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Intel Honesty

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Re: Intel Honesty

#251

Post by astrange »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #130
015a wrote: post #75

I'm not sure if I buy the thesis entirely (that thesis most aptly being: "Gelsinger does have one fatal flaw: he still believes in Intel, and I no longer do.") The biggest reason is geopolitics: If escalated confrontation happens with China, Intel becomes one of the most valuable companies on the planet, period. TSMC will finish western fabs eventually, but the delta-t on when they become competitive (tech, capacity…

> remember that TSMC is built entirely on the back of ASML; Probably a few people east of the Netherlands have noticed and are doing something about it.

That's not the only thing you have to replace. ASML has layers of sole suppliers themselves, like Zeiss who make their lenses.

EUV itself was developed by US government labs; ASML is a sole supplier of it because we licensed it to them and refused to give it to Nikon/Canon for no good reason.

Re: Intel Honesty

#252

Post by astrange »

magicalhippo wrote: post #147
_w1tm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM wins the instruction set wars and buys the tech. Future ARM processors will have x86 hardware that offers compatibility with legacy software. Eventually the instruction set is forgotten.

Got me thinking, from what I've read, modern high-performance cores do a lot of similar tricks and translate everything to uops anyway. How hard would it be for say AMD to make a performant dual-ISA CPU? I was thinking somewhat like how virtual 8086 mode[1] worked on 32bit CPUs, ie OS could be ARM-based, but it could run x86 processes. I assume it would be hard to not sacrifice performance for one of the ISAs, but if…

> Got me thinking, from what I've read, modern high-performance cores do a lot of similar tricks and translate everything to uops anyway.

It's not really true. The uops are highly related to the input instructions. There's enough room in a big desktop CPU to fit a big complex decoder yes, but it's a waste of space you could be using for other things, namely even more caches.

But the main reason not to do it is that you can do emulation or recompilation in software instead.

Re: Intel Honesty

#253

Post by murderfs »

astrange wrote: post #221
murderfs wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Florida and Texas are among the fastest growing states in the country, whereas California is losing population.

The population increasing in a state is mostly about age structure of the country, not people deciding to move there. California's low growth and Florida's high growth are because Americans are getting older, retiring, and not having children.

This is absolutely false, to the point where there's literally a wikipedia article about net migration out of California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_exodus

Re: Intel Honesty

#255

Post by mixmastamyk »

kridsdale3 wrote: post #129
FredPret wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's grim at INTC but don't forget the CHIPS act and whatever else will follow that. The US government spends 0.5T per month - more than the market cap of all but the top 15 American companies [0] [1] Not saying it's a good or bad idea, or that it will or won't happen - but if the US government decides to reinvent Intel, they can easily write a cheque that (if spent wisely) might do the trick. [0] https://companiesma…

Why doesn't the USA just buy out all of Intel's debt, let them start fresh? Call it a Silicon Era War Bond, in reverse.

Better to help another company with better management.

Re: Intel Honesty

#256

Post by theevilsharpie »

jeffparsons wrote: post #244
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #11

Intel is trapped. Its debt repayments alone are massive. The poor performance in stock has encouraged 20years of wage stagnation to the point where you can literally earn over 50% more at amd or nvidia or even an startup for equivalent roles so they aren’t hiring the best. Their pay in the Bay Area is double tsmc in taiwan for equivalent roles in raw dollar terms but the ppp differences means your better off working…

I think if Intel was a private company then it would have a better chance of recovery via a collection of focused experiments to overcome their biggest technical deficiencies (compared to their competitors) or to, e.g., figure out a compelling new product that the market didn't realise it needed, but that doesn't require solving difficult physics problems. But to do this sort of thing you need a dictator at the top w…

> But to do this sort of thing you need a dictator at the top who is willing to risk a run of negative-profit quarters to fix the company's underlying rot.

Private companies still have shareholders that the CEO answers to -- who tend to get angry at taking losses quarter after quarter with no clear path to growth.

Re: Intel Honesty

#257

Post by fluoridation »

flo123456 wrote: post #182
fluoridation wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly speaking, that running Linux as a desktop OS would be easy enough that even non-technical users would be able to do it with difficulties comparable to, say, Windows XP.

