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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

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you couldn’t truthfully answer the question. How is the Mac more locked down than Windows? What class of software can you run on Windows that you can’t run on Macs because of Apple’s operating system? Edit: I see downvotes. But no one can answer the question.. .

> What class of software can you run on Windows that you can’t run on Macs because of Apple’s operating system? First-class containers.

What are “first class containers”? Are you claiming that Macs can’t run Docker?

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

#452
post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you couldn’t truthfully answer the question. How is the Mac more locked down than Windows? What class of software can you run on Windows that you can’t run on Macs because of Apple’s operating system? Edit: I see downvotes. But no one can answer the question.. .

Most of the time it's the other way around, so programs which are used on MacOS but aren't available on Windows. Moving to MacOS is pretty doable I think, but leaving the Apple-sphere is a bit more complicated. And this is not strictly MacOS but iOS: When I had an Android phone I could just connect it to a Linux or Window laptop and copy files of and to it, same probably also works on a Mac. Now that I have an iPhone…

So you can’t transfer files to your Apple device unless you use the Apple provided software to put files on your Apple device?

I fail to see the issue.

And it still didn’t answer the question about how Macs are more locked down than Windows.

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

#453
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brian Krzanich was cancelled/fired for sleeping with a coworker, so the then-CFO Bob Swan was made CEO after Intel tried to hire "externally" for a year or so. After MBA'fying Intel for a couple of years, he left to a16z, a perfect place for people like him. Pat Gelsinger then joined, probably too late, to try to steer the ship back in the right direction. Intel as an organization is finished. (I worked at Intel for…

> Intel as an organization is finished this will age poorly. Intel is already fighting back strongly and really only had 1-2 iterations where they weren't in some ways the performance kings. They'll be back, fabbing their own chips, while AMD and others pay TSMC to make them, and intel will make massive profits. Intel 12th and 13th gen competes with AMD on performance and price and its still using yet another 10nm fi…

This will age poorly. Performance king at unconstrained power is utterly irrelevant from a financial point of view, and requires very little engineering effort to boot: shoving amps into a package until it breaks is the job of a junior engineer frankly. The rapidly dying PC/DIY market will not save Intel.

The metrics that matter financially are performance/power and performance/area, and Intel is worst-in-class in both metrics in both CPU and GPU right now.

I worked in chip design at Intel for over a decade. In the 2016 culling, I noticed they laid off a ton of smart people, but all the terrible management and fake-it-til-you-make-it engineers survived. I left very soon afterwards. I suspect the 2022 massacre will be along the same lines. Intel as an organization is not just finished, it is terminally toxic and incapable of being fixed.

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

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What class of software can you run on Windows that you can’t run on Macs because of Apple’s operating system? First-class containers.

What are “first class containers”? Are you claiming that Macs can’t run Docker?

They can run it, but not very well, and with tons of edge cases (especially concerning networking and FS mounts). Both Windows and Linux have container support built directly into the kernel.

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a lot of the details, but everything I've heard over the last couple of years indicated that AMD was absolutely crushing Intel. A recent laptop I purchased, as well as the last desktop I put together (~2 years ago) each have Ryzen chips. I forget the details but in addition to performance issues, didn't Intel CPUs also have some major security vulnerabilities? And was it that they were related to instruc…

> I don't know anyone who is buying or recommending Intel CPUs at the moment. Aren’t the major cloud providers still mainly running on and buying Intel?

The cloud providers have been buying Intel for years and can't afford to just throw thos chips away. AMD is capturing a much larger proportion of data center CPU sales, but you should still expect to see them buying Intel as well, since AMD can't produce enough chips to satisfy all demand. Also, qualifying new platforms is very expensive so cloud providers will continue to buy already-qualified platforms for as long as the perf/W makes sense.

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

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? Even much smaller organizations tend to have low-impact teams that could be absorbed by others and their work deprioritized. If you're going to fire a dozen managers then the implication (or at least possibility) exists that maybe even the bottom 20% of that group is assigned to low-priority projects and perhaps even under-performing. Then 216 => 43 becomes 203 => 29 Now you've reduced the workforce by…

And suddenly reduce the velocity of all other teams because whoops it turns out those low priority projects were dependencies of everyone else.

I worry about any company that doesn’t track priority and severity separately. Priority is political, and often bullshit (everything is top priority!) but some tasks, if not completed, are company killers, and some just embarrass a loud-mouthed salesperson in front of a customer.

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

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a lot of the details, but everything I've heard over the last couple of years indicated that AMD was absolutely crushing Intel. A recent laptop I purchased, as well as the last desktop I put together (~2 years ago) each have Ryzen chips. I forget the details but in addition to performance issues, didn't Intel CPUs also have some major security vulnerabilities? And was it that they were related to instruc…

AMD chips had the same branch prediction side channel vulnerabilities that intel did. At this point their offerings are pretty similar with intel being a bit cheaper but using more electricity.

Similar to response to maldev higher up - AMD has some of the same issues, but far fewer. And the mitigations had less of an impact.

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

#458
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD also had alot of those major bugs, but it wasn't reported as much since the original papers all targeted intel CPU's since they are the "standard", and then a couple months later someone would do it for AMD but it was old news.

AMD's CPUs, including the latest Ryzen and Epyc processors, are immune to: Meltdown (Spectre v3) Spectre v3a LazyFPU TLBleed Spectre v1.2 L1TF/Foreshadow SPOILER SpectreRSB MDS attacks (ZombieLoad, Fallout, RIDL) SWAPGS https://www.tomshardware.com/features/intel-amd-most-secure-...

Are any of these attacks relevant unless you run a cloud service ?

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

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a terrible idea. Imagine if the same people who bring you the DMV try to make a chip plant

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

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a US citizen, but aren't the retirement funds managed by someone who should be held responsible for not diversifying?

In the US usually the employee usually has a choice of several funds in their 401 (k) retirement account, including international funds. It seems the person upthread owns a target date fund and this means they probably are diversified. Their post doesn't make a lick of sense.

If this is referring to me, then perhaps you're confused because I was responding to a question about rewards and punishments not whether labels fit. And I never claimed the the question and my response were somehow opposite ends of a dichotomy. Indeed the connection there is the problem. A fund can be completely diverse and still high-risk.
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