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Intel Problems

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Re: Intel Problems

#271

Post by sanxiyn »

WoodenChair wrote: post #158
JoshTko wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually have a lot of insight in that Intel still doesn't have a good grasp on the problem. Their 10nm was supposed to enter volume production in mid 2018, and they still haven't truly entered volume production today. Additionally Intel announced in July 2020 that their 7nm is delayed by at least a year which means they figured out their node delay problem.

> We actually have a lot of insight in that Intel still doesn't have a good grasp on the problem. Their 10nm was supposed to enter volume production in mid 2018, and they still haven't truly entered volume production today. Additionally Intel announced in July 2020 that their 7nm is delayed by at least a year which means they figured out their node delay problem. Knowing something happened is not the same as knowing…

I think it's just a difficult problem. Intel is trying to do 10 nm without EUV. TSMC never solved that problem because they switched to EUV at that node size.

Re: Intel Problems

#272

Post by john_alan »

rauhl wrote: post #263
ashtonkem wrote: post #10

I think one day we’re going to wake up and discover that AWS mostly runs on Graviton (ARM) and not x86. And on that day intel’s troubles will go from future to present. My standing theory is that the m1 will accelerate it. Obviously all the wholly managed AWS services (Dynamo, Kinesis, S3, etc.) can change over silently, but the issue is EC2. I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these ma…

> I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these machines will age out and be replaced with m1 powered machines. At that point the idea of developing on ARM and deploying on x86 will be unpleasant Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Agreed that developing on ARM and deploying on x86 is unpleasant,…

You can easily bring macOS up to Linux level GNU with brew.

I agree generally though. I see macOS as an important Unix OS for the next decade.

Re: Intel Problems

#273

Post by wwtrv »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #266
esclerofilo wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ARM business model isn't that profitable. Intel's market cap right now is about 240 billion, 6 times the amount Nvidia is paying for ARM.

>Intel's market cap right now is about 240 billion, 6 times the amount Nvidia is paying for ARM so what? yahoo was a giant in its heyday. blackberry was the king with its phone. no empire stay on top forever. Apple/Amazon created its own cpu. ARM killing it in mobile space. intel is the king right now but with more and more its customers design their own cpu. how long before intel fall?

ARM Ltd. is earning relatively very little from this and there seems to be little reason why would that change in the future. This is why it can’t really survive as an independent company.

If you compare net income instead of mkt. cap Intel is ahead by 70 times (instead of 6) and is relatively undervalued compared to other tech companies.

Re: Intel Problems

#274

Post by davish »

old-gregg wrote: post #270
rauhl wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these machines will age out and be replaced with m1 powered machines. At that point the idea of developing on ARM and deploying on x86 will be unpleasant Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Agreed that developing on ARM and deploying on x86 is unpleasant,…

> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? And I personally hope that by then, GNU/Linux will have an M1-like processor available to happily run on. The possibilities demonstrated by this chip (performance+silence+battery) are so compelling that it's inevitable we'll see them in non-Apple designs. Also, as it usually happens wi…

I think we can look to mobile to see how feasible this might be: consistently over the past decade, iPhones have matched or exceeded Android performance with noticeably smaller capacity batteries. A-series chips and Qualcomm chips are both ARM. Apple's tight integration comes with a cost when it comes to flexibility, and, you can argue, developer experience, but it's clearly not just the silicon itself that leads to the performance we're seeing in the M1 Macs.

Re: Intel Problems

#275

Post by Steltek »

john_alan wrote: post #272
rauhl wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these machines will age out and be replaced with m1 powered machines. At that point the idea of developing on ARM and deploying on x86 will be unpleasant Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Agreed that developing on ARM and deploying on x86 is unpleasant,…

You can easily bring macOS up to Linux level GNU with brew. I agree generally though. I see macOS as an important Unix OS for the next decade.

"Linux" is more than coreutils. The Mac kernel is no where close to Linux in capability and Apple hates 3rd party drivers to boot. You'll end up running a half-baked Linux VM anyway so all macOS gets you is a SSH client with a nice desktop environment, which you can find anywhere really.

