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Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

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Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#171

Post by creato »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #160
nurspouse wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using cubicles a symptom of a sickness would mean that Google and FB are sicker. Intel has better workstations.

I have a Lenovo P920 at Google. Dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6154 CPU @ 3.00GHz for 72 virtual cores. And if I want more cores in the cloud, that's also an option. What does yours look like?

From the context, I think the point was about the whole "work"station, not just the computer. It sounds like intel has cubicles, while google has smaller desks with no dividers.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#172

Post by RandomBK »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #108
icelancer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> $120+/hour Even this would be a substantial discount for most qualified people.

Given the company, it's usually long-term contracts that more closely resemble full-time employment. The location is also usually outside of the biggest, most expensive cities. $120/hr * 40 hrs/wk * 50 wks/yr = $240K before self-employment taxes and paying for insurance. Ends up being comparable to typical compensation in cities that aren't SF, Seattle, or other top-tier markets. Now if someone was doing more typical…

Very true, though it'll depend on the seniority of the position.

$240K/yr, minus self-employment taxes, insurance, and other overhead, not to mention the lack of other non-monetary benefits and comp, is not a lot for someone doing serious machine learning.

I'd imagine that the type of specialized talent that Intel needs to catch up to AMD have plenty of options open to them. A comp strategy based on median industry comp might work to maintain their position, but probably won't churn out new industry-leading tech needed to jump ahead.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#173

Post by MBCook »

wmf wrote: post #166
causality0 wrote: post #127

I'd be interested in an x86-64 processor that took the 1+3+4 approach of the Snapdragon 875. One big core with a super high clock rate and massive IPC, three smaller ones, and four that are smaller still. A desktop CPU with a single-core performance equal to half a normal 8-core chip would be an absolutely incredible tool for IPC-constrained applications like game console emulation.

A desktop CPU with a single-core performance equal to half a normal 8-core chip This isn't possible. The cores are already as fast as they can be, so moving from 10 big to 1 big would only reduce performance.

The bigger problem is you need operating system support. Linux/android has it. iOS has it. If iOS has it there’s a very good chance that macOS has it (we’ll probably find out on Tuesday).

What does Windows support heterogeneous cores at all? I don’t think it does. And until that happens, would you be able to sell a chip to the public?

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#174

Post by flower-giraffe »

mark-r wrote: post #164
microtherion wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the digital camera was literally invented at Kodak! What if they had pivoted to building cameras themselves?

They did manufacture cameras themselves, but it wasn't enough. Remember that Kodak was making money in film manufacturing, film processing, and printing. They were literally making money from every click of the shutter. Even if they built the best cameras in the world, it wouldn't have saved them. And the ability of any electronics company to make cameras from standardized components made it impossible for them to ke…

> They were literally making money from every click of the shutter.

and that’s the pivot the software players made in tech, they monetised every click of the mouse (and every tap) while intel is stuck with the burden of the platform costs

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#175

Post by nurspouse »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #160
nurspouse wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using cubicles a symptom of a sickness would mean that Google and FB are sicker. Intel has better workstations.

I have a Lenovo P920 at Google. Dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6154 CPU @ 3.00GHz for 72 virtual cores. And if I want more cores in the cloud, that's also an option. What does yours look like?

I was careless with my wording. By workstation, I was emphasizing the station portion.

As an example, my current cube at Intel has walls all around (albeit short, but some buildings have walls taller than most people), 2 file storage cabinets with a fair number of drawers, a decent sized desk (enough for 2 people, not that we'd do that). Correspondingly, the cube is enough for 2 people. Also, I have a whiteboard.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#176

Post by mensetmanusman »

ethbr0 wrote: post #52
013a wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and that's my biggest fear. The process side of this industry is in a really scary spot right now. TSMC is killing it. Nvidia is using Samsung to fab the RTX 3xxx chips, and there's some rumblings that low yields are a reason why those are in such short supply (not to mention, whenever Samsung releases a new phone only some regions get the Exynos chips, because historically they couldn't produce enough of them…

The geopolitical angle is not to be forgotten either. TSMC is majority-based in a country whose land and government is claimed by another, nearby, much larger country. A country willing to leverage international economic options to further that claim. TSMC's global importance has direct implications on the world's appetite for intervening or preemptively selling arms against a hypothetical Taiwan Strait invasion.

That’s an interesting point.

I’m sure it’s not lost on folks in the region the importance of TSMC when Xi is telling troops to “prepare for war”

Hopefully their plan to deal with the 30million extra men isn’t war ( https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-02/13/content_28183... )

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#177

Post by redisman »

api wrote: post #39

The US needs to do whatever it takes to get TSMC to build not only top-tier fabs but centers of excellence here. As it stands TSMC on Taiwan, which is threatened by China, has damn near a monopoly on competitive fabrication. A single hit on Taiwan could terminally stall the entire global supply chain for top-tier chips.

Taiwans international relations are pretty delicate. I’m not sure if there is a lot that they want to change right now. Controlling the manufacturing of top end microchips is exactly the kind of card a small “neutral” country with a scary neighbor wants up their sleeve. Sure you could have a US embassy and recognize their sovereignty and put a military base and park some destroyers there but that would be a serious escalation with China.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#178

Post by mensetmanusman »

api wrote: post #39

The US needs to do whatever it takes to get TSMC to build not only top-tier fabs but centers of excellence here. As it stands TSMC on Taiwan, which is threatened by China, has damn near a monopoly on competitive fabrication. A single hit on Taiwan could terminally stall the entire global supply chain for top-tier chips.

Think on decades time scale, electron based turing machines are asymptoting in design, there isn’t much space for someone to be ahead until we start making optical computers.

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#179

Post by redisman »

hydroreadsstuff wrote: post #75
rasz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Taiwan let TSMC move its operations away and thus weaken Taiwans U.S. Defense Guarantees?

Who would've thought that high-end chip manufacturing could be a (n enormous) bargaining chip.

Someone who can think long term I guess

Re: Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

#180

Post by ogre_codes »

vbezhenar wrote: post #87
ogre_codes wrote: post #53

This is just bad all around. Not just for intel, but for the entire industry. I always prefer companies doing well because their products are successful, not because their competitors fall down. More and more, Apple's timing on their switch to in-house ARM designs seems perfectly timed.

Apple should have switched to AMD instead. They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips. Now they either need to halt some Mac lines or develop all kinds of CPUs, from mobile (which they probably can do, because they should be similar enough to iPhones) to server-grade (which they have no experience at all). And there's no way Mac Pr…

> They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips.

With the ARM transition, Apple has perfect compatibility with the iPhone which is arguable more important for Apple than Intel compatibility.

Apple is already investing tons of money in CPU design, they are just doing it via proxy with Intel building the chips for them. Bringing it in-house means they can add the features they want to the CPU on the time frames that meet their needs.

Going with AMD just shifts who they outsource their chip design to, it doesn't give them the sort of control over their architecture they want.

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