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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

#201

Post by AtlasBarfed »

woofie11 wrote: post #88
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…

I think one more issue is support. If I want a chip from TI, Analog Devices, etc., I fill out a web form and get a sample. If I want to talk to an engineer, I place a phone call. If I want to order a dozen of a part, I go to Digikey. If I want a datasheet, it's online. Intel won't give you the time of day unless you're HP or Dell. That's optimal for capitalizing on old markets, but it means it's never in new markets.…

And everything you detailed there is solely a management issue.

They could devote a market segment to support that as a long term emerging market support aspect of their business, but it's clear that short term hit-strike-price-for-execs has been the dominant management mode for quite some time.

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

#202

Post by wayoutthere »

tcoff91 wrote: post #164
alexhawke wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No way; the half-busted chips go into low-cost products like the iPhone SE. It costs little to accumulate and warehouse them until a spot in the roadmap for a budget device arises.

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

#203

Post by shartacct »

rualca wrote: post #31
mensetmanusman wrote: post #29

This is exactly the purpose of competition, it shouldn’t be news.

I disagree. This should be news because it's as close as an official declaration that Intel acknowledges it's time as the world's leading chip manufacturer is over, and that the crown is nowadays firmly on AMD's head. Also, Intel's long history of using unethical tricks to preserve their market share while avoidig competing on price also makes this a historical turn of events.

> This should be news because it's as close as an official declaration that Intel acknowledges it's time as the world's leading chip manufacturer is over, and that the crown is nowadays firmly on AMD's head.

You're being premature here. Intel still makes more profit in one quarter than AMD makes revenue in multiple years. Intel still puts out more than 10x as many CPUs as AMD does in a year in one quarter.

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

#204

Post by Const-me »

gtirloni wrote: post #65
mrjin wrote: post #41

Have been with Intel for almost two decades, I finally moved to AMD for the very first time recently and I'm glad I did. Intel is being called "Toothpaste Company" for a reason. It has deliberately slowed down its innovation since gained performance advantage over AMD with CORE, for over a decade now. Between each iteration, there was not many changes but kept adding fancy instruction sets such as AVX512 useless to m…

What tangible benefits are you getting from choosing AMD now? Honest question as I'm curious if there's another benefit besides price (which Intel is fighting now).

They are faster for many practical applications, at every price point.

Maybe it's just me but all my performance-sensitive applications are heavily multithreaded. AMD CPUs simply have more cores. The profit from Intel only AVX-512 doesn't quite cut it. Besides, not all apps are actually optimized to leverage AVX-512, C++ compilers aren't.

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

#206

Post by Apes »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #46
syshum wrote: post #12

In anti-trust terms would this not be "dumping"

No. Dumping is selling below the cost of production, with the intent of driving someone else out of a market. This is just normal price competition. It's a good thing.

A monopoly becomes illegal when it negatively impacts consumers.

If a company is able to lower costs to better compete with another company taking market share, wouldn't that imply that:

1. They had a defacto monopoly in the sector that allowed them to price above the fair market value.

2. They harmed consumers by pricing above fair market value.

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

#207

Post by Brave-Steak »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #99
Guthur wrote: post #61

Lol, this stinks of PR BS. It's Intel's vertical integration that has hamstrung its chip design for about half a decade. 10nm transition was an unmitigated disaster and because of it Intel has haemorrhaged technical dominance and has only really maintained market dominance due to entrenched and slow moving decision cycles within the data centre space and to a lesser extend the consumer market. Intel will likely stabl…

Not just technical dominance — we’ve all heard of lead Intel engineers hired away to Apple/Google/Amazon/etc during this period of stagnation. How many senior engineers, staff engineers, and low-level talent in general has Intel bled in the last 5-7 years? How many of them have moved to Qualcomm, TSMC, Apple, Google, etc? At this point, I wonder if Intel is even capable of fixing their technical problems since most o…

There's also how Intel has repeatedly laid off older workers

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2015/08/intel_layo...

> Proportionately, employees in their 50s were three times more likely to lose their jobs than workers in their 30s, according to a document obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive that tallies every Intel employee in the United States. The company was nearly five times more likely to lay off workers in their 60s than those in their 30s.

I'm sure they've lost a lot of institutional knowledge through cost-cutting like this.

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

#209

Post by xxpor »

jimbob45 wrote: post #196
tcoff91 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no way they throw away that much revenue. Not even Apple is that committed to purity. I'm sure they have a hush-hush deal with another company to shove their chips in no-name microwave ovens or something.

Funny story about microwaves, theres basically only 2 main manufacturers. They're both in China, and you've never heard of them. But if you look at various brands in the US and take them apart, you'll see the only difference is the interface. The insides are literally the same.

The only exception to this are Panasonic microwaves.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-microwave/

Granted, a microwave with a half broken M1 in it would be awesome.

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

#210

Post by scoopertrooper »

jvanderbot wrote: post #188
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.

That's not amoral. It's missing a market opportunity, but conflating that with morality is an interesting way of looking at it. Businesses don't owe you a product (before you pay for it) any more than you owe them loyalty after you pay for something. They will suffer when someone else offers what you want and you leave. That's the point of markets and competition.

Maybe 'amoral' is a bit strong, but I think there is something wrong with an economic system where producers destroy wealth, rather than distribute all that is produced.

If it's wrong for the government to pay farmers to burn crops during a depression, then it's wrong for a monopoly to disable chip capabilities during a chip shortage.

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