31–40 of 70 posts
Lets see what Lunar Lake (low power, mobile SoC) delivers in next 2 months If it will deliver and match Apples Mx designs in terms of energy eff and perf, then ARMs expansion on the client side will slow down, I guess. No point in porting stuff for marginal gains since ISA does not matter as much as ppl think https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-... Theres also talk about their shift to GPU, ma…
Lets see what Lunar Lake (low power, mobile SoC) delivers in next 2 months If it will deliver and match Apples Mx designs in terms of energy eff and perf, then ARMs expansion on the client side will slow down, I guess. No point in porting stuff for marginal gains since ISA does not matter as much as ppl think https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-... Theres also talk about their shift to GPU, ma…
>Theres also talk about their shift to GPU, maybe Battle Mage will deliver in this year Considering the stock tanking and the announced layoffs, I fear Battle Mage will be unfortunate collateral damage along the line. Really unfortunate timing as that was the only competition we could hope for to the Nvidia and AMD GPU duopoly who jacked up their prices, and Intel was actually committed to the new GPUs constantly pus…
Intel seems 100% tied to its outcomes as a foundry now. If there is any disruption in chip prodution from Taiwan for example, I can see its stock doubling in price.
Devils Advocate: If there is no disruption in Taiwan, and TSMC continues to execute as it has, and Intel continues to execute as is has (not), then Intel might go to $0 or survive only because of government subsidies and military contracts. NVIDIA, AMD, Apple and other companies seeking cutting edge performance will choose the most advanced node to stay competitive. Being the second best foundry has historically not…
People sometimes wonder why anyone is buying Boeing planes—it’s because it’s that or nothing. Airbus has no spare capacity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m putting money on this. Despite these setbacks, AMD aren’t cutting it in the OEM market. The fabs will be used even if it’s boring shit.
> I’m putting money on this. I would not. There is nothing to indicate Intel leadership is capable of executing. Bean counters are not the kind of leadership you need in a changing environment.
During the last couple of years they have achieved in time all the product and process launches that had been announced with years in advance, up to Meteor Lake on the new Intel 4 CMOS process at the end of 2023 and Sierra Forest on the new Intel 3 CMOS process at the middle of 2024.
The only things that could be considered as under-achievements are the facts that in the Intel 4 process the maximum clock frequencies have been lower than hoped and the production yields are still low. Nevertheless, these 2 problems are not surprises. Every new CMOS process launched by Intel during the last decade has been affected exactly by these 2 problems, at least for its first year. For each such process, Intel has succeeded eventually to solve the problems, but they have always needed the experience of multiple years of production for that. With Intel 4 this will not happen, because it will not be used again for another product, being replaced by Intel 3, which probably incorporates whatever fixes were suggested by the experience with Intel 4.
So the financial problems of Intel are not caused by Intel failing to execute their roadmap.
Nevertheless, the bad financial results have been perfectly predictable from the Intel roadmap, as it had been known for years, because that roadmap does not attempt to achieve parity with the AMD server CPUs before the end of 2026 at the earliest.
The financial results of Intel have shown profits for the client CPUs. They have shown losses for their foundry, which have been unavoidable, due to their need to invest huge amounts of money to recover Intel's handicap vs. TSMC and due to the need to transfer a part of their chip production to TSMC, while they are developing their new processes.
They have also shown great losses for the server CPUs. The losses in server CPUs are likely to be caused by Intel having to cut their prices a lot when selling to big customers, in order to convince them to not buy the superior AMD server CPUs.
It is very likely that Intel will continue to have great losses in the foundry and in the server CPUs for at least one more year, based on their public roadmap. After that, their results will depend on how good the Intel 18A CMOS process will be in comparison with the competing CMOS processes of TSMC.
The Intel roadmap for manufacturing processes and for client CPUs has been decent. While some of the Intel choices may be undesirable for their customers, other choices would not have improved their financial results.
Where Intel could have conceived a much better roadmap is in server CPUs, where they have their greatest losses. When AMD launches a new microarchitecture, like now with Zen 5, after 3 or 4 months they also launch their server CPUs with that microarchitecture, like with AMD Turin later this year. On the other hand, when Intel launches a new microarchitecture in their client CPUs, like in the next couple of months with Lunar Lake and with Arrow Lake S, they follow with server CPUs using the same up-to-date microarchitecture usually only one or two years later, e.g. in the second half of 2026 in this case.
