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Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

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Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#91

Post by mnadkvlb »

dippersauce wrote: post #54
swalsh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After purchasing an M1, i'm starting to realize how viable ARM is as a main platform. Nearly everything I want to run on it has a natively built version, and runs great on it. I could easily move anything I've built to a server running ARM with little frustration. I think that may be a bigger part of the coming future.

Before M1 my only exposure to ARM has been low-power SBCs and Android devices, and the experience was mediocre in the “just works” department. Poor hardware support, and a lack of proprietary software support. Performance was also lacking. Apple’s tight integration and high-end CPUs have resulted in a vastly better experience, but I want to have more options than just macOS and MacBooks. I think we’re trending in the…

I have tried buying microsoft arm computers since the last two gens now both the surface prox x with qualcomm sq1 and sq2 as well as another yoga book 5g.

Windows performance on these platforms is so trash, you feel like going back ten years on ultrabooks. Even their own apps are not optimized or some like visual studio didnt even run.

Compare that to x86 builtin emulation on apple m1, it performs so close to native performance on a 1000 bucks macbook air.

Microsoft has definitely different priorities like how to chnange settings for a user without their permissions or how to hide settings so users have less choice. windows experience has been so downhill since win7.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#93

Post by mschuster91 »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #59
dippersauce wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before M1 my only exposure to ARM has been low-power SBCs and Android devices, and the experience was mediocre in the “just works” department. Poor hardware support, and a lack of proprietary software support. Performance was also lacking. Apple’s tight integration and high-end CPUs have resulted in a vastly better experience, but I want to have more options than just macOS and MacBooks. I think we’re trending in the…

> If Microsoft could fix their frankly horrid x86 compatibility on aarch64 device I don't think Microsoft is the real problem there, though. NT was developed to be portable and was working on architectures other than x86 in the beginning. So it was interesting when I heard things about "Windows on ARM" half a decade ago--and then the Surface RT. The RT was crap, but it did have real Windows NT working on non-Intel AR…

> NT was developed to be portable and was working on architectures other than x86 in the beginning.

NT itself yes, but the userland? Not in the slightest. Apple provided Rosetta runtime translation at each arch transition, MS did not. As a result, no company even thought about switching PCs over to ARM which meant that there also was no incentive for the big players you mentioned to port their software over to RT.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#94

Post by bserge »

mizzack wrote: post #71
dbatten wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who (like me) didn't get the "toothpaste company" reference - it seems to be a reference to Intel trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of an old architecture (as one would squeeze every bit of toothpaste out of a tube), rather than innovating with new architectures and technologies. It's hard to figure out exactly where the toothpaste reference originated, but at least one source makes it sou…

It has a bit of a double meaning. Starting with the Ivy Bridge (3rd) generation, Intel switched to using thermal paste between the core and heat spreader instead of solder on socketed desktop processors. Presumably this was done as a cost savings measure. This caused a marked increase in core temperatures and thermal throttling. Enthusiasts discovered that you could remove, or "delid", the heat spreader and replace t…

Cost saving would've been to get rid of the IHS entirely. Their mobile chips work fine without them, I don't really understand why they're a thing for desktop processors.

AMD uses them too, so there must be a reason... is it because they're afraid of improper installation breaking them? That's on the user.

The weight of the desktop heatsinks? Small changes to latch design should suffice. Or you can have a metal spacer around the chip with the die exposed, kinda like GPUs do.

I've replaced many laptop chips and even ran some on desktops with no issues.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#95

Post by mschuster91 »

elorant wrote: post #70
buitreVirtual wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a good bang for the pound even after the price drop? (cost/performance ratio)

The processor is very efficient. Four cores at 3,6GHz, and can support up to 128GB of RAM. Even AMD can't beat that.

Why would you want 128GB of RAM without ECC support, something totally mainstream at AMD?

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#96

Post by OneEyedRobot »

mmastrac wrote: post #87
cletus wrote: post #80

It's amazing how far Intel has fallen. The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how humiliating must that be? Intel completely missed the mobile revolution. They had a stake in that race but sold it (ie XScale). Intel's product segmentation is bewildering. They've also kept features "enterprise" only to prop up high server chip prices to the d…

XScale was an awesome processor. Not only was it competitive, but it was 100% completely open and documented.

I used it in a design. What I remember (it was a while ago) was the lack of OS and driver support from third party software houses. It was a mistake to use it.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#97

Post by vanilla_nut »

codeflo wrote: post #84
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Microsoft could fix their frankly horrid x86 compatibility on aarch64 device I don't think Microsoft is the real problem there, though. NT was developed to be portable and was working on architectures other than x86 in the beginning. So it was interesting when I heard things about "Windows on ARM" half a decade ago--and then the Surface RT. The RT was crap, but it did have real Windows NT working on non-Intel AR…

I'm not so optimistic. There are some technical things Microsoft did poorly when going from x86 to x86-64, which in my opinion delayed the transition of a lot of software by a decade. And this is with processors that can run both instruction sets natively, where no actual software emulation was required. To give some context (this started with Windows Server 2003 64-bit and is still how it works in Windows 11): Inste…

I very nearly want them to double down on this disastrous strategy so in 3-5 years we’ll all be saved from Windows by an MS-run Linux distro (with windows theming, naturally) that just runs Wine+some MS internal goodies for backwards compat. It’s really not that different from Apple’s approach with Rosetta 2 in M1.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#98

Post by colinmhayes »

giuliomagnifico wrote: post #21

Intel needs better (especially with less energy consumption) chips not lower price. If Intel will lower the price they will have less cash for R&D and this is the trouble for intel now: not much competitive chips. And where are again at the beginning of the circle. I hope they will make an internal review of their offices/laboratories/whatever, is not a price issue with the chips, is a performance and technical issue…

Intel's profit is double AMD's revenue. Cash flow is not their problem.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#99

Post by vanilla_nut »

Guthur wrote: post #61

Lol, this stinks of PR BS. It's Intel's vertical integration that has hamstrung its chip design for about half a decade. 10nm transition was an unmitigated disaster and because of it Intel has haemorrhaged technical dominance and has only really maintained market dominance due to entrenched and slow moving decision cycles within the data centre space and to a lesser extend the consumer market. Intel will likely stabl…

Not just technical dominance — we’ve all heard of lead Intel engineers hired away to Apple/Google/Amazon/etc during this period of stagnation. How many senior engineers, staff engineers, and low-level talent in general has Intel bled in the last 5-7 years? How many of them have moved to Qualcomm, TSMC, Apple, Google, etc? At this point, I wonder if Intel is even capable of fixing their technical problems since most of their talent abandoned the sinking ship long ago.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#100

Post by smoldesu »

guiriduro wrote: post #43
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel IS competing against AMD mainly in the server space now. Of course at some point ARM and RISC-V servers will become mainstream, but it will take years. Intel is taking action now and it's aimed directly at AMD.

ARM is already there in the cloud, cf AWS Graviton. With Apple's M1 in the laptop/desktop (mac mini) space, ARM and its superior power/performance ratio is a significant contender for mainstream compute now.

I know a few VPS distributors, and I've heard pretty mixed things about ARM's viability in the server space. Not only is it pretty expensive relative to x86, it's also pretty slow: you won't be getting SIMD instructions like AVX, which are huge in the server space. The only thing ARM has going for it is low IPC, but I really fail to see many applications where you could benefit from that, much less one where it would be worth the price premium over x86.

Maybe in 5 or 10 years, ARM will be viable. But by then, we'll all be rocking RISC-V CPUs because someone realized that accelerating for specialized workloads isn't a crock of shit when 90% of your workload is video decoding.

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