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Intel's Humbling

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Re: Intel's Humbling

#241

Post by RCitronsBroker »

riffraff wrote: post #239
RCitronsBroker wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i honestly don’t see what you are seeing in terms of taiwans future sovereignty. Of course, China would like to do something about Taiwan, especially now with their economy kind of in the dumps and a collapsing real estate bubble. But when you look at the facts of it all, there’s absolut ZERO chance chine can muster up what it takes to hold their own in such a conflict. Their military isn’t up to snuff and they are o…

I think "economy in the dumps" is a bit too harsh. China is facing a deflating real estate bubble, but they still managed to grow the last year (official sources are disputed but independent estimates are still positive).

it’s where the growth is coming from. Chinas growth (or even just sustenance) isn’t coming from a healthy job market and consumer spending. It’s mostly fueled by SOEs and prefectures going into debt to keep on investing, many local administration have found out they can trick debt limits by forming state-owned special purpose vehicles that aren’t bound to their debt limits. That’s not good at all. there’s a reason we are seeing tons of novel Chinese car brands being pushed here in Europe, they massively overproduced and cannot sell them in their own market anymore. It’s really not looking great atm.

edit: one also should keep in mind that the Chinese real estate market is entirely different in its importance to its populations wealth. "Buying" real estate is pretty much the only sanctioned market to invest your earnings. They still pretend to be communist after all.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#242

Post by katbyte »

eslaught wrote: post #127
vineyardmike wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not noticing a hugely growing segment that was bringing insane reams of cash to Apple, and Qualcomm, Samsung and others involved is not something I could call astute. And it's not like they didn't notice either. Apple literally asked intel to supply the chips for the first iPhone, but the intel CEO at the time "didn't see it". https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/16/4337954/intel-could-have-...

I agree mobile was a miss but the linked article actually quotes Intel's former COE making a pretty good argument why they missed: > "The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do... At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below o…

I’m not so sure, he made a choice purely on “will it make money now” not “well let’s take a chance and see if this pays of big and if not we’ll loose a little money”

It’s not like they couldn’t afford it and taking chances is important

Re: Intel's Humbling

#243

Post by rapsey »

RCitronsBroker wrote: post #235
tgtweak wrote: post #174

I'm kind of bullish on Intel right now. They've moved up so many process nodes so quickly and have made some earnest headway in being an actual fab. Let's ignore the elephant in the room which is taiwan and it's sovereignty, and only focus on the core r&d. Intel flopped so hard on process nodes for 4 years up until Gelsinger took the reigns... it was honestly unprecedented levels of R&D failure. What happened over th…

i honestly don’t see what you are seeing in terms of taiwans future sovereignty. Of course, China would like to do something about Taiwan, especially now with their economy kind of in the dumps and a collapsing real estate bubble. But when you look at the facts of it all, there’s absolut ZERO chance chine can muster up what it takes to hold their own in such a conflict. Their military isn’t up to snuff and they are o…

> there’s absolut ZERO chance chine can muster up what it takes to hold their own in such a conflict.

However China is now a full fledged dictatorship. I'm not sure you can count on them being a rational actor on the world stage.

They can do a lot of damage, but would also get absolutely devastated in return. They are food, energy insecure and entirely dependent on exports after all.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#244

Post by klelatti »

BirAdam wrote: post #50

Everyone acts as though Intel should have seen everything coming. Where was AMD? Was AMD really competitive before Ryzen? Nope. Core 2 series blew them out of the water. Was ARM really competitive until recently? Nope. Intel crushed them. The problem for Intel is the inertia of laziness due to a lack of competition. I wouldn’t count them out just yet, however. The company’s first true swing at modern GPU was actually…

> Nope. Intel crushed them.

The problem is that Intel has had a defensive strategy for a long time. Yes, they crushed many attempts to breach the x86 moat but failed completely and then gave up attempts to reach beyond that moat. Mobile, foundry, GPUs etc have all seen half-hearted or doomed attempts (plus some bizarre attempts to diversify - McAfee!).

