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Intel Problems

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Re: Intel Problems

#101

Post by jng »

thoughtsimple wrote: post #55

How does Moore's law figure into this? I suspect that TSMC runs into the wall that is quantum physics at around 1-2nm. Considering that TSMC has said that they will be in full production of 3nm in 2022, I can't see 1nm being much beyond 2026-2028. What happens then? Does a stall in die shrinks allow other fabs to catch up? It appears to me that Intel stalling at 14nm is what opened the door for TSMC and Samsung to ca…

Modern process node designations (5nm, 3nm...) are not measurements any more, they are marketing terms. The actual measure of shrinking is a lot smaller than the name would mean to indicate, and not approaching the quantum limits as fast as it may seem.

Re: Intel Problems

#102

Post by afavour »

tapirl wrote: post #62
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…

Intel's fate predicted in 2014: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErrFtv0UwAA4JaW?format=png

On the flip side that post illustrates just how things can go wrong, too: Windows RT was a flop.

Re: Intel Problems

#103

Post by totalZero »

twblalock wrote: post #94
totalZero wrote: post #8

> This is why Intel needs to be split in two. Yes, integrating design and manufacturing was the foundation of Intel’s moat for decades, but that integration has become a straight-jacket for both sides of the business. Intel’s designs are held back by the company’s struggles in manufacturing, while its manufacturing has an incentive problem. The only comparable data point says that this is a terrible idea. AMD spun ou…

AMD had to go through that in order to become a competitive business again. Look at them now! Maybe Intel's chip design business needs to go through the same thing. Maybe there is a way for Intel to open up its fab business to other customers and make it more independent, without splitting it off into another company. However, it seems like that would require a change in direction that goes against decades of company…

Self-immolation is only a path to growth if you're a magical bird -- it's not a reasonable strategy for a healthy public company. AMD went through seven years of pain and humiliation between that spinoff and its 2015 glow-up. I understand that sometimes the optimal solution involves a short-term hit, but you don't just sell your organs on a lark (nor because some finance bros at Third Point said so). There are obvious strategic reasons to remain an IDM, and AMD would never have gone fabless if the company hadn't been in an existential crisis. Intel is nowhere near that kind of crisis; it may have some egg on its face but the company still dominates market share in its core businesses and is making profits hand over fist.

> Maybe there is a way for Intel to open up its fab business to other customers and make it more independent, without splitting it off into another company.

Intel Custom Foundry. They have several years of experience doing exactly what you describe, and that's how their relationship with Altera (which they later acquired) began. I see AMD's subsequent bid for Xilinx as a copycat acquisition that demonstrates one of the competitive advantages of Intel's position as an IDM: information.

Re: Intel Problems

#104

Post by jeffbee »

vinay_ys wrote: post #99
jeffbee wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 subs…

Usually you would have some number of enclosed aisles of racks make up a deployment pod. You can usually customize machine configuration within a deployment pod while staying within the electrical and thermal envelope of the aisle and without changing the number of core-spine to pod-spine network links. You could potentially build out a data hall but not fully fill it with aisles. As demand starts to trend up you can…

They have perfected it, just not in the manner that you are suggesting.

Re: Intel Problems

#106

Post by vinay_ys »

fhrifjr wrote: post #97
vinay_ys wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and just like Intel & AMD spent a lot of effort/funding for building performance libraries and compilers, we should expect Amazon and Apple invest into similar efforts. Apple will definitely give all the necessary tools as part of Xcode for iOS/MacOS software optimisation. AWS is going to be more interesting – this is a great opportunity for them to provide distributed profiling/tracing tools (as a hosted servic…

So far I found getting started repo for Graviton with few pointers https://github.com/aws/aws-graviton-getting-started

What kind of pointers were you expecting?

I found it to have quite a lot of useful pointers. Specifically –https://static.docs.arm.com/swog309707/a/Arm_Neoverse_N1_Sof...

https://static.docs.arm.com/ddi0487/ea/DDI0487E_a_armv8_arm....

- these two docs gives lot of useful information.

And the repo itself contain a number of examples (like ffmpeg) that have been optimized based on these manuals.

Re: Intel Problems

#107

Post by treve »

Const-me wrote: post #92
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…

Building server software on Graviton ARM creates a vendor lock-in to Amazon, with very high costs of switching elsewhere. Despite using A64 ISA and ARM’s cores, they are Amazon’s proprietary chips no one else has access to. Migrating elsewhere gonna be very expensive. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sponsor their Graviton offering taking profits elsewhere. This might make it seem like a good deal for customers, but I…

Maybe I'm missing something, but don't the vast majority of applications don't care about what architecture they run on?

The main difference for us was lower bills.

Re: Intel Problems

#108

Post by rapsey »

Const-me wrote: post #92
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…

Building server software on Graviton ARM creates a vendor lock-in to Amazon, with very high costs of switching elsewhere. Despite using A64 ISA and ARM’s cores, they are Amazon’s proprietary chips no one else has access to. Migrating elsewhere gonna be very expensive. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sponsor their Graviton offering taking profits elsewhere. This might make it seem like a good deal for customers, but I…

Why would it be lock in. If you can compile for arm you can compile for x86.

Re: Intel Problems

#109

Post by StillBored »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #76
oldgradstudent wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel can become a fab company Not unless they catch up with TSMC in process technology. Otherwise, they become an uncompetitive foundry.

The point is Intel can't compete as a fab or as a design house. It's doubtful if Intel would have been able to design an equivalent to the M1, even with access to TSMC's 5nm process and an ARM license. Which suggests there's no point in throwing money at Intel because the management culture ("management debt") itself is no longer competitive. It would take a genius CEO to fix this, and it's not obvious that CEO exist…

I don't know how you can predict the future like this. Yes, intel greedily choose not to participate in the phone soc market and are paying the price.

But their choice not to invest in EUV early doesn't mean that they will never catch up. They still have plenty of cash, and presumably if they woke up and decided to, they wouldn't be any worse off than Samsung. And definitely better off than SMIC.

Similarly, plenty of smart microarch people work at intel, freeing them to create a design competitive with zen3 or the m1 is entirely possible. Given amd is still on 7nm, and are just a couple percent off of the M1 seems to indicate that if nothing else intel could be there too.

But as you point out Intel's failings are 100% bad mgmt at this point. Its hard to believe they can't hire or unleash whats needed to move themselves forward. But at the moment they seem to be very "IBM" in their moves, but one has to believe that a good CEO with a good engineering background can cut the mgmt bullcrap and get back to basics. They fundamentally just have a single product to worry about unlike IBM.

Re: Intel Problems

#110

Post by WoodenChair »

The thing about all of these articles analyzing Intel's problems is that nobody really knows the details of Intel's "problems" because it comes down to just one "problem" that we have no insight into: node size. What failures happened in Intel's engineering/engineering management of its fabs that led to it getting stuck at 14 nm? Only the people in charge of Intel's fabs know exactly what went wrong, and to my knowledge they're not talking. If Intel had kept chugging along and got down to 10 nm years ago when they first said they would, and then 7 nm by now, it wouldn't have any of these other problems. And we don't know exactly why that didn't happen.
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