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Intel Problems

stratechery.com

11–20 of 431 posts

Re: Intel Problems

#11

Perhaps now the "Why do people obsess over manufacturing?" question that many tech workers ask when other US industries were decimated will become a bit less quizzical.

It only becomes less quizzical when it hits home -- that is when one's own job is on the line.

Re: Intel Problems

#12
Feel this piece ducks one of the most important questions - what is the future and value of x86 to Intel? For a long time x86 was one half of the moat but it feels like that moat is close to crumbling.

Once that happens the value of the design part of the business will be much, much lower - especially if they have to compete with an on form AMD. Can they innovate their way out of this? Doesn't look entirely promising at the moment.

Re: Intel Problems

#13

I think one day we’re going to wake up and discover that AWS mostly runs on Graviton (ARM) and not x86. And on that day intel’s troubles will go from future to present. My standing theory is that the m1 will accelerate it. Obviously all the wholly managed AWS services (Dynamo, Kinesis, S3, etc.) can change over silently, but the issue is EC2. I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these ma…

I can see this happening for things that run in entirely managed environments but I don't think AWS can make the switch fully until that exact hardware is on people's benches. Doing microbenchmarking is quite awkward on the cloud, whereas anyone with a Linux laptop from the last 20 years can access PMCs for their hardware

Re: Intel Problems

#14

I think one day we’re going to wake up and discover that AWS mostly runs on Graviton (ARM) and not x86. And on that day intel’s troubles will go from future to present. My standing theory is that the m1 will accelerate it. Obviously all the wholly managed AWS services (Dynamo, Kinesis, S3, etc.) can change over silently, but the issue is EC2. I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these ma…

If it can emulate x86, is there really a motivation for developers to switch to ARM? (I don't have an M1 and don't really know what it's like to compile stuff and deploy it to "the cloud.")

Re: Intel Problems

#15
post #3

Contrary to the article, AMD is not yet shipping 5nm in volume. (Rumors point to Zen 4 later in 2021.) Additionally, Intel works with ASML and other similar suppliers. Intel even owns a chunk of ASML.

I looked up Canon's and Nikon's lithography numbers yesterday and was shocked to see that they barely make any money off their lithography businesses, considering that both companies make DUV machinery. Although they don't have the street cred of ASML, they are important because (A) there's a shortage, and (B) the demand side of the machinery market needs to foster competition in order to keep ASML from gouging its customers.

To go even further than your comment (with which I agree, 5nm isn't the center of AMD's income right now), TSMC isn't even making most of its wafer revenue from 5nm and 7nm. Straight from the horse's mouth (Wendell Huang, CFO):

"Now, let's move on to the revenue by technology. 5-nanometer process technology contributed 20% of wafer revenue in the fourth quarter, while 7-nanometer and 16-nanometer contributed 29% and 13%, respectively. Advanced technologies, which are defined as 16-nanometer and below, accounted for 62% of wafer revenue. On a full-year basis, 5-nanometer revenue contribution came in at 8% of 2020 wafer revenue. 7-nanometer was 33% and 16-nanometer was 17%."

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/01/14/ta...

Re: Intel Problems

#16
post #13

I think one day we’re going to wake up and discover that AWS mostly runs on Graviton (ARM) and not x86. And on that day intel’s troubles will go from future to present. My standing theory is that the m1 will accelerate it. Obviously all the wholly managed AWS services (Dynamo, Kinesis, S3, etc.) can change over silently, but the issue is EC2. I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these ma…

I can see this happening for things that run in entirely managed environments but I don't think AWS can make the switch fully until that exact hardware is on people's benches. Doing microbenchmarking is quite awkward on the cloud, whereas anyone with a Linux laptop from the last 20 years can access PMCs for their hardware

Professional laptops don’t last that long, and a lot of developers are given MBPs for their work. I personally expect that I’ll get a M1 laptop from my employer within the next 2 years. At that point the pressure to migrate from x86 to ARM will start to increase.

Re: Intel Problems

#17

I think one day we’re going to wake up and discover that AWS mostly runs on Graviton (ARM) and not x86. And on that day intel’s troubles will go from future to present. My standing theory is that the m1 will accelerate it. Obviously all the wholly managed AWS services (Dynamo, Kinesis, S3, etc.) can change over silently, but the issue is EC2. I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these ma…

If it can emulate x86, is there really a motivation for developers to switch to ARM? (I don't have an M1 and don't really know what it's like to compile stuff and deploy it to "the cloud.")

Emulation is no way to estimate performance.

Re: Intel Problems

#18

Feel this piece ducks one of the most important questions - what is the future and value of x86 to Intel? For a long time x86 was one half of the moat but it feels like that moat is close to crumbling. Once that happens the value of the design part of the business will be much, much lower - especially if they have to compete with an on form AMD. Can they innovate their way out of this? Doesn't look entirely promising…

It's worth saying that CPU design isn't like software. Intel and AMD cores are fairly different, and the ISA is the only thing that unites them.

If X86 finally goes, and Intel and AMD both switched elsewhere we'd be seeing the same battle as usual but in different clothes.

On top of the raw uarch design, there is also the peripherals and ram standard etc. etc.

Re: Intel Problems

#19
post #13

I think one day we’re going to wake up and discover that AWS mostly runs on Graviton (ARM) and not x86. And on that day intel’s troubles will go from future to present. My standing theory is that the m1 will accelerate it. Obviously all the wholly managed AWS services (Dynamo, Kinesis, S3, etc.) can change over silently, but the issue is EC2. I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these ma…

I can see this happening for things that run in entirely managed environments but I don't think AWS can make the switch fully until that exact hardware is on people's benches. Doing microbenchmarking is quite awkward on the cloud, whereas anyone with a Linux laptop from the last 20 years can access PMCs for their hardware

Very little user code generates binaries that can _tell_ it is running on non-x86 hardware. Rust is Arm Memory Model safe, existing C/C++ code that targets the x86 memory model is slowly getting ported over, but unless you are writing multithreaded C++ code that cuts corners it isn't an issue.

Running on the JVM, Ruby, Python, Go, Dlang, Swift, Julia or Rust and you won't notice a difference. It will be sooner than you think.

Re: Intel Problems

#20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see this happening for things that run in entirely managed environments but I don't think AWS can make the switch fully until that exact hardware is on people's benches. Doing microbenchmarking is quite awkward on the cloud, whereas anyone with a Linux laptop from the last 20 years can access PMCs for their hardware

Professional laptops don’t last that long, and a lot of developers are given MBPs for their work. I personally expect that I’ll get a M1 laptop from my employer within the next 2 years. At that point the pressure to migrate from x86 to ARM will start to increase.

You miss my point - if I am seriously optimizing something I need to be on the same chip not the same ISA.

Graviton2 is a Neoverse core from Arm and it's totally separate from M1.

Besides, Apple don't let you play with PMCs easily and I'm assuming they won't be publishing any event tables any time soon so unless they get reverse engineered you'll have to do it through xcode.

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