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Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

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Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#301
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shit circumstances outside of their control. They chose to outsource the development of their core products to a country like Russia to save costs. How was that outside of their control? It's not like it was the most stable or reliable country to do business in even before 2022...

Russia is reliable when it comes to software engineering. I've met a few guys from Intel Russia, bright folks. The politics, though...

Individual Russian software developers might be reliable but that's hardly the point. They should've just moved them to US or even Germany or something like that if they were serious about entering the GPU market, though...

e.g. There are plenty of talented engineers in China as well but it would be severely idiotic for any western company to move their core R&D there. Same applied to Russia.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last report I read it was ~80% (Intel) vs ~20% (AMD) for PC market. And ~75% (Intel) vs ~25% (AMD) for data center servers.

> And ~75% (Intel) vs ~25% (AMD) for data center servers. IIRC their data center CPU revenue was about even this quarter so this is a bit deceptive (i.e. you can buy 1 large CPU instead of several cheaper ones).

From https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amds-desktop...

"When it comes to servers, AMD's share totaled 24.2%"

and

"Intel, of course, retained its volume lead with a 75.8% unit market share."

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#303
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IT departments are not going to stop buying x86 processors until they absolutely are forced to. Plenty of them are buying Macbooks. It's definitely a small percentage of the worldwide market, but not entirely insignificant either.

Yes, but that is because users demand it. And they do so begrudgingly. Users are not going to demand an ARM Windows laptop.

But will IT departments buy them if they are 100, 200, or $400 cheaper than a competing x86 machine?

That's the question that remains to be seen.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#304
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would have at least 5 years to figure it out before ARM becomes viable on desktop assuming there continues to be movement in that direction. There is so little incentive to move away from x86 right now. The latest Intel mobile processors address the efficiency issues and prove that x86 can be efficient enough for laptops. IT departments are not going to stop buying x86 processors until they absolutely are forced…

> IT departments are not going to stop buying x86 processors until they absolutely are forced to. Plenty of them are buying Macbooks. It's definitely a small percentage of the worldwide market, but not entirely insignificant either.

If you need to use Excel at work, you need x86 since Excel for Mac is a gutted toy (MS wants your company yo buy / subscribe to windows too).

And google sheets in my opinion is not good for complicated stuff - the constant lag..

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#305
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And ~75% (Intel) vs ~25% (AMD) for data center servers. IIRC their data center CPU revenue was about even this quarter so this is a bit deceptive (i.e. you can buy 1 large CPU instead of several cheaper ones).

Market share is often measured in install base.

Sure, but if the point is showing how Intel isn't really in such a bad spot as one might think just looking at the install base would be pretty deceiving and semi-meaningless.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#306
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market share is often measured in install base.

Of a market that is dying between two growing at the edges. Mobile and server clear trump personal compute. This the markets devaluing intel.

To be fair it's not like there is that much profits in mobile either. ARM CPUs are almost a commodity and the margins aren't that great.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#307
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is reliable when it comes to software engineering. I've met a few guys from Intel Russia, bright folks. The politics, though...

Individual Russian software developers might be reliable but that's hardly the point. They should've just moved them to US or even Germany or something like that if they were serious about entering the GPU market, though... e.g. There are plenty of talented engineers in China as well but it would be severely idiotic for any western company to move their core R&D there. Same applied to Russia.

Well, Intel Russia opened in 2000 back when USA and Russia were on good terms, and Putin was relatively unknown. Sure it was a mistake in hindsight...

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what both companies would need to be competitive in the GPU sector is a cuda killer. That's perhaps the one benefit of merging Antel can more easily standardize something.

There are already packages that let people run CUDA programs unmodified on other GPUs: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40970560 For whatever reason, people just delete these tools from their minds, then claim Nvidia still has a monopoly on CUDA.

There's already a panoply of CUDA alternatives, and even several CUDA-to-non-Nvidia-GPU alternatives (which aren't supported by the hardware vendors and are in some sense riskier). To my knowledge (this isn't really my space), many of the higher-level frameworks already support these CUDA alternatives.

And yet still the popcorn gallery says "there no [realistic] alternative to CUDA." Methinks the real issue is that CUDA is the best software solution for Nvidia GPUs, and the alternative hardware vendors aren't seen as viable competitor for hardware reasons, and people attribute the failure to software failures.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#309

I feel like this is a mistake. Pat's strategy is aggressive but what the company needs. Intel's stock is jumping at this announcement, but I look at it as a bad signal for Intel 18a. If 18a was looking to be a smash hit then I don't think Pat gets retired. If 18a is a success then it is an even more short-sighted decision by the board. What this likely means is two-fold: 1. Intel 18a is being delayed further and/or t…

Friends that work at intel said gelsinger and the board have done EVERYTHING wrong in the past four years. From blowing key customer accounts to borderline malfeasance with payouts. It’s also the board that needs to go too for enabling. The merger with amd sounds like the right path.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#310
post #237
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to address the aside for completeness' sake. An x86 monopoly in the late 80s was a thing, but not now. Today, there are sufficient competitive chip architectures with cross-compatible operating systems and virtualization that x86 does not represent control of the computing market in a manner that should prevent such a merger: ARM licensees, including the special case of Apple Silicon, Snapdragon, NVIDIA SOCs…

I believe the "x86 monopoly" was meant to refere to how only Intel and AMD are legally allowed to make x86 chips due to patents. X86 is currently a duopoly, and if Intel and AMD were to merge, that would become a monopoly.

This is how I interpreted it as well. The others seem to be arguing due to a misunderstanding of what was said/meant.
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