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Intel's Humbling

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Re: Intel's Humbling

#311
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…

Intel should have bought Nvidia. And acqu-hired Jensen as CEO.

I've heard the reason AMD bought ATI instead of Nvidia is Jensen wanted to be CEO of the combined company for it to go through. I actually AMD would be better off it they had taken that deal.

Prior to the ATI acquisition nvidia actually had been the motherboard chipset manufacturer of choice for AMD cpus for a number of years.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#312

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 I worry about with Intel is that they have gotten too much into politics; relying on CHIPS act and other subsidies, encouraging sanctions on Chinese competitors while relying on full access to the Chinese market for sales. It is not a good long term strategy: The winds of politics may change, politicians may set more terms (labour and environment), foreign market access may become politicized too (US politicians…

"This investment, at a time when … wages war against utter wickedness, a war in which good must defeat evil, is an investment in the right and righteous values that spell progress for humanity"

That is not a partner for creating logical systems. Very clear their current decisions are political.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#313
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much is that elite independent of Xi? A relatively independent elite is probably a more stable system. But a completely subservient elite to the fearless leader is however much more dangerous.

I don’t think Xi is as independent as you believe, but that’s a matter of personal opinion. I just don’t think it’s very likely for just about any leader putting themselves into the position you are describing. This is a reoccurring narrative in western media, and I’m not here to defend dictators, but i feel like reality is less black and white than that. Many of the "crazed leaders" we are told are acting irrational…

Also Saddam was told by the US ambassador that the US has no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts...

Re: Intel's Humbling

#314

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…

You should be bullish on intel, they got so much TSMC and Samsung trade secrets through the chips act that it would be a miracle to mess that up.

How did that work?

Re: Intel's Humbling

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still dominate PC’s and the server market.

The trend ain't their friend in those markets though. Many folks running server workloads on ARM and their customer base is drastically more concentrated and powerful than it once was. Apple has shown the way forward on PC chips. They are a dead company walking.

Very hyperbolic take. I agree there is serious competition elsewhere, but "dead company walking" is far from true.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be manufacturing those ARM cpus

Has that been announced? Or is it more a matter of Intel producing some unannounced product on an unannounced timeline with a feature set that has yet to be announced on an architecture that may or may not involve arm? Intel walking away from x86 would be a big step for them. First they don't own arm and second all their high end stuff is x86.

They will be manufacturing them for their customers.

Also arm isa is just isa

You seem to focus on it too much when it isnt THAT relevant.

Isa doesnt imply perf/energy characteristics

Re: Intel's Humbling

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trend ain't their friend in those markets though. Many folks running server workloads on ARM and their customer base is drastically more concentrated and powerful than it once was. Apple has shown the way forward on PC chips. They are a dead company walking.

Very hyperbolic take. I agree there is serious competition elsewhere, but "dead company walking" is far from true.

Time will tell. It's not meant to be hyperbolic - I'm short them and lots of others are and expect it will be a disaster going forward. There are obviously people on the other side of that trade with different expectations, so we will see.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be manufacturing those ARM cpus

Has that been announced? Or is it more a matter of Intel producing some unannounced product on an unannounced timeline with a feature set that has yet to be announced on an architecture that may or may not involve arm? Intel walking away from x86 would be a big step for them. First they don't own arm and second all their high end stuff is x86.

They announced this last year: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...

Re: Intel's Humbling

#319
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…

McAfee was Renee James idea, she was two in a box (Intel speak for sharing a management spot) with Brian Krzanich.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not at all what happened. Intel's 64-bit story was EPIC/IA-64/Itanium and it was an attempt to gain monopoly and keep x86 for the low-end. AMD64 and Itanic derailed that idea so completely that Intel was forced by Microsoft to adopt the AMD64 ISA. Microsoft refused to port to yet-another incompatible ISA. Had Itanium been a success then Intel would have crushed the competition (however it did succeed in killin…

Microsoft did port to Itanium. Customers just didn't buy the chips. They were expensive, the supposed speed gains from "smarter compilers" never materialized, and their support for x86 emulation was dog slow (both hardware and later software). No one wanted Itanium. It was another political project designed to take the wind out of HP and Sun's sails, with the bonus that it would cut off access to AMD. Meanwhile AMD r…

Maybe I wasn’t clear; I meant after Itanium failed, Microsoft refused to support yet another 64-bit extention of x86 as they already had AMD64/x64 (and IA-64 obviously)
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