I think that, as Ben essentially says, they put too much faith in never-ending process leadership and the ongoing supremacy of x86. And when that came to an end the moat was dry.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#245

Post by baq »

klelatti wrote: post #244
BirAdam wrote: post #50

Everyone acts as though Intel should have seen everything coming. Where was AMD? Was AMD really competitive before Ryzen? Nope. Core 2 series blew them out of the water. Was ARM really competitive until recently? Nope. Intel crushed them. The problem for Intel is the inertia of laziness due to a lack of competition. I wouldn’t count them out just yet, however. The company’s first true swing at modern GPU was actually…

> Nope. Intel crushed them. The problem is that Intel has had a defensive strategy for a long time. Yes, they crushed many attempts to breach the x86 moat but failed completely and then gave up attempts to reach beyond that moat. Mobile, foundry, GPUs etc have all seen half-hearted or doomed attempts (plus some bizarre attempts to diversify - McAfee!). I think that, as Ben essentially says, they put too much faith in…

On the contrary, they tried to pivot so many times and enter different markets, they bought countless small companies, some big, nothing seemed to stick except the core CPU and datacenter businesses. IIRC mobileye is one somewhat successful venture.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#246

Post by erik »

dangrossman wrote: post #143
TylerE wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that true for virtually EVERY big tech merger? Like, which ones have actually worked?

Google built its core advertising ecosystem on acquisitions (Applied Semantics, DoubleClick, AdMob, etc) and extended it into the mobile space by buying Android.

Youtube was also an acquisition.

Haven't heard much about successful Google acquisitions lately though.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#247

Post by klelatti »

baq wrote: post #245
klelatti wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nope. Intel crushed them. The problem is that Intel has had a defensive strategy for a long time. Yes, they crushed many attempts to breach the x86 moat but failed completely and then gave up attempts to reach beyond that moat. Mobile, foundry, GPUs etc have all seen half-hearted or doomed attempts (plus some bizarre attempts to diversify - McAfee!). I think that, as Ben essentially says, they put too much faith in…

On the contrary, they tried to pivot so many times and enter different markets, they bought countless small companies, some big, nothing seemed to stick except the core CPU and datacenter businesses. IIRC mobileye is one somewhat successful venture.

Except they weren't real pivots. Mobile / GPU were x86 centric, foundry half hearted without buying into what needed to be done. Buying a company is the easy bit.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#248

Post by 14u2c »

dur-randir wrote: post #231
tgtweak wrote: post #174

I'm kind of bullish on Intel right now. They've moved up so many process nodes so quickly and have made some earnest headway in being an actual fab. Let's ignore the elephant in the room which is taiwan and it's sovereignty, and only focus on the core r&d. Intel flopped so hard on process nodes for 4 years up until Gelsinger took the reigns... it was honestly unprecedented levels of R&D failure. What happened over th…

>have made some earnest headway in being an actual fab In the terms of end product - not really. Last 3-4 gens are indistinguishable to the end user. It's a combined effect of marketing failure and really underwhelming gains - when marketing screams "breakthrough gen", but what you get is +2%/ST perf for another *Lake, you can't sell it. They might've built a foundation and that might be a deliberate tactics to get b…

What you quoted refers to Intel's efforts to act as a fab for external customers.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#249

Post by [deleted] »

dchftcs wrote: post #238
tgtweak wrote: post #174

I'm kind of bullish on Intel right now. They've moved up so many process nodes so quickly and have made some earnest headway in being an actual fab. Let's ignore the elephant in the room which is taiwan and it's sovereignty, and only focus on the core r&d. Intel flopped so hard on process nodes for 4 years up until Gelsinger took the reigns... it was honestly unprecedented levels of R&D failure. What happened over th…

>What happened over the 8 years prior was hedge funds and banks had saddled up on Intel stock which was paying healthy dividends due to cost cutting and "coasting" Not clear about what the role of activist hedge funds is here but Intel's top shareholders are mutual funds like Vanguard which are part of many people's retirement investments. If an activist hedge fund got to run the show, it means that they could get th…

[deleted]

Re: Intel's Humbling

#250

Post by RCitronsBroker »

rapsey wrote: post #243
RCitronsBroker wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i honestly don’t see what you are seeing in terms of taiwans future sovereignty. Of course, China would like to do something about Taiwan, especially now with their economy kind of in the dumps and a collapsing real estate bubble. But when you look at the facts of it all, there’s absolut ZERO chance chine can muster up what it takes to hold their own in such a conflict. Their military isn’t up to snuff and they are o…

> there’s absolut ZERO chance chine can muster up what it takes to hold their own in such a conflict. However China is now a full fledged dictatorship. I'm not sure you can count on them being a rational actor on the world stage. They can do a lot of damage, but would also get absolutely devastated in return. They are food, energy insecure and entirely dependent on exports after all.

True, but the elite class that’s currently profiting from and in control of said country would devastate themselves if they dare. Skepticism about the wests self-inflicted dependency on China is at an all time high. Terms like "on-" or "friend-shoring" are already coming up now.

You’re not wrong, maybe all the scaremongering in the west about China overtaking us got them delusional enough in a Japanese nationalist type way for them to behave this irrational, but i highly doubt it. But that can also change pretty quick if they feel like their back is against the wall, you’re not wrong in that regard

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