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Intel's Humbling

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Re: Intel's Humbling

#11

Post by javier2 »

noopl wrote: post #2

As someone that doesn’t really understand the space and stuff that the article is talking about, I was surprised that “Apple Silicon” didn’t appear here since from my perspective having used both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, it’s a huge “wow” change. Was Apple leaving and Apple Silicon Macs being so incredibly better than Intel ones not actually a big deal for Intel?

There are many different reasons. Firstly, Apple built experience over a decade designing and building the chips, taking over more and more of the design and IP. Then making these chips at a Intel competitor TSMC, who has a different business model to Intel. Apple were also willing to compromise. The first years had weird experiences for customers with Rosetta, broken apps and Macs that could only drive a single external monitor and connect to few devices. Yet we clearly saw the power efficiency from the better foundry tech at TSMC, coupled with decade of saving watts for mobile phone batteries.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#12

Post by [deleted] »

captn3m0 wrote: post #10
autokad wrote: post #5

Intel's 2010 7.6B$ purchase of mcafee was a sign that Intel doesn't know what its doing. In the CEO's words: The future of chips is security on the chip. I was like no, no its not! I wanted them to get into mobile and GPUs at the time. Nvdia's market cap was about 9B at the time. I know it would have been a larger pill to swallow, and likely had to bid a bit more than 9B, but I thought it was possible for Intel at th…

It would have had the same fate as the NVIDIA ARM deal.

[deleted]

Re: Intel's Humbling

#13

Post by bombcar »

autokad wrote: post #5

Intel's 2010 7.6B$ purchase of mcafee was a sign that Intel doesn't know what its doing. In the CEO's words: The future of chips is security on the chip. I was like no, no its not! I wanted them to get into mobile and GPUs at the time. Nvdia's market cap was about 9B at the time. I know it would have been a larger pill to swallow, and likely had to bid a bit more than 9B, but I thought it was possible for Intel at th…

He was right but for the wrong reasons.

Had Intel figured out hyperthreading security and avoided all the various exploits that later showed up …

Re: Intel's Humbling

#14

Post by yakz »

kristianp wrote: post #8
timschmidt wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple had been sandbagging the Intel chips for several generations of macbook with anemic cooling solutions, poor thermal throttling curves, and fans that wait until the last moment to turn on. To the extent that the fastest CPUs available in Macbook Pros did not outperform lower models, because both became thermally saturated. When properly cooled, the Intel silicon tends to perform a lot better. Additionally, both…

> Apple had been sandbagging the Intel chips for several generations of macbook with anemic cooling solutions I don't think that was deliberate. Apple has a long history of not cooling their computers enough.

I had never even considered it was deliberate. In hindsight, doing it deliberately seems pretty smart, at least from a “let’s juice the intro” perspective, but that would have been a really big bet.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#15

Post by adventured »

captn3m0 wrote: post #10
autokad wrote: post #5

Intel's 2010 7.6B$ purchase of mcafee was a sign that Intel doesn't know what its doing. In the CEO's words: The future of chips is security on the chip. I was like no, no its not! I wanted them to get into mobile and GPUs at the time. Nvdia's market cap was about 9B at the time. I know it would have been a larger pill to swallow, and likely had to bid a bit more than 9B, but I thought it was possible for Intel at th…

It would have had the same fate as the NVIDIA ARM deal.

Maybe, however, the GPU market was not considered so incredibly valuable at the time (particularly by eg politicians in the US, Europe or China). Today it's a critical national security matter, and Nvidia is sitting on the most lucrative semiconductor business in history. Back then it was overwhelmingly a segment for gaming.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#16

Post by anyfoo »

autokad wrote: post #5

Intel's 2010 7.6B$ purchase of mcafee was a sign that Intel doesn't know what its doing. In the CEO's words: The future of chips is security on the chip. I was like no, no its not! I wanted them to get into mobile and GPUs at the time. Nvdia's market cap was about 9B at the time. I know it would have been a larger pill to swallow, and likely had to bid a bit more than 9B, but I thought it was possible for Intel at th…

> The future of chips is security on the chip. I was like no, no its not!

Putting aside whether the statement is considered true or not, buying McAfee under the guise of the kind of security meant when talking about silicon is... weird, to say the least.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#17

Post by zer00eyz »

>>> Notice what is happening here: TSMC, unlike its historical pattern, is not keeping (all of its) 5nm capacity to make low-cost high-margin chips in fully-depreciated fabs; rather, it is going to repurpose some amount of equipment — probably as much as it can manage — to 3nm, which will allow it to expand its capacity without a commensurate increase in capital costs. This will both increase the profitability of 3nm and also recognizes the reality that is afflicting TSMC’s 7nm node: there is an increasingly large gap between the leading edge and “good enough” nodes for the vast majority of use cases.

My understanding is that 5nm has been and continues to be "problematic" in terms of yield. The move to 3nm seems to not be afflicted by as many issues. There is also a massive drive to get more volume (and a die shrink will do that), due to the demands of all things ML.

I suspect that TSMC's move here is a bit more nuanced than the (valid) point that the article is making on this step...

Re: Intel's Humbling

#18

Post by lmm »

anyfoo wrote: post #16
autokad wrote: post #5

Intel's 2010 7.6B$ purchase of mcafee was a sign that Intel doesn't know what its doing. In the CEO's words: The future of chips is security on the chip. I was like no, no its not! I wanted them to get into mobile and GPUs at the time. Nvdia's market cap was about 9B at the time. I know it would have been a larger pill to swallow, and likely had to bid a bit more than 9B, but I thought it was possible for Intel at th…

> The future of chips is security on the chip. I was like no, no its not! Putting aside whether the statement is considered true or not, buying McAfee under the guise of the kind of security meant when talking about silicon is... weird, to say the least.

McAfee makes their money from people being required to run it for certification. Imagine government/healthcare/banking/etc. customers being obliged to use only Intel chips because they'll fail their audits (which mandate on-chip antivirus) otherwise. I hate it, but I can see the business sense in trying.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#19

Post by timschmidt »

jsheard wrote: post #6
spenczar5 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSMC manufactures Apple Silicon. It’s a good example of the foundry model that the article is talking about.

Not only do they manufacture Apple Silicon, but Apple usually buys out the first runs of their new processes so they have a head-start against even other TSMC customers. I believe every 3nm wafer that TSMC makes is still going to Apple, hence the just-released Qualcomm SD8G3 flagship chip still being made on TSMC 4nm.

Nvidia's AI $trillions may influence this arrangement in the near future. In the recent past Nvidia has bid Samsung against TSMC in attempts to save costs, but Apple's strategy works well for as long as one foundry has a process advantage.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#20

Post by tw04 »

captn3m0 wrote: post #10
autokad wrote: post #5

Intel's 2010 7.6B$ purchase of mcafee was a sign that Intel doesn't know what its doing. In the CEO's words: The future of chips is security on the chip. I was like no, no its not! I wanted them to get into mobile and GPUs at the time. Nvdia's market cap was about 9B at the time. I know it would have been a larger pill to swallow, and likely had to bid a bit more than 9B, but I thought it was possible for Intel at th…

It would have had the same fate as the NVIDIA ARM deal.

Unlikely with AMD owning ATI. The reason NVidia was blocked from buying ARM was because of the many, many third parties that were building chips off ARM IP. Nvidia would have become their direct competitor overnight with little indication they would treat third parties fairly. Regulators were rightly concerned it would kill off third party chips. Not to mention the collective lobbying might of all the vendors building ARM chips.

There were and are exactly zero third parties licensing nvidia IP to build competing GPU products.

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