New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects • Hacker News Board

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#261

Post by vsef » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #189

hinkley wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known people from towns with one or even two big industries, grew up in several, and the town always gets weird after a while. One in particular I'm thinking of that was almost healthy had a state and an art university pulling in money, and people who lived in the school districts but commuted to heavy industry in an exurb of the next big town. Someone tried building a factory on the edge of town to poach those…

Intel in Oregon is probably like an hour from downtown Portland, and there are a ton of apartment complexes about halfway between the two (and there's nice public transit to Portland, so you don't have to deal with the drivers). Nike also has a big building nearby. Also, I imagine Intel would gain very little from being located in, for example, the Bay Area or NYC. It isn't like they are some little startup that need…

Intel employs 5,900 people in Santa Clara county and that is their corporate headquarters so obviously they think they gain something from a large Bay Area footprint. The idea that Bay Area hiring is primarily "little startups that need to go out to bars" is also very odd.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#262

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

cbozeman wrote: post #188

1-6 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your list is skewing toward Amazon, but point well taken. If you include Google and Microsoft, they're all chip-designers as well because they can simply license ARM's designs. Imagine if Netflix decided to hire chip designers. All that's left is fabrication and Intel is exiting that.

There is no way Intel is going to exit fabrication. They're using TSMC out of necessity, not desire. Intel's fabs are integral not only to their success and profits, but to the infrastructure of the United States itself. We simply cannot allow all CPU fabrication to be offshored, especially when most of it is close to China (Taiwan / TSMC). Samsung is too busy pumping out smartphone / tablet CPUs and NVIDIA's GPUs, s…

I think it's important to point out that the US has plenty of silicon fabrication plants. They just don't produce the cutting edge 3nm chips, instead they focus on the older chips that make up the bulk of the market. Silicon chips are still the fourth largest American manufacturing export.

Given the expensive involved in bleeding edge manufacturing and the comparatively low volumes of sales, the consolidation of manufacturing capacity is not really surprising.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#263

Post by Swizec » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #208

giantg2 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just have trouble wrapping my head around how someone can be that valuable. I'll never even hit $75/hr (excluding inflation).

Their labour can absolutely be that valuable due to how many customers you are effecting with a single hour of work - it's sort of the same principle as athletic stars - paying outrageous salaries to athletes is probably the least bad way to do things (it's certainly better than the companies just pocketing lots of cash). That said, I think this is only achievable because of how relatively young and greenfield softwa…

It’s not about skills, it’s about the value those skills provide.

If you write a webapp to solve a $5000/day problem, that’s worth $X. If your company sells that to 10 companies, your work is worth 10X. But if it’s sold to 10000, wow.

Think of your work in terms of value provided to the buyer, not in terms of cost to yourself. Thus you unlock career potential

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#264

Post by totalZero » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

jtsiskin wrote: post #47

mikewarot wrote: post #36

If he's going to focus on maximizing threads instead of performance per thread, they'll come out on top. The race to make a single instruction thread move ever faster has obviously hit its limits as the main driver of overall compute performance. If they keep pushing the old model of ever more GHz, they'll fail.

That depends on if developers can be convinced to actually use multiple threads...

Maybe if you can find a PC or server that only runs one process at a time. We live in a multithreaded world nowadays due to multitasking and virtualization.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#265

Post by boboche » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

Intel’s last tick before joining DEC, MIPS, PowerPC and other amazing architectures that sat on their successes and ultimatel woke up too late.

I’ve been through 2 architecture deaths in my life, at least this one wont be as painful as I stopped viewing this as a religion and more like tools.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#266

Post by b3kart » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

konjin wrote: post #257

spicybright wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely feel bad for talented people that get suckered into deals like this. Obviously some do if recruiters try and do this.

People agree, talented people do not.

Underpaid people aren’t talented? That’s harsh.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#267

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #149

1-6 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your list is skewing toward Amazon, but point well taken. If you include Google and Microsoft, they're all chip-designers as well because they can simply license ARM's designs. Imagine if Netflix decided to hire chip designers. All that's left is fabrication and Intel is exiting that.

Netflix runs on AWS, and even if they didn't, I would seriously question their management if they decided to hire chip designers. There's something to be said about being focused and not trying to do everything in-house, or specializing where it makes sense to do so.

Yes. Netflix sells content. Any savings they make on the tech-stack side is going to need to be shared with the companies that they are buying content from.

It makes much more sense for them to focus on making content than making ARM chips.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#268

Post by RocketSyntax » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #17

RocketSyntax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err. shouldn't the real competitors be viewed as ARM and M1?

Both. Intel has really found itself in a pickle. After years of stagnation, it has serious competition from * AMD * NVIDIA+ARM * and now Apple Intel will have to hustle for 5 years at least to catch up.

Unless the go all in on something like neuromorphic or quantum

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#269

Post by Daho0n » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

95014_refugee wrote: post #42

clubdorothe wrote: post #4

They've probably lost[1] few months ago their most talented chips engineer, Jim Keller[2]. Ironically, Jim suggested to outsource the manufacturing of their chips, what the new CEO just did [3]. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15846/jim-keller-resigns-from... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer) [3] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/319301-report-intel-wi...

“Losing” Keller is a net win. Hinton, OTOH, is the real deal. I had the privilege of spending some time with him and the gang back in the Nehalem days. Hinton and Keller don’t belong in the same conversation.

I smell fish. Keller is for those companies that hire him as Steve Jobs was for Apple. I can't think of a single person that is better at righting a CPU company's technical direction. I would even bet a lot on money on that he have been asked by Intel.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#270

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #90

UncleOxidant wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been approached by headhunters for contract work at Intel. They want all kinds of machine learning knowledge & experience and the pay is.... $45/hr. I kid you not. I just sort of laugh and tell them that that's about 1/3 of market rate for that kind of thing.

Sometimes recruiters get things wrong, mix things up. That might have been for a different position that got redefined without commensurate pay adjustment. That said, 45 is really low for any position in an engineering company, unless it’s ancillary support services that get farmed out. Something like ‘Lab Admin’ type of thing.

A quick search shows average US software engineer's salary is $92,046 / yr. Divide that by 251 working days and 8 hours to arrive at $45/h.