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Intel’s palpable desperation on display with Rocket Lake

semiaccurate.com

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

#51

Post by skavi »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #29
henriquez wrote: post #5

My main question would be why Intel would even bother releasing Rocket Lake if, balancing between higher IPC and lower clocks, the performance would be _lower_ than the 10 series chips. So I disagree with the article that this will be an unqualified disaster. It's quite likely that they will be a little faster, at least core for core. But it also seems like these are notebook chips hacked into a desktop socket and li…

You ask: "Why Intel would even bother releasing Rocket Lake if, balancing between higher IPC and lower clocks, the performance would be _lower_ than the 10 series chips?" My understanding from the article is that the answer to that question is that Intel is unable to produce any quantity of chips at 10nm that makes (enough) money. The author surmises that rather than go a year with AMD essentially unchallenged in the…

Rocket Lake is desktop. Apple already uses 10nm Ice Lake in it’s smaller laptops, and 45W Tiger Lake (10nm) is expected to be released with Rocket Lake.

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

#52

Post by ethbr0 »

013a wrote: post #47
ethbr0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chip architecture isn't current Intel's problem, process architecture is. There's some overlap between the 2, but 100% of Intel's current struggles can be chalked up to dysfunction on their process side. Given the lead time of chip arch (2-3 years?), the chip side of the house is arriving at manufacturing start day, and the process and specs they'd been optimizing for just aren't available. Until Intel's process catc…

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.

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

#53

Post by ogre_codes »

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.

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

#54

Post by solarkraft »

totalZero wrote: post #49
nxc18 wrote: post #4

Is there good coverage of how Intel became so uncompetitive? My instinct is to say this is just the natural result of the presence of MBAs who are trained to focus _exclusively_ on this quarter's results so ignore R&D investment and also shit on employees by doing gimmicks like hotdesking to pinch pennies. I'm willing to bet my intuition is wrong, especially given my extremely deep bias against MBAs and 'this quarter…

My perspective is that every process node is so critical that missing the mark on 10nm had far-reaching ramifications. This kind of technology has gargantuan inertia. The entire hardware ecosystem is strongly interconnected between different firms, and each firm's future technology depends strongly on its past execution. Failure to deliver on 10nm not only jeopardized the smooth rollout of the subsequent process node…

AMD seems to be doing well on x86 - they could've gone with them and saved themselves a somewhat painful ecosystem breakage.

It's not just Intel's failure. They must think their chips are competitive against AMD's as well (or they're all in on iOS apps on Macs).

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

#55

Post by topspin »

wmf wrote: post #46
topspin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One wonders whether the beating Intel is is taking will lead it forego license-based downclocking with Rocket Lake.

The AVX512 downclocking was to prevent the chip from overheating; one does not just turn that off.

You don't improve thermal performance by backporting to less efficient nodes either.

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

#56

Post by djrogers »

newen wrote: post #19
rwmj wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part of hot-desking in my experience is you always seem to end up next to some guy from marketing who is on their phone all day, and as a result you get absolutely no thinking time.

Same problem comes up with open offices. Some ass from another department constantly talking on the phone 9 to 5. I developed a Pavlovian twitch every time his phone rang.

> Some ass from another department constantly talking on the phone 9 to 5.

Dude, that guy's job probably relied on him being on the phone all day - he's just doing it. It's not his fault that you can hear him, it's your office manager/designer.

Some of us really do have to spend a huge chunk of our day talking to other people on the phone, zoom, etc. There's n other way to get our jobs done, and if they don't give us private office space to do it in, then we have to do it in the open space they do give us.

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

nxc18 wrote: post #4

Is there good coverage of how Intel became so uncompetitive? My instinct is to say this is just the natural result of the presence of MBAs who are trained to focus _exclusively_ on this quarter's results so ignore R&D investment and also shit on employees by doing gimmicks like hotdesking to pinch pennies. I'm willing to bet my intuition is wrong, especially given my extremely deep bias against MBAs and 'this quarter…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by lostlogin »

rwmj wrote: post #13
nxc18 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several of the engineers I worked with a few years ago left Intel (for the company I work at) after they switched to hotdesking to save money on facilities. Basically the concept was instead of engineers having an assigned office or desk, the office would have a large field of unassigned desks and generic equipment. Every day you would come in, reserve a desk, take any belongings from a locker, and set up shop. At th…

The worst part of hot-desking in my experience is you always seem to end up next to some guy from marketing who is on their phone all day, and as a result you get absolutely no thinking time.

This sounds like hell. Was there a reason it wasn’t split by department - eg sales, accounting, engineering etc?

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

#59

Post by CountSessine »

ethbr0 wrote: post #40
avmich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The TL;DR is that Intel has always been a vertically integrated shop (meaning that they usually fab and design their own chips), and that is starting to bite them because pure-play foundries are improving their tech at a faster rate. Are you saying that vertically integrated companies are inherently disadvantaged because pure-play companies have a bigger list of orders and can spend more on evolving technology? The…

The balance likely comes down to volume. Specifically, total global chip sales. If Intel builds Intel (I believe their contract fabing is a rounding error?), then they're directly tied to Intel chip sales. This sets up a potential death spiral. Intel misses a process node deadline, Intel's products are uncompetitive, Intel sales decrease, less demand for Intel fab, less money for Intel fab improvement. Intel can temp…

This is the case with every foundry, though. It’s the reason GloFo isn’t competitive anymore, for example. What’s more interesting is the physics reason that they tripped up the last generation - what did TSMC do right that Intel did wrong? What bets were made? Which ones paid off?

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

#60

Post by sounds »

rwmj wrote: post #21
eropple wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the more oddly axe-grindy articles I've seen in a while. Poorly edited English and writing what feels like angrily about some pieces of silicon--is this just the house style for this site? Maybe somebody can provide some context.

S|A is known for these ranty opinion articles - and dislike of Intel. On the other hand they do seem to have access to a lot of industry insiders and break important stories all the time.

I believe S|A's dislike of Intel and access to industry insiders are correlated.

Specifically I know a lot of industry insiders have a dislike of some of Intel's practices. When S|A talks about them, S|A knows to take the "ranty" tone, as a means of signalling up front to readers, "Hey, this isn't going to be a bland slide presentation..."

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