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Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

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Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#361

Post by caller9 »

scarface74 wrote: post #322
moffkalast wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the now two year old Apple M1 still smokes every single chip I just mentioned, all in a fanless iPad Air Well yes, but then you have to use macOS and the locked down close ecosystem that is Apple. That's not really something they're directly competing against.

Tell me again how MacOS is more locked down than Windows and why most people should care?

The iPad runs iOS, which I suppose is what they meant. Windows ARM is less locked down than Windows S. iOS is still a walled-garden with a few holes here and there.

The second part of your question is key though "why most people should care." They obviously don't. It "just works" and generally keeps them from doing insecure shit. Want to buy hardware from someone else? Tough shit! Why would you anyway? You've got money to burn and no desire to write code that runs on your box without a second "real" computer. Buy some more lightning cables while you're at it. Don't forget to mention green bubbles next time you message an Android peasant.

I said that last part pretty snarky, but you're not wrong about most people not caring. That's their audience and they've nailed it.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#362

Post by gtirloni »

jen20 wrote: post #354
gtirloni wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares what a desktop processor plugged to a wall outlet consumes? Seriously, if you care about power consumption, don't buy a K processor.

> Who cares what a desktop processor plugged to a wall outlet consumes? Anyone without solar panels?

Those 5 people running off-grid with solar panels only certainly do care about power consumption and wouldn't buy a K processor.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#363

Post by ImprovedSilence »

shakezula wrote: post #336
scarface74 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s very much anecdata. Were the companies profitable or were they living off of VC funding?

Yes, that’s… why I was upfront about that. The companies range from startups to enterprise, at practically all stages of funding, but they each told me their funding never materialized or investors gave management ultimatums. A few were in crypto, two are in fintech, a few more in various b2b tech companies. But they all gave almost identical explanations: management sees a rough economy ahead and tightened their bel…

That seemed to be the feel in 2008 as well. Lots of companies that were fine choose to have layoffs just because they “saw” a rough economy ahead. Self fulfilling prophecy, or just trimming the fat…?

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#364

Post by alfor »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #339
alfor wrote: post #313

Hire Jim Keller back and build the next thing instead of milking the same customers. The company developing a competent alternative to the M1/M2 or nvidia GPU is going to have a good business. Seems to me that Intel is alway in this cycle of greatness and then crash while sitting on their laurels. It seem they need to have a fire under their buts to make the right decisions.

I love comments like this. I don't think any other industry has this kind of sport-team mythos in the mind of the layman. If Ford or Toyota has a bad year, people think "Hmm they need to make better cars". If Intel or AMD has a bad year, people say "Clearly they need do hire that guy who was in charge when they made all those good chips". It's incredibly lazy thinking, and I love it.

If Ford or Toyota had a Steve Job or Elon musk they wouldn’t be in the same place.

Listen to interview with Jim Keller, yes, there is a whole team doing the work, but you need a technical/management person with the credibility and willingness to make the hard choices and take risks.

99% of people hired for CEO roles will be happy to coast, take their bonus on short time gains and move to the next opportunity. Who is willing to take risks for long term success that will not appear on the quarterly report?

You need someone who can get that job and at the same time doesn’t give a damn about what people think and about the money. Those people are rare. That’s why Apple doesn’t have ’another’ Steve Job, Apple will coast on the previous trajectory for a while, but won’t disrupt anything else major, they will play safe.

The same is true for Google, they got their own money printer going nonstop, who would be crazy enough to take risks with that?

The last disruption of Google was Gmail/GSuite and was started as a side project. How many top engineer do they have, where is all their output?

For Intel they need to disrupt their own products to move forward, that’s why it’s hard to do, you don’t want to kill the golden goose. But it’s either you now or the competition in a few years.

Man Intel was really sleeping on this one to be kicked that hard by Apple on the first release of their desktop chip.

So in a nutshell: talented engineers are everywhere in those companies, that’s not the diferenting factor, good leadership is and the incentives reward those who don’t take risks.

BTW: your comment is mostly an ad hominem with a condescending tone: mind of the laymen, incredibly lazy thinking, I love comment like this!

Try with arguments instead.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#365

Post by chatterhead »

hgdfhgfdhgfhg wrote: post #330
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Govt regularly robs the tax paying people to give kickbacks to their corporate allies. It's just business as usual

The US needs a chip fabrication factory. The money is being used to build it. This has no relevance to the the 3000 workers who were laid off

Then they can build one for the people by the people. Nothing says they need to give money to private orgs to secure fundamental national technology.

