Intel's Humbling • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel's Humbling

#331

Post by edgyquant » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 3:46 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #122

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…

If you're process nodes are going wayyyy over schedule, it shouldn't take much intelligence to realize that TSMC is catching up FAST. You should probably have some intel (haha) on ARM and AMD chips. They didn't care. Why? It's monopoly business tactics, except they didn't realize they weren't Microsoft. It's not like this was overnight. Intel should have watched AMD like a hawk after that slimeball Ruiz was deposed a…

Microsoft also got its lunch ate during this time by mobile. They have a new CEO who’s had to work hard to reshape the place as a services company.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#332

Post by dgroshev » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 3:55 PM UTC

RCitronsBroker wrote: post #294

rapsey wrote: 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…

Problem is, "rational" is not objective. "Rational" is more like "consistent with one's goals (subjective) under one's perception of reality (subjective)".

When you're saying "Putin invaded Ukraine irrationally" you're implicitly projecting your own value system and worldview onto him.

Let's take goals. What do you think Putin's goals are? I don't think it's too fanciful to imagine that welfare of ordinary Russians is less important to him than going down in history as someone who reunited the lost Russian Empire, or even just keeping in power and adored. It's just a fact that the occupation of Crimea was extremely popular and raised his ratings, so why not try the same thing again?

What about the worldview? It is well established that Putin didn't think much of Ukraine's ability to defend, having been fed overly positive reports by his servile underlings. Hell, even Pentagon thought Ukraine will fold, shipping weapons that would work well for guerrilla warfare (Javelins) and dragging their feet on stuff regular armies need (howitzers and shells). Russians did think it'll be a walk in the park, they even had a truck of crowd control gear in that column attacking Kyiv, thinking they'll need police shields.

So when you put yourself into Putin's shoes, attacking Ukraine Just Makes Sense: a cheap&easy way to boost ratings and raise his profile in history books, what not to like? It is completely rational — for his goals and his perceived reality.

Sadly, people often fall into the trap of overextending their own worldview/goals onto others, finding a mismatch, and trying to explain that mismatch away with semi-conspiratorial thinking (Nato expansion! Pipelines! Russian speakers!) instead of reevaluating the premise.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#333

Post by offices » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:01 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #221

duped wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was ARM really competitive until recently? Nope. Intel crushed them. Intel never "crushed" ARM. Intel completely failed to develop a mobile processor and ARM has a massive marketshare there. ARM has always beaten the crap out of Intel at performance per watt, which turned out to be extremely important both in mobile and data center scale.

> Intel never "crushed" ARM. They certainly tried selling their chips below cost to move into markets ARM dominated, but "contra revenue" couldn't save them. > Intel Corp.’s Contra-Revenue Strategy Was a Huge Waste of Money https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/21/intel-corp...

The name they chose to try and make it not sound like anti-competitive practices just makes it sound like Iran-Contra

Re: Intel's Humbling

#334

Post by maxglute » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:01 PM UTC

RCitronsBroker wrote: post #329

bigbillheck wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are one broken dam away from a huge mass casualty event. Are there any dam-having countries for which this isn't the case?

none or VERY few are even remotely close to the impact a potential breach of the three gorges dam would have. [1] Seriously, it’s worth reading up on, it’s genuinely hard to overstate. [1]: https://www.ispsw.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/718_Lin.pdf "In this case, the Three Gorges Dam may become a military target. But if this happens, it would be devastating to China as 400 million people live downstream, as well as…

It's grossly overstated because TW doesn't have the type or numbers of ordnance to structurally damage gravity dam the size of three gorges. And realistically they won't because the amount of conventional munitions needed is staggering, more than TW can muster in retaliatory strike, unless it's a coordinated preemptive strike, which TW won't since it's suicide by war crime.

The entire three gorges meme originated from FaLunGong/Epoche times propaganda, including in linked article (to interview with Simone Gao) and all the dumb google map photos of deformed damn due to lens distortion. PRC planners there aren't concerned about dam breech, but general infra terrorism.

The onne infra PRC planners are concerned about are coastal nuclear plants under construction, which is much better ordnance trade for TW anyway, and just as much of a war crime.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#335

Post by adrian_b » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #321

adrian_b wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 5.1 GHz Intel Core Ultra 9 processor 185H is the replacement for the 5.4 GHz Intel Core i9-13900H Processor of previous year. Both are 45-W CPUs with big integrated GPUs and almost identical features in the SoC. No liquid cooling needed for either of them, just standard 14" or 15" laptops without special cooling, or NUC-like small cases, because they do not need discrete GPUs. Both CPUs have the same microarchite…

That's getting a little convoluted. I still don't see how this substantiates that Intel 4 "has obvious difficulties in reaching high clock frequencies". Intel is shipping competitive clock frequencies on Intel 4 vs. everyone in the industry except the most recent generation of their own RPL parts, which have the advantage of being being up-bins of an evolved and mature process. That sounds pretty normal to me? New pr…

I have also pointed that while for Intel this repeats their previous two process launches, which is not a good sign, TSMC has never had such problems recently.

