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

Intel is dying and we can’t save it

sithsiri.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 268 posts

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#111

Post by dylan604 »

dathinab wrote: post #28

I see Intel not being dominant, having to take a back seat, shrinking a bit. But dying?? Nup, I'm not seeing this at all. I mean AMD for years survived in a situation much worse then Intel currently is. Intel's productions nodes might be behind TSMC's but they are still quite valuable, not all chips need 5nm processes. Heck we could say most chips don't need it. Intel is still innovating, just because they currently…

But not being hyperbolic doesn't drive clicks. Sort of like all of the headlines about Musk no longer being the richest man because the stock prices fell. Whoopee friggin boohoo. He still has more money than >99% of all humans on the planet.

In sports it's fun to say that 2nd place is just the first loser, but that's all in jest and friendly banter. When making things like this overly dramatic, it serves nobody except those trying to short the stock.

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#112

Post by posguy »

monocasa wrote: post #49
posguy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung has 8nm, but Nvidia has had a bit of a rocky ride on it as it was not tuned for large die area chips, but rather small Exynos SoCs.

Sure, but that's only a cute hack due to Apple bidding to eat up literally all of the TSMC 5nm capacity. I'm sure Nvidia would prefer TSMC 5nm to Samsung 8nm if they could put their hands on it.

Nvidia bit the hand that fed them (TSMC) hence not using TSMC 7nm or 5nm. Turns out complaining publicly about your manufacturing partner year after year causes them to allocate their wafer starts to your competition (AMD, Apple, etc).

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#113

Post by coliveira »

dathinab wrote: post #47
monocasa wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, China will be careful to crush Taiwan economically first so that no one cares when they roll tanks in. Well, no one other than Taiwan I guess.

Given how dependent high end computing is on TSMC (Amd, Apple, Nvidea, + more) it's quite unlikely to be a viable strategy. But given how messed up & fragmented the EU military is if the US stops military support for Taiwan china will likely directly declare War and Attack. (To be precise there is no EU military, just that of all members which makes it fragmented and in many cases is their military isn't in the best…

> china will likely directly declare War and Attack.

This is the American dream.

But no, China is not that stupid. Sure, they want Taiwan back, but they will not declare war and create global instability right in their backyard. Only stupid people would do this, and the Chinese are not stupid. They are in a marathon. They see the goal in 30, 50, 100 years. They will not give this gift to the American government.

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#114

Post by lancefisher »

tw04 wrote: post #84

Let's all just come to a common agreement: there's no planet on which the US military allows Intel to die. Period. End of story. Having a US based company with fabrication facilities on US soil is vital to national security and will be for the entirety of my lifetime and likely my grandchildren's lifetime (if I ever have any). For all the bluster of the investors wanting to chop Intel up: they will find a swift and f…

This is true for Micron and it’s true for Intel. Strategically, the US needs these fabs.

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#115

Post by aemreunal »

tw04 wrote: post #84

Let's all just come to a common agreement: there's no planet on which the US military allows Intel to die. Period. End of story. Having a US based company with fabrication facilities on US soil is vital to national security and will be for the entirety of my lifetime and likely my grandchildren's lifetime (if I ever have any). For all the bluster of the investors wanting to chop Intel up: they will find a swift and f…

I agree with your assessment of Intel's role in US national security, though Texas Instruments also owns and operates chip fabs in the US [1]. They most likely aren't as sophisticated as Intel or able to create similar chips, but Intel most likely isn't the only source of chips in the US.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#116

Post by AmVess »

icedchai wrote: post #53
dathinab wrote: post #28

I see Intel not being dominant, having to take a back seat, shrinking a bit. But dying?? Nup, I'm not seeing this at all. I mean AMD for years survived in a situation much worse then Intel currently is. Intel's productions nodes might be behind TSMC's but they are still quite valuable, not all chips need 5nm processes. Heck we could say most chips don't need it. Intel is still innovating, just because they currently…

Indeed, a similar situation happened in the mid 2000's before Intel moved to the Core architecture. I wouldn't be surprised if something like this happened again.

Intel has been bleeding engineers to other firms for a while now, and new talent has been skipping them altogether. These are not good developments for a company that depends on brain power to make their products.

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#117

Post by nwmcsween »

thisisnico wrote: post #85
icedchai wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, a similar situation happened in the mid 2000's before Intel moved to the Core architecture. I wouldn't be surprised if something like this happened again.

The Core Architecture in the mid 2000's was such an incredible shot back to the top. I remember seeing the benchmarks absolutely dominate AMD on every level, power, performance, TDP, Cost, etc. etc. This is almost immediately after Athlon 64 and the Athlon 64X2 started to gain market share, spanking Intel's Pentium 4 at the time. IIRC Intel ended up dropping the Prescott architecture, moving to the Pentium M architec…

This just puts into perspective how stagnate cpus have been, ~14 years and we are just starting to move to more than 4 core processors on prosumer systems.

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#118

Post by calvano915 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #101
passive wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, exactly this. Intel has really stumbled on fabrication the last 2-3 years, but the idea that they won't correct that ignores decades of precedent. I'm an AMD fanboy from the K6 days, and I love what Lisa Su has been able to deliver for them, but if it wasn't for Intel's stumbles, they would still be single digits at best in most markets. Look at their progress from Pentium 4 to Core 2 Duo (makes me feel real ol…

Curious, why were you a fanboy? Is it like rooting for team red and all the fun that goes into it? Honestly wondering since I have no feelings for any company even if their products are amazing.

I've been a fan for much the same time period yet never owned an AMD powered device, except maybe a game console? AMD has been useful to keep Intel on top of their game, but Intel has been on top for most of the last 15 years give or take.

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#119

Post by Shared404 »

tw04 wrote: post #99
WanderPanda wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of protectionism will only worsen Intels efficiency and will drain taxpayers pockets. Why can’t people learn from all the instances where a government tried to micromanage and horribly failed in the mid/long run?

Who said anything about micromanaging? I simply said the government both won't let Intel fail, and won't let their assets be sold off to foreign companies. It's easy to say "that's dumb" - but what's your alternative? If it includes "just buy CPUs from insert foreign entity " - that's a nonstarter for myriad reasons.

I don't know whether or not I agree/think it's a good idea, but I think you are correct.

There is no way the USG will let Intel fail.

Re: Intel is dying and we can’t save it

#120

Post by ativzzz »

jrumbut wrote: post #102
exintelwithop wrote: post #39

I worked at Intel years ago. At that time, The ratio of excellent to useless people I experienced there was 1:40. That is way out of whack. I am certain it only got worse because all the 1/40’s I knew left. They are going to have to go and get people who have modern skillsets and mindsets and those people don’t want to live in Hillsboro. And it’s going to be expensive. And those people don’t tolerate dead weight. My…

It's odd that when people from Intel talk about Intel on the Internet or with me in person it's so frequently about high level strategy and C level/Board of Directors politics. The way they're spoken of exhibits a lot of careful examination. I can't think of another company like that, maybe Microsoft years ago or GE. Is this something I'm imagining or is that a frequent topic of conversation at all levels of Intel?

Probably because nobody working at Intel was doing any actual work and were just reading/talking about Intel politics.
Post reply on HN