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Intel Problems

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Re: Intel Problems

#41

Post by tyingq »

mhh__ wrote: post #5
jeffbee wrote: post #4

Well I got down to the part where the author said that AMD never threatened Intel in the data center market and I closed the tab. AMD won entire generations of data center orders while Intel was flailing with Itanium and NetBurst.

Speaking of Itanium, if the x86 dam has truly burst, I'd much rather see something more like the Itanium than RISC-V. Something new. It's a shame the Mill is so secretive, actually, they're design is rather nice.

There's Russia's Elbrus VLIW chip. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15823/russias-elbrus-8cb-micr...

Re: Intel Problems

#42

Post by sradman »

> Solution One: Breakup

> Solution Two: Subsidies

Solution Three: lower prices/margins (temporarily) to match the value proposition of AMD on Windows PCs and Linux Cloud servers.

Re: Intel Problems

#43

Post by api »

mhh__ wrote: post #13
ashtonkem wrote: post #10

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

I don't think it takes "exact" hardware. It takes ARM64, which M1 delivers. I already have a test M1 machine with Linux running in a Parallels (tech preview) VM and it works great.

Re: Intel Problems

#44

Post by nickik »

dogma1138 wrote: post #36
ashtonkem wrote: post #10

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…

At that point if it will be trouble for Intel it would be a death sentence for AMD... Intel has fabs, yes it’s what maybe holding them back atm but it also a big factor in what maintains their value. If x86 dies and neither Intel nor AMD pivot in time Intel can become a fab company they already offer these services, yes no where near the scale of say TSMC but they have a massive portfolio of fabs and their fabs are l…

AMD makes great designs, switching to ARM/RISC-V would make them lose value but not kill them.

Re: Intel Problems

#45

Post by api »

dogma1138 wrote: post #36
ashtonkem wrote: post #10

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…

At that point if it will be trouble for Intel it would be a death sentence for AMD... Intel has fabs, yes it’s what maybe holding them back atm but it also a big factor in what maintains their value. If x86 dies and neither Intel nor AMD pivot in time Intel can become a fab company they already offer these services, yes no where near the scale of say TSMC but they have a massive portfolio of fabs and their fabs are l…

How hard would it be for AMD to make an ARM64 based partly on the IP of the Zen architecture? Seems like AMD could equal or beat M1 if they wanted.

Re: Intel Problems

#46

Post by mhh__ »

ashtonkem wrote: post #33
mhh__ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the m1 isn’t a graviton 2. But then again the mobile i7 in my current MBP isn’t the same as the Xeon processors my code runs on in production. This isn’t about serious optimization, but rather the ability for a developer to reasonably estimate how well their code will work in prod (e.g. “will it deadlock”). The closer your laptop gets to prod, the narrower the error bars get, but they’ll never go to zero. And ke…

That's true but the Xeon cores are much easier to compare and correlate because of the aforementioned access to well defined and supported performance counters rather than Apple's holier than thou approach to developers outside the castle.

Re: Intel Problems

#47

Post by varispeed »

When I learned that allegedly Intel and nVidia were fixing the laptop market, I just hope that this company goes down or goes through a substantial transformation. Their current management situation is untenable. If I was a shareholder (fortunately I am no longer), I would pressure them to sack everyone involved.

Re: Intel Problems

#48

Post by jeffbee »

secondcoming wrote: post #28
jeffbee wrote: post #4

Well I got down to the part where the author said that AMD never threatened Intel in the data center market and I closed the tab. AMD won entire generations of data center orders while Intel was flailing with Itanium and NetBurst.

GCP only offer Epyc CPUs in some regions. None of those regions are ones we use! Gah! Can someone update us on where AWS offer them, if at all?

If you think about how these providers deploy a cloud facility, it makes sense that the offerings in a given place are relatively static. The whole network design, thermal/mechanical design, and floor plan is built with certain assumptions and they can't just go in and rack up some new machines. It evolves pretty slowly and when a facility gets a new machine it is because they refresh the whole thing, or a large subset of it.

That said, the EPYC machine type is available in 12 zones of four different regions in the US, which isn't bad.

Re: Intel Problems

#49

Post by spideymans »

totalZero wrote: post #23
klelatti wrote: post #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…

The demise of x86 isn't something that can be fiated. It could come about, but there would need to be a very compelling reason to motivate the transition. Technologies that form basic business and infrastructural bedrock don't go away just because of one iteration -- look at Windows Vista for example. Even if every PC and server chip manufacturer were to eradicate x86 from their product offerings tomorrow, you'd stil…

Windows Vista's problems were relatively easy to solve though. Driver issues naturally sorted themselves out over time, performance became less of an issue as computers got more powerful, and the annoyances with Vista's security model could be solved with some tweaking around the edges. There wasn't much incentive to jump from the Windows ecosystem, as there was no doubt that Microsoft could rectify these issues in the next release of Windows. Indeed, Windows 7 went on to be one the greatest Windows release ever, despite being nothing more than a tweaked version of the much maligned Vista.

Intel's problems are a lot more structural in nature. They lost mobile, they lost the Mac, and we could very well be in the early stages of them losing the server (to Graviton, etc...) and the mobile PC market (if ARM PC chips take off in response to M1). Intel needs to right the ship expeditiously, before ARM gets a foothold and the x86 moat is irreversibly compromised. Thus far, we've seen no indication that they know how to get out of this downward spiral.

Re: Intel Problems

#50

Post by mhh__ »

sitkack wrote: post #25
mhh__ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of Itanium, if the x86 dam has truly burst, I'd much rather see something more like the Itanium than RISC-V. Something new. It's a shame the Mill is so secretive, actually, they're design is rather nice.

One of RISC-V's main goals is to be boring and extensible. Think if it as the control-plane core, or the EFI for a larger system. You would take RISC-V and use it drive your novel VLIW processor.

How? RISC-V will have to have memory model, for example, which will define some at least effective execution model. If you turn RISC-V into not RISC-V you might as well just start from scratch.
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