771–777 of 777 posts
Here are 2 things I have noticed that seem obvious weaknesses: 1. Looking at the CyberMonday and BlackFriday deals, I see that the 12900K and 14900* series CPUs are what is being offered on the Intel side. Meanwhile AMD has released newer chips. So Intel has issues with either yield, pricing or other barriers to adoption of their latest. 2. The ARC GPUs are way behind; it seems obvious to me that a way to increase us…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is great "write a horror story in 7 words" content.
Ok, I'd like to pitch a Treehouse of Horror episode. Part 1, combine branch predictor with the instruction trace cache to be able to detect workloads, have specific licenses for say Renderman, Oracle or CFD software. Part 2, add a mesh network directly to the CPU, require time based signing keys to operate. Maybe every chip just has starlink included. Part 3, In an BWM rent your seats move, the base CPU is just barel…
But didn't IBM do things like this for years with mainframes?
Sad to see Gelsinger go, but despite the churn, I don't think Intel is doomed. At worst, per their most recent Q3 results, I see $150Bn in assets and $4Bn in outstanding stock, and I see the US Gov (both incoming and outgoing) gearing up for a long war against China where Intel would be an asset of national importance. My back of envelope calculation says Intel should be about $35 a share (150/4). If they stumble whe…
Interested in your opinion, since TSMC has fabs in the US now, are Intel still relevant even in the context of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan?
1. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ts...
Intel has had some big failures (or missed opportunities) over the years. Just going from memory - Pentium 4 architecture, not recognizing market opportunities with ARM, Itanium, AMD beating them to 64 bits on x86, AMD beating them to chiplets and high number of PCIe lanes with EPYC, poor battery life (generally) on laptops. The innovations from Apple with Apple Silicon (ARM) and AMD with EPYC make Intel look like th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's orthogonal. Fixed-function hardware has a power efficiency advantage over programmable hardware. This isn't new or surprising, but it's also unrelated to CPU vs. GPU. Both CPU & GPU are programmable, so that's not relevant.
Those aren't useful distinctions. You might as well say the ALUs in a CPU aren't programmable because they aren't the instruction decoders.
It's a very useful distinction to make.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intel GFX held back the industry 10 years. If people thought Windows Vista sucked it was because Intel "supported" it by releasing integrated GPUs which could almost handle Windows Vista but not quite. The best they could do with the GFX business is a public execution. We've been hearing about terrible Intel GFX for 15 years and how they are just on the cusp of making one that is bad (not terrible). Most people who'v…
> If people thought Windows Vista sucked it was because Intel "supported" it by releasing integrated GPUs which could almost handle Windows Vista but not quite. What does an OS need a GPU for? My current laptop only has integrated Intel GPU. I'm not missing Nvidia, with its proprietary drivers, high power consumption, and corresponding extra heat and shorter battery life...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? Ram is ram, storage is storage.
You can't just buy an ARM or POWER motherboard from one place, a CPU from another place, some RAM sticks from another place, a power supply, a heatsink/fan, some kind of hard drive (probably NVMe these days), a bunch of cables, and put them all together in your basement/living room and have a working system. With x86, this is pretty normal still. With other architectures, you're going to get a complete, all-in-one sy…