I just looked and AMD now has a LARGER market cap than INTC.
Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
231–240 of 293 posts
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#232Intel and Google share surprisingly similar problems: an almost pathological inability to grow lines of business with new products because they kill them off too early. In Intel's case, it's even worse, they kill them off right before the market would have made them successful. They should own the "things with semiconductors" market, but instead financially engineered their way to focus only on higher profit core chi…
I think Intel missed the boat when they refused to accept third party fabbing back when they were process node leaders. So instead that business went to TSMC and other competitors and made so much money that those companies were able to overtake Intel and are far more diversified so they don't live and die on the PC market. At the time everybody was saying "of course Intel isn't going to fab AMD chips, that would be…
Seems like a theme with Intel. Back in the 80s Acorn was evaluating using Intel's 286, but Intel didn't want to work with them so they ended up making their own CPU, which directly led to ARM.
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think normal people (ie non-developers) are less concerned about the performance, as the battery life and the need to almost never need a fan (and keep it on your lap comfortably). You can commonly find Macbook Airs at $800, and I doubt many are buying sub-$400 laptops, unless they are going with low-end Chromebooks, in which the Chromebook vs Windows is a reverse spin on whether consumers are overpaying vs what th…
I'm just back home from a long vacation. My computer while I was away was my $250 Pinebook Pro, it worked fine for everything that I wanted to do, that included a fair bit of development work.
Anyone who is a developer is likely comfortable with Linux. I feel most non-devs could probably make do with a basic distro, but there's plenty of small gotchas that we don't even give a second thought to.
Pine is clear who their audience is: "This is limited quantity production due to a severe global electronic components shortage. Please do not order the Pinebook Pro if you’re seeking a substitute for your X86 laptop, or are just curious and you’re ordering it with an intent to file a return/refund return request. These pre-orders are meant for enthusiasts familiar with the Arm architecture and interested in the PineBook Pro for this specific reason. Thank you."
However, this does underpin the point that ARM-based computers are extremely viable.
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but instead financially engineered their way to focus only on higher profit You explained the core of the problem that usually gets little blame. Successful companies get infiltrated by Wall Street MBA types who make decisions for the short term to manipulate the stock price because their own compensation structures help encourage that behavior. Companies, especially like Intel should be built for being resilient o…
> Successful companies get infiltrated by Wall Street MBA types who make decisions for the short term to manipulate the stock price This really applies for Intel, but for Google, I think it's less so. I've been thinking you have to look at incentives and at a large corporation everyone is incentivized to make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. If you really want to spend years hammering away at…
Why not? Getting a project up is a struggle anyway. And it’s a trade off between the upside and downside risk. At Google there is little downside risk and upside is reasonable. One or two experienced and passionate engineers, hammering away, amplified by a big company can compete with a startup.
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Successful companies get infiltrated by Wall Street MBA types who make decisions for the short term to manipulate the stock price This really applies for Intel, but for Google, I think it's less so. I've been thinking you have to look at incentives and at a large corporation everyone is incentivized to make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. If you really want to spend years hammering away at…
Why not? Getting a project up is a struggle anyway. And it’s a trade off between the upside and downside risk. At Google there is little downside risk and upside is reasonable. One or two experienced and passionate engineers, hammering away, amplified by a big company can compete with a startup.
The downside risk is only marginally different. If you are "passionate" engineer at Google, going to startup means making 150k rather than 350k. Don't get me wrong, 200k is a lot, even in the bay area, but it's not like you are destitute. If it doesn't work out you can always return to Google. The upside is completely different.
Secondly, you are also at the mercy at your VPs, who got to that position by also maximizing short term results. A VC may not have the tools to force you to pivot if you are making ump-teen million dollars in year 1, but a VP may decide to kill your project to move more experienced engineers to another pet project. A passionate engineer at a pet project is an anomaly at a large corporation, who also has to fight the political winds of people trying to maximize their short term gains. And I don't think those people are wrong, it's the rational thing to do, especially when any equity upside will go largely to existing shareholders.
