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What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

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Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#11

Post by deelowe »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #6

I have not watched Intel closely for a long time. Seeing that its market cap is down 30% over the last decade is crazy. Considering how IT in general grew so much over the same time period. What happened? To see how the Intel CEO is thinking, I now scrolled through a few interviews with him. In this interview, Intel's CEO is asked to describe the difference of a CPU and a GPU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d07wy5AK…

In a nutshell, Intel's board was focused on extracting value from the company instead of innovating. While this was going on, compute was undergoing a transformation as everything transitioned to cloud solutions. By the time they realized, it was too late and the rot had set in. Now the company is full of mediocre middle managers and principles who spend all day playing politics instead of working on real problems.

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#12

Post by spockz »

Intel has been hitting all (or enough of) the right notes for about 30 years. In our industry (perhaps everywhere) we have a constant tension between optimising in the current direction and do the same thing but better (CPU general, x86 specifically) and trying another approach. This has to be managed while the world around you changes requiring you to pivot into perhaps a completely different direction.

CPUs are still relevant. And x86 can still provide a lot of value and iterate forward. AMD has spent 20 years getting to the front. It is the short term vision that is killing Intel.

AI accelerators are going to be useful and valuable until the point they are commoditised just like CPU. Until then someone (Nvidia) will gain a lot of profit. They used this money to buy their way into the datacenter with companies like mellanox. Nvidia will be on top for a while. And then the cycle continues and we will see a new company on top.

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#13

Post by BeefWellington »

spockz wrote: post #12

Intel has been hitting all (or enough of) the right notes for about 30 years. In our industry (perhaps everywhere) we have a constant tension between optimising in the current direction and do the same thing but better (CPU general, x86 specifically) and trying another approach. This has to be managed while the world around you changes requiring you to pivot into perhaps a completely different direction. CPUs are sti…

In terms of performance, AMD spent around 10 getting to the front, 2-3 in front, then another 10 getting back in front. However until the introduction of Ryzen (and really EPYC) AMD hadn't been able to make substantial inroads into the market.

Laptops using AMD CPUs are at their most available and they're still lucky to be 20% of any given manufacturer's SKUs.

Intel has an opportunity to reclaim some of those areas with their more power efficient chips, but both they and AMD are facing more competition from non-x86 manufacturers than ever, and that competition is likely only to grow.

Apple's CPUs seemed to be a product of engineering without concern for backwards compatibility, e.g.: analyze current software, make the CPU do those things well. I wonder what Intel could produce if they came at a new line of processors with the same mindset, though that would require engineers to be in charge of the company again.

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#14

Post by tw04 »

BeefWellington wrote: post #13
spockz wrote: post #12

Intel has been hitting all (or enough of) the right notes for about 30 years. In our industry (perhaps everywhere) we have a constant tension between optimising in the current direction and do the same thing but better (CPU general, x86 specifically) and trying another approach. This has to be managed while the world around you changes requiring you to pivot into perhaps a completely different direction. CPUs are sti…

In terms of performance, AMD spent around 10 getting to the front, 2-3 in front, then another 10 getting back in front. However until the introduction of Ryzen (and really EPYC) AMD hadn't been able to make substantial inroads into the market. Laptops using AMD CPUs are at their most available and they're still lucky to be 20% of any given manufacturer's SKUs. Intel has an opportunity to reclaim some of those areas w…

The last time they did that we ended up with Itanium.

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#15

Post by akira2501 »

fragmede wrote: post #9
14 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which means close the site and ignore the article. Or wait for some kind soul to post the archived version on HN lol.

I might get kicked out of the cool kids club for suggesting this, but, err, maybe we could use money in exchange for goods and se services? I know! it's a crazy idea. it'll never work. but still.

The "service" of writing down things people have said out loud is pretty low margin. So your choices are to put a paywall up and hope people pay a flat rate for whatever you happen to offer each month or to increase your distribution as much as you can while embedding relevant static advertisements. Since delivery is exceedingly cheap it seems obvious which strategy to use.

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#16

Post by Pet_Ant »

tw04 wrote: post #14
BeefWellington wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of performance, AMD spent around 10 getting to the front, 2-3 in front, then another 10 getting back in front. However until the introduction of Ryzen (and really EPYC) AMD hadn't been able to make substantial inroads into the market. Laptops using AMD CPUs are at their most available and they're still lucky to be 20% of any given manufacturer's SKUs. Intel has an opportunity to reclaim some of those areas w…

The last time they did that we ended up with Itanium.

Itanium was designed to be diferente for difference sake to build a most using patents to prevent competition/commoditization with a pinch of the second-system effect thrown in.

What is needed is a sober look and re-engineering.

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#17

Post by ArtTimeInvestor »

deelowe wrote: post #11
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #6

I have not watched Intel closely for a long time. Seeing that its market cap is down 30% over the last decade is crazy. Considering how IT in general grew so much over the same time period. What happened? To see how the Intel CEO is thinking, I now scrolled through a few interviews with him. In this interview, Intel's CEO is asked to describe the difference of a CPU and a GPU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d07wy5AK…

In a nutshell, Intel's board was focused on extracting value from the company instead of innovating. While this was going on, compute was undergoing a transformation as everything transitioned to cloud solutions. By the time they realized, it was too late and the rot had set in. Now the company is full of mediocre middle managers and principles who spend all day playing politics instead of working on real problems.

    board was focused on extracting value from the company
From the company? Extract to where?

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#18

Post by DeepPhilosopher »

TechPlasma wrote: post #3
timmytokyo wrote: post #2

Article is paywalled.

The verge has seemingly been doing this a lot recently and it's been very annoying. It's not obvious that any given article will be paywalled or not. It would be nice if they at least marked them.

Whether or not its paywalled depends on how much you read. You can get around most of the paywalls by going incognito or clearing your cookies.

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#19

Post by orwin »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #17
deelowe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a nutshell, Intel's board was focused on extracting value from the company instead of innovating. While this was going on, compute was undergoing a transformation as everything transitioned to cloud solutions. By the time they realized, it was too late and the rot had set in. Now the company is full of mediocre middle managers and principles who spend all day playing politics instead of working on real problems.

board was focused on extracting value from the company From the company? Extract to where?

Their own pocket I'd wager.

A simple way to check if a board/CEO wants to extract a lot of future value _now_ is to look into their accounting, and especially how they count physical assets.

If they count physical assets at their current selling price, you can probably get in long-term.

If they count them at their buying prices you might have to worry.

If they do 'future accounting', tying into assets their estimated future added value, you can be sure the current owners are extracting the most they can _now_ and will try to drop the bag into futures investors (or ask for a government bailout)

Re: What Arm's CEO makes of the Intel debacle

#20

Post by astrodust »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #17
deelowe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a nutshell, Intel's board was focused on extracting value from the company instead of innovating. While this was going on, compute was undergoing a transformation as everything transitioned to cloud solutions. By the time they realized, it was too late and the rot had set in. Now the company is full of mediocre middle managers and principles who spend all day playing politics instead of working on real problems.

board was focused on extracting value from the company From the company? Extract to where?

"Shareholders" meaning "executives".
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