While one reason why TSMC did not have such problems is that they have made more incremental changes from one process variant to another, avoiding any big risks, the other reason is that Intel has repeatedly acted as if they had been unable to estimate from simulations the performance characteristics of their future processes and they have always been caught by surprise by inferior experimental results compared to predictions, so they always had to switch the product lines from plan A to plan B during the last decade, unlike the previous decade when all appeared to always go as planned.

A normal product replacement strategy is for the new product to match most of the characteristics of the old product that is replaced, but improve on a few of them.

Much too frequently in recent years many Intel new products have improved some characteristics only with the price of making worse other characteristics. For example raising the clock frequency with the price of also increased power consumption, increasing the number of cores but removing AVX-512, or, like in Meteor Lake, raising the all-cores-active clock-frequency with the price of lowering the few-cores-active clock frequency.

While during the last decade Intel has frequently progressed in the best case by making two steps forward and one step backward, all competitors have marched steadily forwards.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#336

Post by edgyquant » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:20 PM UTC

bonton89 wrote: post #311

bee_rider wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AMD is doing fantastic and it’s CEO is great. It would be a big let down if they had bought nvidia as we’d have a single well run company instead of two

Re: Intel's Humbling

#337

Post by throwaway4good » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:25 PM UTC

davidy123 wrote: post #312

throwaway4good wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That bananas quote is from an Israeli minister.

Imagine what it would do if Intel became strongly associated with one side in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It could really hurt their business.

Usually business leaders are smart enough to stay out of politics.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#338

Post by King1st » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

throwaway4good wrote: post #256

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 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…

Intel has used political incentives often though its history to great effect. I think its a much smaller issue than you think. Its part of their standard game-plan for over 30 years. The issue with boeing is becoming acontract company that into contracts out all their work which is self defeating and leads to brain drain. EX: the door lacking bolts because Boeing doesnt even build its own fuselages anymore and have let their standards fall, wholly depending on contractors with little oversight.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#339

Post by ajross » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

adrian_b wrote: post #335

ajross wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's getting a little convoluted. I still don't see how this substantiates that Intel 4 "has obvious difficulties in reaching high clock frequencies". Intel is shipping competitive clock frequencies on Intel 4 vs. everyone in the industry except the most recent generation of their own RPL parts, which have the advantage of being being up-bins of an evolved and mature process. That sounds pretty normal to me? New pr…

I have also pointed that while for Intel this repeats their previous two process launches, which is not a good sign, TSMC has never had such problems recently. While one reason why TSMC did not have such problems is that they have made more incremental changes from one process variant to another, avoiding any big risks, the other reason is that Intel has repeatedly acted as if they had been unable to estimate from si…

> I have also pointed that while for Intel this repeats their previous two process launches, which is not a good sign, TSMC has never had such problems recently.

I'll be blunt: you're interpreting a "problem" where none exists. I went back and checked: when Ivy Bridge parts launched the 22nm process (UNDENIABLY the best process in the world at that moment, and by quite a bit) the highest-clocked part from Intel was actually a 4.0 GHz Sandy Bridge SKU, and would be for a full 18 months until the 4960X matched it.

This is just the way Intel ships CPUs. They bin like crazy and ship dozens and dozens of variants. The parts at the highest end need to wait for yields to improve to the point where there's enough volume to sell. That's not a "problem", it's just a manufacturing decision.

Re: Intel's Humbling

#340

Post by zamadatix » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

timschmidt wrote: post #49

jdewerd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely ridiculous. No, Apple did not juice the M1 by giving it better cooling than x86. Quite the opposite, they took a big chunk of their design+process wins to the bank and exchanged them for even cooler and quieter operation because that's what they wanted all along. Cool and quiet was a deliverable . It's absurd to point out that apple could have gotten higher perf from x86 at higher power as if it's some kin…

Maybe it's not clear to everyone... hot transistors waste more power as heat. It's a feedback loop. And it doesn't require liquid nitrogen to nip in the bud. Running the chip hot benefits no one. Kicking on a fan, and racing to idle without throttling would use less battery power. I'm not sure what's so upsetting about the assertion that chips composed of a similar number of transistors, on a similar process node, co…

Even taking the latest Intel has to offer with the Core Ultra 9 185H in a system with active cooling and putting it up against the fanless model of the M1 MacBook Air comes out equal in performance at more than triple the power usage - 3 years after the fact. It's got nothing to do with a feedback loop, there is less cooling capacity and not even a fan on the Apple model, the fan wasn't somehow needed for the performance level. Not that a conspiracy of Apple to run all their MacBooks like shit for many years prior to switching all to make Intel look bad is a bit ludicrous - if the problem was ever that the fans weren't on enough they would have just turned them up. Turns out, they can remove them instead!

The one place I agree with you is in the > ~16 core space (Server style) with TBs of RAM, where total performance density is more important than power, they don't bother to really compete. Where I differ slightly is I don't think there is anything about the technical design that prevents this, just look how Epyc trounced Intel in the space by using a bunch of 8 core chip modules instead of building a monolith, rather they just don't have interest in serving that space. If Apple was able to turn a phone chip into something with the multicore performance of a 24 core 13900k it doesn't exactly scream "architectural limitation" to me.