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course they care. for the last ten years Microsoft has pushed all of its effort into Azure, which is coincidentally based on Linux (!) accept it, they gave up on Windows. Windows 11 is my proof...a lame re-skinning which can't even displace Windows 10 > You should have a look at Windows' desktop market share and get back to us. They still own the space. no one under 25 uses Windows! Go look at any college classr…
> just walk into any college classroom in America... America isn't the world. Walk into any classroom outside the US and you'll see something very different.
the third world isn't buying Intel's top-of-the-line CPUs...
go look at high-end Lenovo laptops with Intels' best CPUs...$3k+++
Intel and AMD won't last long selling cheap CPUs to a shrinking Windows market overseas
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is a major unsolved problem to my eye. The cost of living in Columbus - while nowhere near the craziness of coastal cities - is steadily rising. Real estate in surrounding cities is also going up, and it's hard for me to imagine how all those working the jobs that will supposedly be created by the fabs will afford to live near them. One development in Ohio has been a proposal for a passenger rail line that…
Yeah I lived in Columbus and other parts of Ohio for 15 years or so and it strikes me as bizarre to try to bring industry back. Rubber, steel, automotive, etc. industries were absolutely massive in the 50's, 60's, 70's. But the corporate raiders of the 80s destroyed and sold off all the factories to replace them with cheaper offshore labor. The cost of living in Ohio only continued to go up and most cities in the sta…
> most cities in the state are filled with suburbs full of homes now approaching $500k or more.
I still get Zillow emails from my time living in the state. $500k is in the rearview mirror. A lot of new developments in the "nicer" suburbs are hitting the $1MM mark. $500k buys you a new home in the far, far suburbs. $250k gets you a 800 sqft 40s-50s ranch in a "crestfallen" neighborhood (and the price history on Zillow will show it as being sold for $60k 10 years ago).
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is buying something 10x more powerful than you'd need at 2x the price "good value"? So a MacBook Air is 2x the price of the very cheapest laptops. Trouble with the very cheapest laptops, though, is that they use the very cheapest chips; Intel is not making a lot of money on those (if they're Intel at all; these days a lot of that category is ARM Chromebooks). The MacBook Air's actual competition is more capable…
Only in the US. A macbook air is much, much more expensive in most of the rest of the world. E.g. m2 air with bare minimum upgrades is 2000€. That is much more than double. So sure it is good, but at that price point that is the bare minimum.
I noticed this when traveling. It’s almost like they never price adjust to currency outside the US.
Sticker shock looking at Apple product prices in Japan.
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#239I find it kind of amazing that Intel haven't found a way to profit during the global chip shortage. Look at food and energy over the past year or so: supermarket and oil & gas companies are posting record profits. They are riding the wave of price rises and supply constraints. What's different about CPUs?
At the beginning of the chip shortage, Intel's CPU just weren't very good. AMD was beating them at performance and efficiency. Intel has caught up now, but their chips still use significantly more power than the current AMD chips. Intel spent a lot of time and money developing their new Arc GPUs. They were delayed and they missed the crypto boom. Drivers and GPU performance were disappointing even after delaying the…
> Drivers and GPU performance were disappointing even after delaying the launch. This first generation of intel GPUs will be a huge loss for them.
To be fair to Intel, some of this was legitimately overwhelming bad luck - their GPU driver team for Arc was based out of Russia.
Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are absolutely correct in the history to my recollection. But I'd challenge that it was a good idea as having multiple product lines better creates opportunities for new and unique products in different spaces. Optane is an example of where Intel tried to "fake it" but ended up producing a confused product that didn't leverage common industry knowledge in either the memory or solid state storage spaces. More towa…
How did Optane represent faking it? It was and still is the fastest persistent storage ever made, no? I thought they killed it because of the difficulty of manufacturing it.
It died because the first generation of Optane devices failed to take the market by storm and instead of advancing the technology they simply exited the market, eating all of the prior investment.
Why they failed to take the market seems to be both a combination of lousy marketing (is it a drive, or are they RAM replacements?), selling only enterprise-class products, high prices, and competition technology that is both "good enough" and beats it in all of the other areas.
Spec-wise, a Samsung 2TB 990 Pro, is about as fast (sustained, IOPS, etc.), a 10th the price, and is coming from a manufacturer with a reputation of sustaining development and releasing newer, better products in that product-line. If the part fails, you're likely to not only replace it, but upgrade it for the same cost.