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Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

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Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#161

Post by s1dev »

billsnow wrote: post #156
tw04 wrote: post #103

I've never had time for Intel creating 400 different CPUs just to create artificial market segmentation and force people into a more expensive CPU. Why is there an i3, i5, i7, i9 - ahh, right, because then you can try to justify charging incrementally more for each additional feature. Oh you want turbo boost? Sorry that's an i5! Oh you want hyperthreading/SMT? Nope, next model up. Oh you want ECC? That's a "workstati…

ECC support is an actual +10-20% cost in materials for the motherboard and DIMM manufacturers. Also, ECC errors are basically non-existent on desktop/laptop workloads. ECC is worth the extra cost in servers, but for desktops and laptops, the market got it right.

A consumer PC should see a single bit error roughly once a week. That’s hardly non-existent

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#162

Post by brianwawok »

inetknght wrote: post #140
colejohnson66 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the silicon lottery is very much a thing at these nanometer sizes. So some market segmentation has to exist. If Intel threw away every chip that had one of the four cores come out broken, they’d lose a lot of money and have to raise prices to compensate. By fusing off the broken and one of the good ones, they can sell it as a two core SKU. Does this excuse Intel’s form of market segmen…

> By fusing off the broken and one of the good ones, they can sell it as a two core SKU. Fuse off the broken one? Sure, makes sense. Fuse off a good one? That's arguably amoral and should be discouraged. Three cores can be better than two. Let the consumer disable the runt core if they need.

Wait till you find out that two people side by side on an airplane may pay 10x or more difference in ticket price, for the same ride.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#163

Post by secondaryacct »

alexhawke wrote: post #158
colejohnson66 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the silicon lottery is very much a thing at these nanometer sizes. So some market segmentation has to exist. If Intel threw away every chip that had one of the four cores come out broken, they’d lose a lot of money and have to raise prices to compensate. By fusing off the broken and one of the good ones, they can sell it as a two core SKU. Does this excuse Intel’s form of market segmen…

Apple produces one A series chip for the iPhones every year. How does that work?

It doesnt, still cant game with it.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#164

Post by tcoff91 »

alexhawke wrote: post #158
colejohnson66 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the silicon lottery is very much a thing at these nanometer sizes. So some market segmentation has to exist. If Intel threw away every chip that had one of the four cores come out broken, they’d lose a lot of money and have to raise prices to compensate. By fusing off the broken and one of the good ones, they can sell it as a two core SKU. Does this excuse Intel’s form of market segmen…

Apple produces one A series chip for the iPhones every year. How does that work?

Baseless speculation: perhaps they do actually throw away chips? They only really target a premium market segment so perhaps it's not worth it to their brand to try and keep those chips.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#165

Post by mizzack »

cptskippy wrote: post #112
mizzack wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it because they're afraid of improper installation breaking them? Yes. This was an issue back in the Athlon Thunderbird days. "It's on the user" doesn't work as an argument when all of your large desktop/server OEMs notice a large uptick in failure rate post-assembly.

Looking back it seems so barbaric. I remember how they briefly tried those black foam sticker pads in the corners of the substrate before acquiescing and using the IHS. At some point they realized they could do better than a heatsink mounting system that involved trying to balance a heavy metal object on a small pedestal while trying to hook a tensioned spring to a clip you couldn't see by exerting tremendous downwar…

Only as barbaric as the ~50dB, 4krpm tiny fans on enthusiast coolers in those days.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#166

Post by minhazm »

alexhawke wrote: post #158
colejohnson66 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the silicon lottery is very much a thing at these nanometer sizes. So some market segmentation has to exist. If Intel threw away every chip that had one of the four cores come out broken, they’d lose a lot of money and have to raise prices to compensate. By fusing off the broken and one of the good ones, they can sell it as a two core SKU. Does this excuse Intel’s form of market segmen…

Apple produces one A series chip for the iPhones every year. How does that work?

Look at the Apple A12x. They disabled a GPU core in it for the iPad, and then in the A12z they enabled that core. This was likely to help with yields. Then with the M1 chips they decided to sell a 7 core version of the chip with the base level Macbook Air and save the 8 core version for the higher trims.

Even Apple is susceptible to it. But Apple doesn't sell chips, they sell devices and they can eat the cost for some of these. For example if a chip has 2 bad cores instead of selling a 6 core version Apple is probably just scrapping it.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#167

Post by colejohnson66 »

brianwawok wrote: post #162
inetknght wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By fusing off the broken and one of the good ones, they can sell it as a two core SKU. Fuse off the broken one? Sure, makes sense. Fuse off a good one? That's arguably amoral and should be discouraged. Three cores can be better than two. Let the consumer disable the runt core if they need.

Wait till you find out that two people side by side on an airplane may pay 10x or more difference in ticket price, for the same ride.

Such as some airlines having a “business/first class” that’s nothing but “board before the plebs”

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#168

Post by [deleted] »

cletus wrote: post #80

It's amazing how far Intel has fallen. The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how humiliating must that be? Intel completely missed the mobile revolution. They had a stake in that race but sold it (ie XScale). Intel's product segmentation is bewildering. They've also kept features "enterprise" only to prop up high server chip prices to the d…

[deleted]

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#169

Post by MangoCoffee »

Maakuth wrote: post #30
lvl100 wrote: post #25

Intel is NOT competing against AMD only. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a number of big tech companies developing their own chips. Focusing on AMD would be quite myopic from a strategic pov. This market is only getting more competitive. Either you compete on performance or price.

These companies are already not paying anything close to the list price, though.

its not about the price but the ability to create chip that fit what you needs. For example: YouTube is now building its own video-transcoding chips.

The biggest cost of making chip is the foundry and the foundry ecosystem have reduced the cost to where everyone can be a fabless and just outsource to foundry like TSMC and Samsung.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/youtube-is-now-build...

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#170

Post by formerly_proven »

tw04 wrote: post #103

I've never had time for Intel creating 400 different CPUs just to create artificial market segmentation and force people into a more expensive CPU. Why is there an i3, i5, i7, i9 - ahh, right, because then you can try to justify charging incrementally more for each additional feature. Oh you want turbo boost? Sorry that's an i5! Oh you want hyperthreading/SMT? Nope, next model up. Oh you want ECC? That's a "workstati…

Fun-fact: Intel's 12th gen desktop CPUs will no longer have AVX-512. Well, I mean, the cores do have it, but it's disabled in all SKUs. So to do any AVX-512 development and testing at all you will need an Intel Xeon machine in the future.
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