With all the things we book under the "National Security" banner a much needed next gen chip factory should be one of them.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#366

Post by fomine3 »

giantg2 wrote: post #335
AareyBaba wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Client/Consumer CPUs(Ryzen) is just one business for AMD. The others are graphics (Radeon), datacenter (EPYC), and embedded (Xilinx, PS & Xbox consoles). The one year forecast will probably have to be adjusted based on current unexpected economic conditions but they will keep growing. What folks don't appreciate is that AMD is on a roll. A clear roadmap and processes in place to execute like clockwork in tandem with…

Yeah, I think they do significantly more graphics and embedded than Intel. But I could be wrong.

Graphics business should be worse than CPU business after crypt bubble gone and ETH PoS. Gaming PC isn't a very big market for CPU, but big for GPU.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#367

Post by JamesianP »

jrockway wrote: post #281
JamesianP wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which retirement funds are doing ok this time around? They typically switch to bonds which thanks to inflation are down something like 20 percent in the last year (some more like 30), despite yielding far less than stocks in the best of times.

It's the right strategy in general, not a strategy guaranteed to never lose money. Your savings account is down 20% year over year in terms of purchasing power because what $1 is changed dramatically. Rare event, and sometimes you're just screwed. If I had a time machine, I would definitely use it to time the market!

People who are retired, and have absolutely no way to bounce back if the market is unkind, should absolutely invest in places that never lose money. I'm not talking about inflation. I can go out and buy actual guaranteed bonds that pay me an actual guaranteed positive interest rate. Yeah they don't keep up with inflation, but it only a small trickle in lost earning power at that point, not a loss of 1/5 of the number of years I can stay retired which the funds are delivering.

My savings account is not what I'm talking about. Inflation or not, it is still a number I can describe as "positive".

I'm referring to bonds that retirement and wealth management add to funds use to supposedly counter volatility. These are investments that at best will only pay single digits. They have suffered the worst year since 1931 or something. And we're just getting going. The frustrating part is as I said, the underlying bonds themselves still pay that 4% or so which would be much better than the funds are achieving. But for some reason they have to sell the bonds at a loss.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#368

Post by scarface74 »

caller9 wrote: post #361
scarface74 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me again how MacOS is more locked down than Windows and why most people should care?

The iPad runs iOS, which I suppose is what they meant. Windows ARM is less locked down than Windows S. iOS is still a walled-garden with a few holes here and there. The second part of your question is key though "why most people should care." They obviously don't. It "just works" and generally keeps them from doing insecure shit. Want to buy hardware from someone else? Tough shit! Why would you anyway? You've got mon…

> The iPad runs iOS, which I suppose is what they meant. Windows ARM is less locked down than Windows S. iOS is still a walled-garden with a few holes here and there.

The conversation never mentioned “iOS” or phones and the submission is about Intel who has nothing to do with mobile or Android. He specifically said MacOS:

>> Well yes, but then you have to use macOS and the locked down close ecosystem that is Apple.

What does any of your response have to with Intel, Windows or MacOS?

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#369

Post by eyelidlessness »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32

I think this is the first major layoff announcement at a big, established tech firm I've heard this year that is anywhere near this size. I mean, there have been loads of "couple hundred" employee layoffs, and certainly a lot of hiring slowdown/freezes, but again, haven't seen anything else near this big, and the layoffs previously seem to have been concentrated in unprofitable VC-funded companies. I know Tesla laid…

I’ve seen a whole lot of stories like this at larger and larger companies. There was one like it about Facebook yesterday. They’re shorting their own stock [predictions] and adding employment insecurity to reinforce that. Big tech companies would love to benefit from a less competitive hiring landscape and the “recession?” narrative fits that well.

Too bad, and so sad, that they’ll be just as eager for talent when talent inevitably moves on and finds they’re happier where they landed when they were being used as stock price pawns.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#370

Post by kayson »

gtirloni wrote: post #351
AaronFriel wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel repeated their Prescott (Pentium 4/Pentium D) strategy of completely removing power limitations on their team to beat AMD. As a result, the Intel processors have TDPs and real world power usages >2.5x that of a comparable Ryzen. Sure, they're winning, but at what cost ? The 12900K at 240 watts pulls almost the same power as a 280W 64-core Threadripper. AMD is responding in kind, with new top-end processors pull…

Who cares what a desktop processor plugged to a wall outlet consumes? Seriously, if you care about power consumption, don't buy a K processor.

It matters for SFF builds where people often want the highest performance possible but are severely limited by cooking. Efficiency becomes extremely important.
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