Whichever for me was in 2010 when I set up Ubuntu for my grandma and put a Firefox shortcut on her desktop and she never had any issues with her computer again. Very simple use-case but it was a lot better served than by Windows Vista at the time. These days it’s even better served by an iPad though.

IME, that works as long as the user does nothing but browse the web and nothing in the environment or the computer changes. Things get tricky the moment any of those assumptions are invalidated. And that's because the user is not really operating the computer, but just using it to access the web. That it's a "desktop" is only an implementation detail.

Re: Intel Honesty

#258

Post by fluoridation »

mjevans wrote: post #220
fluoridation wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly speaking, that running Linux as a desktop OS would be easy enough that even non-technical users would be able to do it with difficulties comparable to, say, Windows XP.

The goal posts always seem to move. Windows is an ugly pain in the butt to create install media for (when you're not on the native OS), and it's just as bad to Install on random hardware. Maybe more so since it's less likely to ship network drivers for random wifi gear and lan connections. Even Debian has non-free blobs for drivers with the (at least 'Live' versions) these days, finally. Repair shops are the next big…

>Windows is an ugly pain in the butt to create install media for (when you're not on the native OS)

That sounds like a Linux problem, not a Windows problem. Windows can create Linux boot USBs just fine.

>Maybe more so since it's less likely to ship network drivers for random wifi gear and lan connections.

Eh. IME the opposite is true. I've never seen Windows not recognize a network card, but I've on occasion had to manually install drivers for Debian for a plug-in NIC, but that years ago, now. On the other hand, very occasionally Windows needs to be spoon-fed drivers for a storage controller during installation.

Re: Intel Honesty

#259

Post by ProfessorLayton »

cogman10 wrote: post #151
amluto wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has a lot to do with people believing what you just said. Which is, of course, utter nonsense! If a neighborhood suddenly gets rezoned for 20-story mixed-use development, an existing house will be devalued, but an existing lot will likely gain more then enough value to compensate.

> Which is, of course, utter nonsense! That doesn't change the loss of voting power. Further, value to who? I agree a 20 story high-rise has more value than a single-family home, but how does that help the single-family homeowner or the homeowners that live around the lot that gets rezoned? That's the problem. The existing homes and their owners seem mostly downsides to rezoning even though the city as a whole would…

>That's the problem. The existing homes and their owners seem mostly downsides to rezoning even though the city as a whole would benefit greatly from them.

That's only part of the problem, though. Homeowners are voting in their interest, and selfish or not, that's democracy. The other side of the coin is that the people who stand to benefit the most don't vote for policies or politicians that have their interests in mind.

SF shows up in HN all the time for its NIMBYsm, but the city is mostly renters, whom could vote as a block like homeowners, and easily get more housing built. But they don't.

Re: Intel Honesty

#260

Post by TheAlchemist »

pphysch wrote: post #175
015a wrote: post #75

I'm not sure if I buy the thesis entirely (that thesis most aptly being: "Gelsinger does have one fatal flaw: he still believes in Intel, and I no longer do.") The biggest reason is geopolitics: If escalated confrontation happens with China, Intel becomes one of the most valuable companies on the planet, period. TSMC will finish western fabs eventually, but the delta-t on when they become competitive (tech, capacity…

> The biggest reason is geopolitics: If escalated confrontation happens with China If escalated confrontation happens with China, and that is massive IF that is dependent on insanely belligerent action from the West like giving nukes to Taiwan, then new semiconductor manufacturing will be the least of our worries. A Chinese blockade on Chinese and East Asian exports to US would result in total economic collapse in US…

While I agree that a full blown confrontation with China is unlikely (although I do think the probability of it is nowhere near 0), I think your thinking is kind of flawed too. Why would there be a total economic collapse ?

What are the strategically important things imported from China that US couldn't live without, and that couldn't switch to importing from eslewhere or manufacturing at home, in times of war ?

My understanding is that US would is importing a lot of non critical things, whereas China is much more dependent on importing critical commodities (food, oil).

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