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Intel acquires Linutronix

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Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#41

Post by dr_zoidberg »

imglorp wrote: post #28
dannyw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, that's probably where the industry will be in 5 years. You might not like it, but X-as-a-service make way more money for the company, and shareholders. It'll probably look like this: buy a 'cheap' Intel CPU for $99 (say, 4P, 12E cores clocked at 2 GHz), with "Turbo" to 4.5 GHz being a $79/year subscription and "Extreme Turbo Max" to 5.1 GHz being an additional $35/year. First year free, of course, to…

That trick might work for home desktop due to the short sight bug in human consumers (mostly gamers?), but does it make sense for server? It seems like a bunch of potential liabilities for a cloud host or data center operator. This is basically DRM for CPU and as such, its primary function is to stop working when all the business rules don't line up right.

They tried it for home desktop ~10 years ago and had to back down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#42

Post by BeetleB »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #33
pinewurst wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Name a single successful Intel acquisition, especially open source.

Mobileye ?

Bought for 15B. Net profit in 2021 was $1B. It'll take a while to get their investment back. Not sure I'd call it a successful acquisition.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#43

Post by eptcyka »

barkingcat wrote: post #25
bestouff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their current CPU-features-as-a-service marketing push doesn't look like a right move to me.

Wouldn't that be exactly the right thing to do if you want to minimize physical sku's and maximize sales? as far as the user is concerned, if they put deactivated silicon on a chip, and can hit the power envelope targets, then it's like it wasn't there at all...

They can produce more chips from the same wafer if they just produce smaller chips. I think doing this is stupid in the long run.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#44

Post by gary_0 »

ojn wrote: post #30
taffronaut wrote: post #24

As Thomas Gleixner has been the x86 maintainer since 2008, what do they gain from this? It seems a pretty close relationship already. It's not as if they're acquiring IP. Conversely if they'll allow Linutronix to continue "to operate as an independent business" and e.g. work on other architectures like RISC-V, then that dilutes their access to the talent they're acquiring.

Yeah, Intel clearly has no interest in helping RISC-V succeed. https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-invests-in-open-source-r...

Intel is well aware that their x86 IP isn't the secret sauce it used to be. If RISC-V takes over the world, they won't be caught off-guard.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#45

Post by colinmhayes »

BeetleB wrote: post #42
NicoJuicy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobileye ?

Bought for 15B. Net profit in 2021 was $1B. It'll take a while to get their investment back. Not sure I'd call it a successful acquisition.

They're trying to IPO mobileye for $50B. If they can pull that off the acquisition will have been a major success.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#46

Post by zxspectrum1982 »

imglorp wrote: post #28
dannyw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, that's probably where the industry will be in 5 years. You might not like it, but X-as-a-service make way more money for the company, and shareholders. It'll probably look like this: buy a 'cheap' Intel CPU for $99 (say, 4P, 12E cores clocked at 2 GHz), with "Turbo" to 4.5 GHz being a $79/year subscription and "Extreme Turbo Max" to 5.1 GHz being an additional $35/year. First year free, of course, to…

That trick might work for home desktop due to the short sight bug in human consumers (mostly gamers?), but does it make sense for server? It seems like a bunch of potential liabilities for a cloud host or data center operator. This is basically DRM for CPU and as such, its primary function is to stop working when all the business rules don't line up right.

It sure makes sense on the server-side. That's been IBM's business model for mainframes for half a century.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#48

Post by dannyw »

missedthecue wrote: post #35
dannyw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, that's probably where the industry will be in 5 years. You might not like it, but X-as-a-service make way more money for the company, and shareholders. It'll probably look like this: buy a 'cheap' Intel CPU for $99 (say, 4P, 12E cores clocked at 2 GHz), with "Turbo" to 4.5 GHz being a $79/year subscription and "Extreme Turbo Max" to 5.1 GHz being an additional $35/year. First year free, of course, to…

That's just leasing, which unlike SaaS, is not a new business model. It's been around for thousands of years, and there are a lot of problems with it. How do you repo from a non-paying account for instance? With a SaaS, their account is automatically turned off. This isn't the case when leasing out an actual physical product.

Intel Management Engine.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#49

Post by pinewurst »

colinmhayes wrote: post #45
BeetleB wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bought for 15B. Net profit in 2021 was $1B. It'll take a while to get their investment back. Not sure I'd call it a successful acquisition.

They're trying to IPO mobileye for $50B. If they can pull that off the acquisition will have been a major success.

But not an intentional one. They bought it as a "hey we're relevant too!" move at peak autonomous car hype, and as it's hardly additive in real life, are trying to IPO it for the dumb money before they have to write it off (e.g. Habana).

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#50

Post by zmk5 »

hansendc wrote: post #31
zmk5 wrote: post #4

Hopefully this results in even better drivers for Linux. I wonder if the graphics cards they have planned will have good Linux drivers too. I've always had a good experience with their Linux integrated graphics drivers so far.

I hope so too! But, I was trying to think of if I've ever seen the Linutronix folks working on the Intel graphics code. I don't think I have: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... For very selfish reasons, I'm hoping that this acquisition will give the Linutronix folks even more of an opportunity to contribute to the core kernel and especially arch/x86. Disclaimer: I work on Linux at Intel.

Thanks for your hard work!
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