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Intel: Winning and Losing

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Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#11

Post by KerrAvon »

deaddodo wrote: post #9
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #6

I'll give a viewpoint that the article reads like a listing of spec sheets and process improvements for CPUs of that era and not much else. Not really worth reading imho. I'd love some discussion on why Intel left XScale and went to Atom and i think Itanium is worthy of discussion in this era too. I don't really want a raw listing of [In year X Intel launched Y with SPEC_SHEET_LISTING features].

> I'd love some discussion on why Intel left XScale and went to Atom I thought it was pretty obvious. They didn't control the ARM ISA and ARM Ltd designs had caught up to + surpassed XScale innovations (superscalar, Out-of-order pipelining, MIPS/w, etc). So instead of further innovating they decided to launch a competitor of their own ISA.

Intel at the time was clear about it: they wanted to concentrate fully on x86. They thought they could do everything with x86; hadn’t they already won against their RISC competitors by pushing billions into x86? Why would ARM be any different? Shortsighted, in hindsight, but you can see how they got there.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#12

Post by KerrAvon »

Demiurge wrote: post #8
igtztorrero wrote: post #3

The Atom model was the breaking point for Intel. No one forgives them for wasting their money on Atom-based laptops, which are slower than a tortoise. Never play with the customer's intelligence.

I've always wondered, how do some smart companies, or smart film directors, or smart musicians can fail so hard? I understand that, sometimes, it's a matter of someone abusing a project for personal gain. Some CEOs, workers just want to pitch, pocket the money, and move on, but the level of absurdity of some of the decisions made are counter-productive the 'get rich quick' scheme too. I think there are self perpetuat…

It doesn’t even have to be that negative. With the best intentions in the world, it’s rare to have a CEO who is fundamentally capable of understanding both the technology and the viable market applications of that technology. Steve Jobs didn’t manage to do it at NeXT.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#13

Post by BearOso »

dash2 wrote: post #10

These are the years when Intel lost dominance, right? This article doesn't seem to show much insight as to why that happened or what caused the missteps.

Intel really lost dominance when 14nm stagnated. This article only goes up to that point.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#14

Post by nikanj »

Demiurge wrote: post #8
igtztorrero wrote: post #3

The Atom model was the breaking point for Intel. No one forgives them for wasting their money on Atom-based laptops, which are slower than a tortoise. Never play with the customer's intelligence.

I've always wondered, how do some smart companies, or smart film directors, or smart musicians can fail so hard? I understand that, sometimes, it's a matter of someone abusing a project for personal gain. Some CEOs, workers just want to pitch, pocket the money, and move on, but the level of absurdity of some of the decisions made are counter-productive the 'get rich quick' scheme too. I think there are self perpetuat…

Essentially no organizations actually reward telling your superiors that they're wrong. You pretend to sip the kool-aid and work on your resume. If one or two high-ranking leaders are steering the ship to the rocks, there's basically nothing the rank-and-file can do

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#15

Post by foobarian »

Demiurge wrote: post #8
igtztorrero wrote: post #3

The Atom model was the breaking point for Intel. No one forgives them for wasting their money on Atom-based laptops, which are slower than a tortoise. Never play with the customer's intelligence.

I've always wondered, how do some smart companies, or smart film directors, or smart musicians can fail so hard? I understand that, sometimes, it's a matter of someone abusing a project for personal gain. Some CEOs, workers just want to pitch, pocket the money, and move on, but the level of absurdity of some of the decisions made are counter-productive the 'get rich quick' scheme too. I think there are self perpetuat…

At some point organizations get taken over by the 9-5 crowd who just want to collect a paycheck and live a nice life. This also leads to the hard-driving talent to leave for more aggressive organizations, leaving behind a more average team. What leaders remain will come up with not so great ideas, and the rank and file will follow along because there won't be a critical mass of passionate thought leaders to find a better way.

I don't mean to look down on this kind of group, I am probably one of them. There is nothing wrong with people enjoying a good work life balance at a decent paying job. However, I think there is a reality that if one wants a world-best company creating world-best products this is simply not good enough. Just like a team of weekend warriors would not be able to win the Superbowl (or even ever make it anywhere close to a NFL team) - which is perfectly fine! - the same way it's not fair to expect an average organization to perform world champion feats.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#16

Post by acroyear »

Mr. Magoo-ism galore.

Intel had constantly try to bring in visionaries, but failed over and over. With the exception of Jim Keller, Intel was duped into believing in incompetent people. At a critical juncture during the smart-phone revolution it was Mike Bell, a full-on Mr. Magoo. He never did anything after his stint with Intel worth mentioning - he was exposed as a pretender. Eric Kim would be another. Murthy Renduchintala is another. It goes on and on. Also critical was the the failure of an in-house exec named Anand Chandrasekher who completely flubbed the mega-project coop between Intel and Nokia to bring about Moblin OS and create a third phone ecosystem to the marketplace. WHY would Anand be put in charge of such an important effort?????? In Intel's defense, this project was submarined by Nokia's Stephen Elop, who usurped their CEO and left Intel standing at the altar. (Elop was a former Microsoft exec, Microsoft was also working on their foray into smartphones at the time. . very suspicious). XScale was mis-handled, Intel had a working phone with XScale prior to the iPhone being release .. but Intel was afraid of fostering a development community outside of x86 (Balmer once chanted -> developer, developer, developer). My guess is that ultimately, Intel suffers from the Kodak conundrum, i.e. they have probably rejected true visionaries because their ideas would always threaten the sacred cash cows. They have been afraid to innovate at the expense of profit margins (short term thinkers).

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#17

Post by brcmthrowaway »

acroyear wrote: post #16

Mr. Magoo-ism galore. Intel had constantly try to bring in visionaries, but failed over and over. With the exception of Jim Keller, Intel was duped into believing in incompetent people. At a critical juncture during the smart-phone revolution it was Mike Bell, a full-on Mr. Magoo. He never did anything after his stint with Intel worth mentioning - he was exposed as a pretender. Eric Kim would be another. Murthy Rendu…

Is Raja Koduri another phony?

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#19

Post by acroyear »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #17
acroyear wrote: post #16

Mr. Magoo-ism galore. Intel had constantly try to bring in visionaries, but failed over and over. With the exception of Jim Keller, Intel was duped into believing in incompetent people. At a critical juncture during the smart-phone revolution it was Mike Bell, a full-on Mr. Magoo. He never did anything after his stint with Intel worth mentioning - he was exposed as a pretender. Eric Kim would be another. Murthy Rendu…

Is Raja Koduri another phony?

I don't know tbh, heard both good and bad things .. he was brought in after many of the problems had already become serious. He probably had a very difficult charter.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#20

Post by acroyear »

aurizon wrote: post #18

Intel is a failed monopolist, unlike Apple! So is IBM with MCA, micro-channel-architecture

yes, they tried with the 'Compute Continuum' .. but this never panned out. They spent loads of bandwidth and money trying to bring this reality into being, but it failed miserably. They assumed every user would have a smart-TV, smart-phone, tablet, and desktop .. all running their hardware/software. Turns out, no - they won't. They didn't "see" that the phone would dominate the non-business segment as it has.
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