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Intel Fights for Its Future

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Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#51

Post by mcintyre1994 »

hkmurakami wrote: post #42
IshKebab wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the upgrade cycle won't stay short for long, just like it hasn't for desktops. Give it 10 years and people will be keeping their phones until they break. Also anyone can make an ARM CPU so the margins are thin, whereas with x86 CPUs Intel will basically only ever have one competitor - AMD. They want to find another monopoly.

Even today I see an increasing number of friends moving from 2 years cycles to 3 year cycles. The "killer app" for smartphone refresh rates staying low are (1) battery degradation and (2) forced OS updates for app updates, which in turn slows the phone down to compel an update[1]. [1] I'm actually curious if OS updates slow down older phones these days. This was the case 5 years ago but perhaps things have changed/

I have an iPhone 6S - I'd say OS updates do slow the phone down, but they also tend to be really buggy and generally rubbish for a while. I think it's probably more bad engineering and software quality than anything nefarious.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#52

Post by yrro »

hkmurakami wrote: post #42
IshKebab wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the upgrade cycle won't stay short for long, just like it hasn't for desktops. Give it 10 years and people will be keeping their phones until they break. Also anyone can make an ARM CPU so the margins are thin, whereas with x86 CPUs Intel will basically only ever have one competitor - AMD. They want to find another monopoly.

Even today I see an increasing number of friends moving from 2 years cycles to 3 year cycles. The "killer app" for smartphone refresh rates staying low are (1) battery degradation and (2) forced OS updates for app updates, which in turn slows the phone down to compel an update[1]. [1] I'm actually curious if OS updates slow down older phones these days. This was the case 5 years ago but perhaps things have changed/

As a grumpy Moto G 3 owner, I would love for an OS update that slowed my phone down.

Short support cycles seriously dent the feasibility of keeping the same phone for even two years...

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#53

Post by oblio »

Someone wrote: post #43
oblio wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just a joke, based on the usual wooden speak of these announcements. I don't know which acquisition is better. I do think that Intel should probably enter the ARM, somehow, just to hedge their bets.

Again ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale )? They gave up on that to focus on low power x86 CPUs. Intel has an architectural license for 32-bit ARM ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings#Arm_architectural... ), so they could design their own micro-architecture whenever they want to. I don’t know whether they have one for 64-bit ARM, but they have money, so I expect it wouldn’t be difficult to get one.

I didn't mean that they should necessarily build something. But at least buying stock from an ARM manufacturer might not be a bad idea. Maybe not taking them over, but at least having stock.

That way, if things go wrong with x86, they can at least pull a Yahoo - Alibaba.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#55

Post by erikb »

Often the solution is a stalemate until a profitable opportunity arises. So, no surprises here.

Interesting to see that such a giant can really start shaking so badly by losing one of its sources of profit. I think even if the whole desktop market dies Intel will still make more money than most companies. Sure, maybe they need to shrink 80%, but 20% is far from a small company.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#56

Post by erikb »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #4

This article makes it seem that being a major player in mobile is the only way Intel could survive. Mobile is a decelerating market, while cloud and servers, where Intel has a huge lead is an expanding market and profitable. In 2017, Intel's revenue hit an all-time high, as it did the year before, and its stock is an all time high. This is not a company "fighting for its future."

How big is the server market though and how much is it supposed to grow?

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#57

Post by muyuu »

Not a single company in the field has a 100% guaranteed future. Even Microsoft, completely dominating in the 90s, is now second fiddle to the likes of Google and has their future jeopardised by the emergence of the cloud and mobile platforms.

Having said that, Intel are going nowhere overnight.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#58

Post by sitepodmatt »

pjmlp wrote: post #48
IshKebab wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the upgrade cycle won't stay short for long, just like it hasn't for desktops. Give it 10 years and people will be keeping their phones until they break. Also anyone can make an ARM CPU so the margins are thin, whereas with x86 CPUs Intel will basically only ever have one competitor - AMD. They want to find another monopoly.

In Europe, where most of us use pre-pay without major subsidies, everyone uses them until they break or get stolen.

I think that very dependent on the target demographic and country. Also definitely some delusion in it too, many people I know will go on about planned obsolescence and so forth in a put the world to right speech and then whip out the latest iPhone or Samsung flagship to call an Uber that they have on contract.

Intel gave up too early in my opinion, the Zenfones (pre-Snapdragon) were great phones, I just don't think Asus alone had enough penetration to make it worth their while.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#59

Post by vectorEQ »

DocTomoe wrote: post #41
ternaryoperator wrote: post #4

This article makes it seem that being a major player in mobile is the only way Intel could survive. Mobile is a decelerating market, while cloud and servers, where Intel has a huge lead is an expanding market and profitable. In 2017, Intel's revenue hit an all-time high, as it did the year before, and its stock is an all time high. This is not a company "fighting for its future."

They also do not have a product for the server market. Yes, they have server-oriented processor families. No, after the storm that has been Meltdown/Spectre, none of these processor families are still considered "safe enough", even firmware-related fixes won't cut it there because the profitibality of a data center is calculated with TFLOPS/m^2 in mind. Even if profitiability was not an issue (=> government), they wo…

intel is just fine. spectre and meltdown were blown way out of proportion. almost every CPU to date has had similar vectors to exploit them or worse. if intelligence agencies don't know this they have shitty assurance and should get better. most agencies for high integrety systems wont have been using intel/amd as there are cpus out there (ibm for example) which offer much better assurance with regards to memory integrity etc.

that being said, government is a tiny market compared to businesses (cloud providers etc. etc.) so really if they all switch to ibm or so intel still wouldn't be in trouble. it would be a tiny bump in the road.

Re: Intel Fights for Its Future

#60

Post by erikb »

joeblau wrote: post #50

> By declining Steve Jobs’ proposal to make the original iPhone CPU in 2005, Intel missed a huge opportunity. I'm really intrigued by stories of missed opportunities. Certain companies have all of the power then make a minor miscalculation on the future of technology. Does anyone have similar personal experiences that echo this type of missed opportunity deal?

I think this is a misinterpretation. If you are the market leader and have huge profits you can enter such a market at any time. It just costs more and more the stabler the market becomes, which in turn of course also decreases the risks and costs of development. The art is finding the sweet spot to enter, and beating the competition that's already in the market and tries to keep you out.
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