 2007 there were legions of pundits, columnists, and "experts" who said the same thing about Apple making a telephone. I wonder if there's a market for a server optimized for iOS builds. Cram as many Mx chips and possible into a racka…

Sure as I said, anything is possible, and that can change, but to be fair the iPhone is a consumer device, which was firmly within Apple's wheelhouse already when they were developing the first model.

Do you really think there's a market for dedicated hardware for iOS build servers? I mean there is some market for this since CI vendors already do iOS builds, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to imagine there being enough demand for Apple to actually put the R&D and product development resources into making this a reality.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#156

Post by robk » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

zarkov99 wrote: post #76

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #20

As someone who worked on Intel's phone chip: we definitely didn't win it. We fucked it up twelve ways to Sunday. Why: giant egos. There were turf wars between Austin, Santa Clara and Israel over who would design it, and the team that won out had long since lost its best principle engineers and had no clue how to spin the architecture to meet the design win. Otellini's hindsight hedge is pure spin: we knew the landing…

How much of the blame do you think is Otellini's? I got a really bad feeling about Intel when he became CEO.

100% but the culture was already set then. But letting the finance guys run the shop put a stake through the heart of any engineering soul left

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#157

Post by rurban » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #147

dragontamer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel dropped the ball on 10nm and 7nm processes constantly for the last 5 years. Skylake was the "tick", then they couldn't "Tock" to 10nm, so they made 14nm+, then 14nm++, then 14nm+++... Intel's been stuck on the same process for half a decade now.

This doesn’t come up enough: intel’s ceo had to abruptly resign in June 2018 due to a relationship with an employee. [1] That could not have come at a worse time for a company like intel. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-intel-ceo-idUSKBN1JH1VW

That could have been a good thing for Intel. The fish rots from the top for a couple of years already.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#158

Post by rurban » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #59

whatever1 wrote: post #40

My question is why Qualcomm while using the same arch, has not produced a chip as fast as the M1?

Qualcomm is a virtual monopoly in the space it serves (mid to high end non-Apple non-Chinese phone chips); arguably it doesn't have that much incentive to do anything much.

And they are supposed to be a much shittier company than Intel, or Boeing or Oracle. You need to be really desperate to work there.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#159

Post by eulers_secret » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

sounds wrote: post #88

DeRock wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 det…

> but Intel's 14nm is what Apple gets to compete against today, right now.

Intel's 10nm node is out, I'm typing this on one right now. It's competitive in single-core performance against what we've seen from the M1. Graphics and multi-core it gets beat though...

Or do you mean what Apple used to use? (edit: the following is incorrect) It's true Apple never used an Intel 10nm part.

EDIT: I was wrong! Apple has used an Intel 10nm part. Thanks for the correction!

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#160

Post by PakG1 » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #97

notSupplied wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory about why turf wars like this happens: the more successful and wealthy an entity, the greater opportunity there is for a manager to take wealth instead of make it. When you’re scrappy and broke, the only path to success is to make the company successful. When the company is rich and multitudinous, an individual can gain more from politics and turf wars rather than actually trying to push an already hi…

You put it so well, having worked in both large and small companies - I can attest to this theory. An exception might be SpaceX where you have a strong dictator at the top and any annoyances of tribal war get direct authoritarian spanking.

Is SpaceX already that big to be in the class of overweight titans like Intel?