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Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

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Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#271

Post by mepian »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #250
bane wrote: post #116

Intel 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…

ARC GPUs are basically dead on launch. It's not competitive in any way and fundamentally broken upon release. Intel integrated graphics works because it's a value-add to an expensive component already necessary for many computing products. ARC GPUs is basically Intel expecting the market to be the beta tester for a very expensive & inferior product.

Fundamentally broken? How?

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#272

Post by nico »

danpalmer wrote: post #130
nico wrote: post #123

In the next 1-5 years we are going to see a lot of big companies falling apart. Small teams, with the help of tech/AI can now move so much faster than big teams. The communication and coordination overhead is starting to be too big of a burden, especially when you can have 1 person do the work of 30-100 (using AI).

I’m not sure that’s true given hardware as a limiting factor. Small teams have always been able to move faster in building things, they have fewer requirements and less to lose. But small teams can’t buy expensive hardware up front, and modern AI is hardware constrained for many purposes. These companies will either end up renting hardware from cloud providers, or using AI APIs from cloud providers.

Sure, that’s an immediate limitation. Big hardware will go slower and come later. When AI has fully integrated with robotics.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#273

Post by bsder »

darth_avocado wrote: post #191
bane wrote: post #116

Intel 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…

> 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…

It isn't just the MBA types.

"Only the paranoid survive" applied fractally at all levels in Intel. This meant that there were very few "anointed successors" as people who had specialized knowledge regarded not sharing it as a survival technique.

This meant that as the technical people who built things got old and retired a lot of institutional knowledge simply walked out the door.

Technical excellence rests on training and sharing. Intel was the exact anathema of that.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#274

Post by startupsfail »

nemothekid wrote: post #235
startupsfail wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 maximiz…

150k means not on a path to own your own home and not much savings. If that’s a single income for a family, in the bay you’d be struggling.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#275

Post by nikau »

philistine wrote: post #249
heavyset_go wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could buy a laptop with 16GB to 32GB of memory and more than double the storage space for $800, and you can buy laptops that you can actually upgrade the hardware on. You can also spend less and get a similarly spec'd laptop. I just picked up a new laptop with 16GB/1TB and 8 cores for $500 and upgraded it to 64GB of memory for $100. I bought a low end Mac in 2015 with the same 8GB/256GB specs, 8GB wasn't enough e…

What about the most important laptop spec: the case. Is your 500$ laptop using a metal case, or are you stuck in plastic city?

Yes, the most important spec is a material for a case that cant absorb impact.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#277

Post by mrtweetyhack »

Aromasin wrote: post #79
jl6 wrote: post #50

I 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?

In 2020, Intel generated a record $35.4 billion cash from operations and $21.1 billion of free cash flow (FCF) and returned $19.8 billion to shareholders. They profited massively , and put their dividend up 5%. They brought in Gelsinger and used that cash to build 2 new leading edge fans, and upgrade capacity on newer ones. Then the economic downturn happened, and sales dwindled. They're making less revenue but still…

[dead]

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#278

Post by heavyset_go »

danaris wrote: post #94
heavyset_go wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to do web dev on an 8GB Mac and it wasn't fun. If you use an IDE, it will be constrained for memory if you have things like browser windows open, you will have a bad time if you try to open multiple projects and running Docker made it all worse. Virtual machines were out of the question which made mobile app development difficult. If you can stick with a terminal or some lightweight editors, 8GB might be okay…

Did you try it on an Apple Silicon Mac? There was a lot of discussion of this at the time the M1s first came out, with loads of people (who had never touched one) confidently declaring that 8GB of RAM was far too little...and then nearly everyone who actually bought an 8GB M1 Mac saying "yeah, it might not handle heavy loads well, but that's what the Pro machines are for—in normal use, it has no problem at all with 8…

> Now, it does sound like you were trying to run a whole bunch of rather heavy stuff on it—y'know, the stuff that one might call "pro", and possibly even buy a "pro" machine for? The kind of thing where if you're buying the absolute bottom of the line, you might be able to expect that it wouldn't work well.

That's nice, but I can buy a much cheaper non-"pro" computer with better specs that can handle a basic workload that involves a browser, IDE and maybe Docker. Like I've run all of that on entry level machines without a problem.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#279

Post by heavyset_go »

philistine wrote: post #249
heavyset_go wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could buy a laptop with 16GB to 32GB of memory and more than double the storage space for $800, and you can buy laptops that you can actually upgrade the hardware on. You can also spend less and get a similarly spec'd laptop. I just picked up a new laptop with 16GB/1TB and 8 cores for $500 and upgraded it to 64GB of memory for $100. I bought a low end Mac in 2015 with the same 8GB/256GB specs, 8GB wasn't enough e…

What about the most important laptop spec: the case. Is your 500$ laptop using a metal case, or are you stuck in plastic city?

Magnesium aluminum alloy, I won't touch plastic cases.

Re: Intel posts largest loss in its history as sales plunge

#280

Post by heavyset_go »

mrtksn wrote: post #93
heavyset_go wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD's 5nm chips compete with and outperform the M1, low end laptops ship with 16GB of media by default, 8-10h of battery life is good enough for most people and Dell XPS laptops, for example, weigh 1.17kg, which is less than the M1 Air.

Can you give me a link to such a device? Sub 1000 laptop with 10H battery life, lighter and smaller than Air, higher performance than M1 sounds good. I wonder why people buy those about Air heavy, about Air performing premium and expensive laptops then.

Grabbed a Dev On on sale for $500 and I'm very happy with it.
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