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Intel: Winning and Losing

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Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#41

Post by igtztorrero »

nikanj wrote: post #14
Demiurge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Who doth not answer to the rudder shall answer to the rock.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#42

Post by ls612 »

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 lost dominance in the 2017-2019 era. The rise of Ryzen and Apple finally deciding to switch to Apple Silicon were the two fundamental blows to Intel. They have been able to make a brief comeback in 2021-2022 with Alder Lake but quickly fell behind again and now have staked everything on 18A being competitive with TSMC N2 this year.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#43

Post by acroyear »

aurizon wrote: post #36
acroyear wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the flowering of Moore's Law - especially with SSD and memory density - that is still unfolding to the point that an iPhone/android has power of a high end work station from the year ~~2000, same with CMOS optical sensor density and patterned lenses

i don't think it's just the performance .. it's a form-factor paradigm shift in the consumer end. the younger generations just don't care about screen real estate as much as genX and early Millenials did. the devices became (surprisingly) much more addictive than what ppl expected and consequently, the devices went into pockets, into bed with them .. etc, sad really.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#44

Post by acroyear »

mrandish wrote: post #35
acroyear wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think a key reason they missed mobile is that it was during Intel's peak dominance and growth. Mobile was smaller, less powerful chips at lower prices and lower margins than Intel's flagship CPUs in that era. The founders who built the company were gone and Intel was a conglomerate run by people hired/promoted for managing existing product/category growth not discovering and homesteading new categories. They manage…

managers, yeh, intel luvs managers ;)

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#45

Post by acroyear »

zozbot234 wrote: post #40
acroyear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atom was shit. A desperation move. I was so embarrassed to recommend a Poulsbo laptop to friend, it was the worst machine I have every seen.

The early Atoms had pretty good performance per watt compared to Intel's other offerings. The whole 'netbook' and 'nettop' market segment was pretty much enabled by the Atom chips, and similar machines are still around nowadays. The E-cores found in recent Intel generations are also very Atom-like.

about a year after 'netbook's came out, the iPad was in the wild and it destroyed any chance of these ever catching on.. sure, they were cheaper, but the user experience on a tablet was just so much better. (and tablets got cheaper fast)

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#46

Post by bsder »

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 think Itanium is worthy of discussion in this era too

Itanium was a massive technical failure but a massiver business success.

Intel spent a gigabuck and drove every single non-x86 competitor out of the server business with the exception of IBM.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#47

Post by bsder »

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…

> This is probably why having some churn with the outside world, and also understanding what is the periphery of the outside, unbiased opinion is, is very important.

Maximally efficient is minimally robust.

Squeezing every penny out of something means optimizing perfectly for present conditions--no more, no less. As long as those conditions shift slowly, slight adjustments work.

If those conditions shift suddenly though, death ensues.

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#48

Post by Demiurge »

iwontberude wrote: post #34
keyringlight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there will be a similar situation at nvidia, which apparently has a challenge with so many of their employees being rich as their stock has rocketed up in value, and then could cause concerns about motivation or if skilled and knowledgeable employees will leave.

I think many Nvidia employees will stick around because their new found wealth being at the biggest most important company in the world will give them insight about the market they invest in. I make an order of magnitude more day trading than as a software engineer at a Mag7 company and I stay employed for the access to they way modern businesses think. Companies like mine are an amalgamation of management and engine…

I don’t think that’s common

Re: Intel: Winning and Losing

#49

Post by ksec »

fidotron wrote: post #29

The core problem at Intel is they promoted the myth that ISA has no impact on performance to such a degree they started fully believing it while also somehow believing their process advantage was unassailable. By that time they'd accumulated so many worthless departments that turning it around at any time after 2010 was an impossibility. You could be the greatest business leader in history but you cannot save Intel w…

>You could be the greatest business leader in history but you cannot save Intel without making most of the company hate you, so it will not happen.

This is deep. It also highlight why it is easier to hire somebody outside of the company rather than promoting from within.

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