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Intel Problems

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Re: Intel Problems

#121

Post by garethrowlands »

raverbashing wrote: post #30
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.

Nah I think the Itanic concept is dead in the water VLIW works (especially in the way it was done in Itanium - IIRC) when either your workload is too predictable or maybe if your compiler manages to be one order of magnitude smarter than it is today (even with llvm, etc) It seems even M1 prefers to reorder scalar operations than work with SIMD ops in some cases (this is one of its processors)

Mill is claimed to run general purpose code well, unlike Itanic and VLIW in general. Are you claiming Mill would be like Itanium?

Re: Intel Problems

#122

Post by aluminussoma »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #80

A major incentive for the US government to get involved is touched on. Not only is Taiwan 'just off the coast' from China, China is coming for it and intends to assimilate Taiwan back into China just as Hong Kong and Macau have been. At that point, the only sustainable leverage the rest of the world would have in chip technology would be ASML.

It is thought provoking to think that the USA's interest in Taiwan is more about protecting TMSC than protecting a democratic state in East Asia. By this line of thinking, building capacity in Arizona, or anywhere outside Taiwan, is good for TMSC and for the USA but weakens Taiwan.

Re: Intel Problems

#123

Post by eutropia »

I worked at Intel in 2012 and 2013. Back then, we had a swag t-shirt that said "I've got x86 problems but ARM aint one".

I went and dug that shirt out of a box and had a good laugh when Apple dropped the M1 macs.

Back then, the company was confident that they could make the transition to EUV lithography and had marketing roadmaps out to 5nm...

Re: Intel Problems

#124

Post by sradman »

twblalock wrote: post #100
sradman wrote: post #42

> 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.

Intel needs to change the way it does business. Simply lowering prices won't achieve that. Becoming the cheap option is likely the beginning of a death spiral the company will never recover from -- it will give the company an excuse to double down on a failing strategy. Furthermore, AMD is not the biggest threat to Intel. The biggest threat is cloud providers like Amazon designing their own chips, which is already ha…

> Becoming the cheap option is likely the beginning of a death spiral...

Maybe. I didn't suggest becoming the cheap option I suggested re-evaluating its premium pricing strategy in the short-term to reflect current and future customer value. Margin stickiness seems to be a built-in bias similar to the sunk-costs fallacy.

Server-side Neoverse is a threat but a slow-moving one. I'm assuming that "Breakup" (going fabless) will not show benefits for many months if not years. Price seems like an obvious lever; perhaps I'm being naive about pricing but it's not obvious to me why.

Re: Intel Problems

#126

Post by hpcjoe »

mhh__ wrote: post #24
klelatti wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair points, but if you're saying that if we moved to a non-x86 (and presumably Arm based) world then its business as usual for Intel and AMD then I'd strongly disagree - it's a very different (and much less profitable) commercial environment with lots more competition.

The likelihood of Intel moving to ARM is probably nil. They have enough software to drag whatever ISA they choose with them, whereas AMD bringing up an ARM core could be fairly herculean as they have to convince their customers to not only buy their new chip but also trust AMD with a bunch of either missing or brand new software.

AMD has already done an ARM 8 core chip. Then abandoned it.

ISA changes require a long term investment and building up an ecosystem. Which were out of scope for AMD at the time.

I think the market has changed somewhat, and they don't have to do all the heavy lifting. Would be interesting to see what happens there.

Re: Intel Problems

#127

Post by NortySpock »

gorjusborg wrote: post #6

Totally reasonable argument, and I think most would be better off with an independent, US-based foundry. Unfortunately, I doubt that the US government functions well enough at this point to recognize the threat and overcome the influence Intel's money would wield against the effort.

I thought GlobalFoundries was US based, and they have a fab in Vermont (and Germany and Singapore)

Re: Intel Problems

#128

Post by tapirl »

afavour wrote: post #102
tapirl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is more a stance to show Microsoft is ready to put Windows on arm CPUs if x86 loses the market.

Re: Intel Problems

#129

Post by renewiltord »

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #96
garaetjjte wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only comparable data point says that this is a terrible idea. Huh, I would say completely opposite thing. AMD wouldn't have survived if it kept trying to improve their own process instead of going to TSMC.

The problem here is not the success of AMD after splitting, but the complete retreat of Global Foundries from the SOTA process node. If this happens again with an Intel split then we have only TSMC left, off the coast of mainland China in Taiwan, in the middle of a game of thermonuclear tug of war between the West and China. While Capitalism will likely be part of the solution, through subsidizes for Intel or some ot…

I feel like that disclosure isn't warranted since like two of them are in the S&P 500 and everyone here probably has some exposure to that.

Re: Intel Problems

#130

Post by twblalock »

totalZero wrote: post #103
twblalock wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obviou…

> 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.

Years from now, people looking back will be amazed at how fast that changed. The time to react to disruption is now, when the company still has the ability to do so.

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