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Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

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Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#131

Post by klelatti »

tw04 wrote: post #126
hollerith wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if your mom doesn't care about battery life, she will probably buy a product that is also sold to buyers who do care about battery life, and if the product can meet those buyer's needs with a smaller battery, then your mom's laptop will be lighter. So, does your mom also not care about the weight of her laptop?

The Macbook air with intel CPU weighs 2.75 lbs, the Macbook air with M1 weighs 2.8 lbs. The macbook pro is 3.0 vs 3.1 lbs. The weight is a non-factor. Quite frankly until you start cracking 5lbs nobody even cares in my experience. Apple's maniacal focus on making laptops skinnier and lighter has done a disservice to the entire product line, which they seemingly acknowledged with the 16" Pro.

Strongly disagree. I'm writing this on a 12" MacBook with a partly broken screen - by far my favourite machine (I have a 2020 MacBook Pro too). I'm not alone too.

I expect we'll see an M series MacBook again but this time it won't be underpowered.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#132

Post by hangonhn »

heyheyhey wrote: post #123
ksec wrote: post #99

"Notable absent from that list is he fired Pat Gelsinger. Please just bring him back as CEO." - [1] 2012 on HN, when Paul Otellini Retired. "The only one who may have a slim chance to completely transform Intel is Pat Gelsinger, if Andy Grove saved Intel last time, it will be his apprentice to save Intel again. Unfortunately given what Intel has done to Pat during his last tenure, I am not sure if he is willing to pi…

Wow, I'm impressed by your persistence. Have you worked with him or know him personally?

I worked at VMware when Pat first became the CEO. Pat is very much an engineer. If you ever wanted an engineer as your CEO, then that's Pat. That comes with some goods and some not-so-greats. Pat isn't very inspiring, at least not when he first became CEO. But I always got the feeling that he genuinely love engineers and is more comfortable around them than anything else. I once hosted a fun little engineering challenge (building bridges out of spaghetti). It wasn't a fancy event -- just a bunch of engineers having fun. Pat actually agreed to come by to hand out the awards at the end. I left VMware partly because I've been there so long and partly because I wasn't excited about it anymore. I felt its best days were behind it. Well, Pat proved me wrong by a wide margin. If no-nonsense engineering is what you need to win, then Pat is the right person for the job. It's a good day for Intel I think.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#134

Post by mhh__ »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #63

Gelsinger was pushed out as CTO after horribly failing to address AMD's competitive threats. I have no idea how he wormed his way back in, but this does not bode well for Intel's future: Gelsinger is proof of the "Peter Principle", being promoted too high. EDIT: I was a bit harsh, toned it down. EDIT 2: This is probably petty, but I can't ignore the fact that there was a significant hubbub at Intel regarding him usin…

Damn, didn't read about that technique in Hennessy and Patterson.

Odd.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#135

Post by neogodless »

ghaff wrote: post #119
neogodless wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see if this is true, statistically: https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-int... Intel/AMD split in x86 currently 61.4% / 38.6%. If we (very incorrectly assume) 100% of Intel sales were through Apple and were going to all be replaced by Apple, then, even given current trends AMD and Apple would be at roughly 50/50 before long. Looks like OS X is around 16-17% of desktop operating system share…

First of all, ARM is already dominant on non-laptop mobile. Secondly, ARM is growing rapidly for workloads in places like AWS and many think there will be a lot of growth on-prem as well. Apple's symbolically important for Arm in the sense that it shows switching to a non-x86 architecture for a laptop is possible but they're fairly irrelevant from a volume perspective. If one assumes that x86 remains the dominant arc…

I don't know the history of non-laptop mobile CPUs. I assume they have pretty much almost all always been ARM. Please correct me if I'm misinformed. That hasn't factored into desktop/laptop considerations in the past. Currently, it seems to only factor into Apple's plans for unifying their OS X and iOS stack.