While the Lion Cove and Skymont cores of Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake S are competitive with Zen 5, the Intel server CPUs launched these days, Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids, continue to use cores that are only marginally better than the cores used in Alder Lake three years ago.
The new Granite Rapids server CPUs will be able to match the number of cores per socket of the AMD server CPUs, for the first time after many years. However, they will use cores not much better than Zen 4, which will be inferior to Zen 5.
This situation would have been easily avoided by Intel if they would have launched now only CPUs using their up-to-date cores, instead of using obsolete cores in their server CPUs.
The reason why AMD does not have this problem is because they design a single CPU chiplet that will be used both in their desktop and high-power laptop CPUs and in their server CPUs. On the other hand, Intel duplicates their design and validation efforts by designing distinct chips for desktops and for servers. When AMD finishes the design of a chiplet, it is ready for both desktops and servers. Their server CPUs use a few months of additional testing, but that is all of the delay. It is not clear how the design work is organized at Intel, but it appears that there is not enough overlap in the design of the client CPUs and of the server CPUs, so the latter are finished only after one extra year or two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m putting money on this. Despite these setbacks, AMD aren’t cutting it in the OEM market. The fabs will be used even if it’s boring shit.
> I’m putting money on this. I would not. There is nothing to indicate Intel leadership is capable of executing. Bean counters are not the kind of leadership you need in a changing environment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, if Intel is still committed to the AI business, it all hinges on the GPUs at the moment.
The AI bubble could pop by that time leaving them broke with overpriced doorstops in stocks. That's like building Bitcoin miners before it popped. Too risky to go all in on AI now when Nvidia already has a stronghold monopoly that even AMD can't break.
But the "AI bubble"? Are we going to discover that none of the LLM-based applications that are being developed now actually works (despite many having already been working for years, e.g. copilot) AND at the same time that further improvements, both in the LLMs themselves and in the code surrounding them, are impossible- in other words, that LLMs, after four or five years of development at most are already a mature technology? Are we not going to find any new use cases for agents that have almost the skills of specialists, minus some kind of cognitive impairment? Honest question, I don't understand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re not run by bean counters. This particular issue will be QA’ed out and Intel’s big customers know that.
Isn't the whole problem that it wasn't QA'd out precisely because Intel no longer know how to ship good products? Sure Intel have the resources to make their customers whole on this screw up but the concern is that Intel have had a pattern of poor execution in the fast 10-15 years and this is just the most recent example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The AI bubble could pop by that time leaving them broke with overpriced doorstops in stocks. That's like building Bitcoin miners before it popped. Too risky to go all in on AI now when Nvidia already has a stronghold monopoly that even AMD can't break.
Curious what you (and others) mean with "AI bubble popping". I mean, in practice? Crypto was a bubble (or well, a hype) in that almost none of the proposed applications ever looked remotely plausible, even to a superficial assessment. (Meanwhile, BTC is still around $50k). But the "AI bubble"? Are we going to discover that none of the LLM-based applications that are being developed now actually works (despite many ha…
Large corps and FAANGS are spending billions on Nvidia HW and on ML training but all those LLMs aren't earning them any money, in fact they're still loosing money just to capture the market share and consumer mindset, but there's doesn't seem to be a profit light at the end of the tunnel.
Once they've bled enough money with no chance of RoI, they'll put a halt on ML expansion and stop buying Nvidia HW. Intel entering at that point would be suicide.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious what you (and others) mean with "AI bubble popping". I mean, in practice? Crypto was a bubble (or well, a hype) in that almost none of the proposed applications ever looked remotely plausible, even to a superficial assessment. (Meanwhile, BTC is still around $50k). But the "AI bubble"? Are we going to discover that none of the LLM-based applications that are being developed now actually works (despite many ha…
>Curious what you (and others) mean with "AI bubble popping" Large corps and FAANGS are spending billions on Nvidia HW and on ML training but all those LLMs aren't earning them any money, in fact they're still loosing money just to capture the market share and consumer mindset, but there's doesn't seem to be a profit light at the end of the tunnel. Once they've bled enough money with no chance of RoI, they'll put a h…