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Intel acquires Linutronix

community.intel.com

111–120 of 139 posts

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#111
post #16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

> 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.

Do you like it?

I kind of hate this modern trend of taking the most dystopian possible kind of future as something completely inevitable and normal.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#112
post #97
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it bother you less, assuming that 3-letter agencies can access parts of CPUs that you can't? If anything, it bothers me more! Why would they get special treatment, and why would I have to subsidize its features paying for my CPU to have it, but disabled?

FWIW, IIUC the binning process that designates chips as Core, Xeon, Pentium etc series ultimately sources parts from a common set of conveyor belts, identifying final designations using QC processes that further subclassify against what parts of a chip do not work correctly. So if say the AVX512 unit in a single core doesn't pass muster an entire die might go in the "doesn't have AVX512" bin and then get marketed app…

I am impressed that this reuse is possible cheaply. I have had no exposure to the business end of this process. Indeed, my comment may be less relevant than I thought.

If it might not be clear even to the manufacturer which chip pays for which other chip, then I might give them a pass.

I suppose the only way to tell for sure would be de-lidding and comparing. But that's an expensive hobby.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#113
post #16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that this type of future will lead to literal class warfare. I believe whatever the next punk movement is will be reactionary against this type of lock-in; cultural and economic.

Maybe we should talk about making certain business plans illegal.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#115
post #16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 makes no sense - you would just buy the ultra cheap unlocked model each year. Also how do you justify paying for a boost when the next gen is faster and an incremental price increase.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#116
post #56

Cute Lego digger: https://linutronix.de/videos/Linutronix_Bagger_1080.mp4

That sounds like a fun company to work for :) Sure one can whine about an RPi and "industrial reliability" (and all I can think of is that damned SD card...), but hey, it's just a cool movie, and it communicates in a nice way what they do. Also, it sounds like they should have been involved in the Mars helicopter (Ingenuity), which runs Linux and need these types of techniques. Cool podcast on the subject: [0] [0]: h…

> and all I can think of is that damned SD card...

I'm having some better experiences with SD cards marketed as "high endurance". Another trick I've been doing is to mount /var/log as tmpfs. If they crash when they run out of space, I let them restart themselves.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#117
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I read your statement and I thought "should be easy to find at least one"! Turns out it isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Acquisitions_and_investm... Not only does none of these ring a bell, all the software ones seem to be legitimate garbage. Why did intel buy a cloud gaming startup?

They bought a drone company that had built a single drone that was better than all competing drones in the market, and then they stopped it. No more support, no more new development, no more production.

So senseless.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD spun off their fab business, they didn't MBA themselves to death so I'm not sure why that's the only possible end result you see?

The bad CEO (Hector Ruiz) who probably would have done it left, and AMD eventually got a much much better CEO (Lisa Su).

Given how Global Foundries has essentially given up in regards to moving to better nodes, it seems like spinning the fabs off and going to contract manufacturing was absolutely the right call. AMD was already a gen or so behind and falling back further due to lack of investment in it's fabs.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#120

Intel seems to be making all the right moves. I'm excited to see what Pat Gelsinger can do over the next 5 years (I'm long INTC).

Intel has a lot of irons in the fire and some very talented engineers, but they've always competed with a process advantage behind them and been able to use it to recover from the occasional architecture misstep like Itanium or the Pentium IV. Pat Gelsinger is probably the best CEO they could have picked but they're in a tough position and I'm not optimistic.

So the CEO decided to use TSMC for some future products.
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