ARM is growing in servers, but AMD is as well[0]. It's not clear though how either smartphone or server architecture will affect desktop/laptop purchasing for consumers en masse.

Of course if we're talking about 2025-2030, I'm sure any predictions I make are a roll of the dice, at best. But right now I don't think there's enough momentum of any players to have absolute certainly about 2025 and beyond. There is a lot of inertia with x86 in desktop/laptop, and so far Apple's Macbook Air/Pro and Mac Mini are the only high performing options on ARM.

I like AMD but I'll be happy to see any technological progress that makes significant improvements to our quality of life.

Anecdote City:

Just five years ago I didn't consider laptops viable for gaming, and now I do most of my gaming on one. The Macbooks with M1 seem like they are capable of some level of gaming, but not "max setting" 1080p gaming, so it's not yet an option for someone like me to switch. But when I'm working, I do most of that on a powerful but very quiet desktop. The M1 chip would not improve my quality of life on my desktop because the efficiency of the chip won't really change anything for me. There's no compelling reason to swap out of my custom built machine to a Mac Mini.

Anecdotes are very personal. And so are computers. For many consumers where an M1-based machine work, the benefits are all but lost on them anyway, for a variety of reasons. They don't make decisions based on CPU efficiency - just what they are used to and what features they need and want. If a feature is really life-changing for that particular person they might be OK with change, e.g. switching out operating systems.

For a developer, it's either easy to think about switching because you know everything is cross-platform, or it's perhaps impossible to switch because you use exclusive software.

[0] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/318217-amd-arm-both-in...

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#136

Post by mhh__ »

sq_ wrote: post #95
fxtentacle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your market breakdown, but surely not with your assessment. In the consumer segment, you have regular people trying to make vacation videos with software like Adobe Premiere and Adobe Media Encoder, or Magix. Nvenc quality is bad. AMD is horribly slow. The only fast high quality encode is with Intel's dedicated CPU instructions, which both apps heavily promote to their users. And the 30% that you mention…

> AMD is horribly slow Not sure where you're getting that these days? Absolutely in the days of Bulldozer, but AMD's Zen 3 architecture has taken even the single core lead from Intel, not to mention the multi core lead they've held for several years now.

The encoder?

AMDs GPU encoder still lags a way behind Nvidia for example

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#138

Post by ra7 »

hangonhn wrote: post #132
heyheyhey wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I'm impressed by your persistence. Have you worked with him or know him personally?

I worked at VMware when Pat first became the CEO. Pat is very much an engineer. If you ever wanted an engineer as your CEO, then that's Pat. That comes with some goods and some not-so-greats. Pat isn't very inspiring, at least not when he first became CEO. But I always got the feeling that he genuinely love engineers and is more comfortable around them than anything else. I once hosted a fun little engineering challe…

What does this mean for VMware? By all accounts, it seems like Pat was well liked at VMware.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#139

Post by tambourine_man »

ksec wrote: post #99

"Notable absent from that list is he fired Pat Gelsinger. Please just bring him back as CEO." - [1] 2012 on HN, when Paul Otellini Retired. "The only one who may have a slim chance to completely transform Intel is Pat Gelsinger, if Andy Grove saved Intel last time, it will be his apprentice to save Intel again. Unfortunately given what Intel has done to Pat during his last tenure, I am not sure if he is willing to pi…

That's remarkable, can you share the reason for your emotional investment? Have you worked at Intel or with Pat?

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#140

Post by huac »

fxtentacle wrote: post #77
parasubvert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are vastly underestimating the revolution of what the M1 represents to the PC industry.

I think you are vastly underestimating how hard IT departments will kick you if you request or bring a device that cannot properly execute the company-critical legacy Windows x64 software. Like SAP, for example. (SAP is the largest non-American software company by revenue and does business management, workflow automation, and bookkeeping) My prediction is that outside of hipster startups, M1 will have no effect on bu…

M1 with Rosetta emulation is still faster or comparable to top Windows laptops, with room to run for M2.
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