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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

#271

Post by freemint »

mook wrote: post #231
freemint wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to pay more for cheap CPUs such that they have ECC. High prices on ECC subsidize cheaper parts without ECC.

Except that if the cheaper chips have ECC, they probably couldn't go up much in price — that price is limited by how much people (who don't care about ECC anyway) are willing to pay. So if prices for the low end went up, people (like you) would instead go without (meaning Intel doesn't get your money), or try to get second hand (Intel doesn't get your money), or go with AMD (Intel doesn't get your money). But Intel w…

Intel would like to make the same profit per wafer as before. Any savings you get as some who wants ECC gets added weighted by fraction of volumes to chips in my price class. No thanks.

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

#272

Post by chithanh »

woofie11 wrote: post #198
Aromasin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a point where I would have to disagree. While their early access programs are generally restricted to larger customers, you can apply to join other schemes (called Docs and Docs+ as far as I remember) where they will assign you an account manager and a dedicated platform application engineer to help you with your design-in process. I worked at a small start-up producing COM-HPC boards for companies who wanted…

I wasn't comparing to AMD. I've had few enough interactions with AMD that I can't pass judgement, but from the few I've had were consistent with your assessment. AMD was a complete black hole. My interactions with Intel were lightyears ahead of AMD. But Intel, in turn, was lightyears behind Analog, Linear, Maxim, TI, and most other vendors I've dealt with (this was before Analog gobbled Linear and Maxim up).

XMG (a gaming laptop brand) even publicly announced that AMD would not meet their request for validation samples of Ryzen 5800 and 5900 CPUs. CPUs that have been launched and are shipping to other customers already.

https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/n4i3x2/update_threa...

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

#273

Post by Dylan16807 »

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #190
zamadatix wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most stuff eventually turns into cost so I'll ignore "costly" effects like heat/power and performance per dollar and focus on max performance scale for workloads and other unique differences not achievable via just throwing more money at the alternative. Per socket performance scaling is higher for equivalent tier sockets. At hyperscale that goes back into the price benefit (buy and maintain less physical data center…

For non-NUMA aware workloads with high inter-core coordination (for example, a write heavy database workload) Intel will still perform much better because the cross-chiplet latency of EPYC chips is very high. Going through the IO die and to another chip is about as expensive as going to main memory. Hyperscalers are running web servers which is a different story. But if you're running web servers you might be better…

Though there is the effect that clusters of eight cores on EPYC have faster access to each other than on Intel.

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

#274

Post by xxs »

bserge wrote: post #94
mizzack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 space…

The IHS is needed to prevent the die from, hence RMA.

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

#275

Post by graton »

worrycue wrote: post #219
vanilla_nut wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Talent comes and goes. If other companies can hire away talent, Intel can hire them back too. If you pay enough, people will come. Intel currently seem quite willing to pay.

That's a change then. Before they use to aim for paying at about the 50th percentile. So Google and other companies would literally pay twice or more as much in salary in comparison.

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

#276

Post by sbierwagen »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #216
mschuster91 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other side, just take a "Tragerl" of beer (German beer crate with 20x0.5l): - It weighs much more than a crate of 20x0.5l aluminium cans or plastic bottles - it is more voluminous: glass bottles have way thicker walls and they need plastic spacers to prevent the bottles from crashing each other, whereas cans and bottles can be shrinkwrapped just fine) - the return logistics are simpler: glass bottles and the c…

> The switch to plastics has saved lots of money and environmental pollution in logistics Ah, but this is debatable! https://www.wri.org/insights/planes-trains-and-big-automobil... "Trains move 32% of goods in the United States, but generate only 6% of freight-related greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile trucks account for 40% of American freight transport and 60% of freight-related emissions." From the beginning of t…

>in the United States.

Fun fact, Europe moves most of its freight by road: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/road-transpo...

Compare with the US: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ13vD9... (A screenshot from this PDF: https://www.kth.se/polopoly_fs/1.87118.1550154619!/Menu/gene... )

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

#277

Post by grp000 »

mizzack wrote: post #101
bserge wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 space…

> is it because they're afraid of improper installation breaking them? Yes. This was an issue back in the Athlon Thunderbird days. "It's on the user" doesn't work as an argument when all of your large desktop/server OEMs notice a large uptick in failure rate post-assembly.

I don't know if there's any truth to this, but I heard that there were also issues that could arise more easily with electrically conductive thermal paste and that there was essentially fraud going on where lower end SKUs were being passed off as higher end units. That being said, that seems like something that would only affect the consumer used market.

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

#278

Post by pdimitar »

rteuionwiv wrote: post #255
dragontamer wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel and AMD __literally__ sell those broken chips to the open marketplace, recouping at least some of the costs (or possibly getting a profit from them). Apple probably does the same strategy PS3 did: create a 1-PPE + 8-SPE chip, but sell it as a 1-PPE + 7-SPE chip (assume one breaks). This increases yields, and it means that all 7-SPE + 8-SPE chips can be sold. 6-SPE-chips (and below) are thrown away, which is a s…

I can confirm that 5000 desktop ryzen series has issues with turbo boost, basically if you disable turbo and stay on base clock then everthing is fine, but with turbo (CPB) enabled you get crashes and BSOD. I had this problem at work at my new workstation with ryzen 5900x. We RMAed it and new cpu works fine. From what i read it's pretty common problem, but it's strange that no on talks about it.

Can the turbo boost maximum frequency value be lowered a little in the BIOS to try and alleviate the problem?

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

#279

Post by digikata »

woofie11 wrote: post #198
Aromasin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a point where I would have to disagree. While their early access programs are generally restricted to larger customers, you can apply to join other schemes (called Docs and Docs+ as far as I remember) where they will assign you an account manager and a dedicated platform application engineer to help you with your design-in process. I worked at a small start-up producing COM-HPC boards for companies who wanted…

I wasn't comparing to AMD. I've had few enough interactions with AMD that I can't pass judgement, but from the few I've had were consistent with your assessment. AMD was a complete black hole. My interactions with Intel were lightyears ahead of AMD. But Intel, in turn, was lightyears behind Analog, Linear, Maxim, TI, and most other vendors I've dealt with (this was before Analog gobbled Linear and Maxim up).

It really depends on who the targeted customers are. I remember inquiring on some TI lines and being told by the rep that unless you’re a customer anticipating 1M+ units, that chip really isn’t available.

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

#280

Post by Taniwha »

wyager wrote: post #143
tw04 wrote: post #103

I've never had time for Intel creating 400 different CPUs just to create artificial market segmentation and force people into a more expensive CPU. Why is there an i3, i5, i7, i9 - ahh, right, because then you can try to justify charging incrementally more for each additional feature. Oh you want turbo boost? Sorry that's an i5! Oh you want hyperthreading/SMT? Nope, next model up. Oh you want ECC? That's a "workstati…

> Give me an option for with or without GPU, and with or without 10Gbe In what capacity is 10Gbe included as a CPU feature? I’ve only ever used PCIe cards.

so these days 10GbPCIe and 10gbe are essentially the same thing at the low level silicon/pins/wires level the bit packing/unpacking/signalling stuff has a whole lot in common and they're all sort of converging on some superset of hardware serdes - the higher level hardware stuff is still different (ethernet MACs vs PCI etc) of course
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