Re: Intel Problems

#276

Post by cwhiz »

Spooky23 wrote: post #175
JoshTko wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually have a lot of insight in that Intel still doesn't have a good grasp on the problem. Their 10nm was supposed to enter volume production in mid 2018, and they still haven't truly entered volume production today. Additionally Intel announced in July 2020 that their 7nm is delayed by at least a year which means they figured out their node delay problem.

Wasn’t the issue that the whole industry did a joint venture, but Intel decided to go it alone? I worked at a site (in a unrelated industry) where there was a lot of collaborative semiconductor stuff going on, and the only logo “missing” was Intel.

Didn't Samsung also go it alone, or am I mistaken?

Re: Intel Problems

#277

Post by JoshTko »

WoodenChair wrote: post #158
JoshTko wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually have a lot of insight in that Intel still doesn't have a good grasp on the problem. Their 10nm was supposed to enter volume production in mid 2018, and they still haven't truly entered volume production today. Additionally Intel announced in July 2020 that their 7nm is delayed by at least a year which means they figured out their node delay problem.

> We actually have a lot of insight in that Intel still doesn't have a good grasp on the problem. Their 10nm was supposed to enter volume production in mid 2018, and they still haven't truly entered volume production today. Additionally Intel announced in July 2020 that their 7nm is delayed by at least a year which means they figured out their node delay problem. Knowing something happened is not the same as knowing…

The point of my comment is that Intel doesn't know either and that's a bigger problem.

Re: Intel Problems

#278

Post by davish »

mc10 wrote: post #251
npunt wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ben missed an important part of the geopolitical difference between TSMC and Intel: Taiwan is much more invested in TSMC's success than America is in Intel's. Taiwan's share of the semiconductor industry is 66% and TSMC is the leader of that industry. Semiconductors helps keep Taiwan from China's encroachment because it buys them protection from allies like the US and Europe, whose economies heavily rely on them. To…

> Semiconductors helps keep Taiwan from China's encroachment because it buys them protection from allies like the US and Europe, whose economies heavily rely on them. Are there any signed agreements that would enforce this? If China one day suddenly decides to take Taiwan, would the US or Europe step in with military forces?

The closest I've found is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act

Not guaranteed "mutual defense" of any sort, but the US at least has committed itself to helping Taiwan protect itself with military aid. The section on "Military provisions" is probably most helpful.

Re: Intel Problems

#279

Post by jecel »

klelatti wrote: post #136
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days when Intel could single handedly successfully introduce a new (incompatible) ISA are long gone (if it ever could). Given itanium, I'd say they never could (although that could have been a fluke of that specific design)

Indeed and that was with HP. Look long enough back and you have iAPX 432!

There was also the three way ISA battle at Intel: 486 vs 860 vs 960. In the end they decided that legacy software was too valuable and redefined the 860 as a graphics co-processor and the 960 as a intelligent DMA to keep people from building Unix computers with them

Re: Intel Problems

#280

Post by Stevvo »

adrian_b wrote: post #206
cbozeman wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it'll be a good thing when people stop worrying about process node technology and start worrying about performance and power usage. Intel's 14nm chips are already competitive with AMD's (TSMC's, really) 7nm chips. The i7-11700 or whatever the newest one coming out soon is called, is going to be pretty much exactly on parity with AMD's Ryzen 5000 series. So if node shrinkage is such a dramatic increase in perf…

Since AMD has introduced its first 7 nm chip, Intel's 14-nm chips have never been competitive. Intel's 14-nm process has only 1 advantage over any other process node, including Intel's own 10 nm: the highest achievable clock frequency, of up to 5.3 GHz. This advantage is very important for games, but not for most other purposes. Since the first 7-nm chip of AMD, their CPUs consume much less power at a given clock fre…

"This advantage is very important for games, but not for most other purposes."

I disagree. The majority of desktop applications are only lightly threaded e.g. Adobe products, office suites, Electron apps, anything mostly written before 2008.

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