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Intel acquires Linutronix

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Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#51

Post by bee_rider »

bestouff wrote: post #7
caleb-allen wrote: post #2

Intel seems to be making all the right moves. I'm excited to see what Pat Gelsinger can do over the next 5 years (I'm long INTC).

Their current CPU-features-as-a-service marketing push doesn't look like a right move to me.

Is it rented or is it just pay-to-permanently-unlock.

Paying to permanently unlock a feature might not be so bad. And forcing extensions to justify their price might not be the worst thing. And this might let them get the "nobody is paying for avx-512" signal a little faster than spinning up a billion slightly different SKUs.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#52

Post by ho_schi »

mhh__ wrote: post #9
colinmhayes wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is currently worth less than AMD even though Intel's profit is quite a bit higher than AMDs entire revenue. I recognize that Intel has huge problems to solve but they absolutely seem undervalued currently.

Intel have been making balls-out plays (i.e. they could've just sold the fab business and MBA-ed themselves to death) and making good money but their stock is 30% or so down from last year so I am inclined to agree. They'll never have a run like they did from Nehalem through to Zen's launch, but I think they're about to prove that they still have it and that they know how to sell chips.

MBA-ed to deadth hehe

German "Tod durch BWLer".

If a company suffered from this it is IBM. They sold they're hardware business with long term earnings and the entry path to many customers was lost. Now there is Red Hat with the IBM-Letter attached to it. At least we see improving support for ThinkPads through Red Hat. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon instead invested in hardware with software. Siemens is another exampled for dead by MBA, thanks for ruining Siemens Nixdorf. How you can even think about focusing a company on one single market with a "Profit Center", you loss the broad base and flexibility. No other part can sustain you till you adapt to a change.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#53

Post by missedthecue »

dannyw wrote: post #48
missedthecue wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just leasing, which unlike SaaS, is not a new business model. It's been around for thousands of years, and there are a lot of problems with it. How do you repo from a non-paying account for instance? With a SaaS, their account is automatically turned off. This isn't the case when leasing out an actual physical product.

Intel Management Engine.

Sure you can remotely disable it, but unless you get the chip back, you've lost it, and you'd have been better off selling it anyway.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#54

Post by ianmcgowan »

zxspectrum1982 wrote: post #46
imglorp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That trick might work for home desktop due to the short sight bug in human consumers (mostly gamers?), but does it make sense for server? It seems like a bunch of potential liabilities for a cloud host or data center operator. This is basically DRM for CPU and as such, its primary function is to stop working when all the business rules don't line up right.

It sure makes sense on the server-side. That's been IBM's business model for mainframes for half a century.

That's true, I had to pay IBM in the 90's for a CPU upgrade where they just dial in, change a config, and poof-more CPU. It was completely infuriating and one reason we migrated to HPUX. The hardware support from IBM was amazing though - the techs are very well trained and show up with basically another mainframe in the van and start swapping parts until things work.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#55

Post by jabl »

gary_0 wrote: post #44
ojn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Intel clearly has no interest in helping RISC-V succeed. https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-invests-in-open-source-r...

Intel is well aware that their x86 IP isn't the secret sauce it used to be. If RISC-V takes over the world, they won't be caught off-guard.

Maybe, but I think the more immediate motivations are

- Get customers for their fab services division, now that they're making a serious push to fab 3rd party chips.

- Help RISC-V threaten ARM at the low end, thus taking away attention and resources ARM could otherwise use to compete with x86 servers.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#56

Post by teekert »

formerly_proven wrote: post #10

Cute Lego digger: https://linutronix.de/videos/Linutronix_Bagger_1080.mp4

That sounds like a fun company to work for :)

Sure one can whine about an RPi and "industrial reliability" (and all I can think of is that damned SD card...), but hey, it's just a cool movie, and it communicates in a nice way what they do. Also, it sounds like they should have been involved in the Mars helicopter (Ingenuity), which runs Linux and need these types of techniques. Cool podcast on the subject: [0]

[0]: https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/145067/mars-goes-to-shel...

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#57

Post by lisper »

svnt wrote: post #29
phkahler wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Their current CPU-features-as-a-service marketing push doesn't look like a right move to me. That was bothering me a bit too, but then I realized it may have a use that most of us don't care about. Sure they could charge more for AVX512 or whatever, and they might try to charge rent for such options which I'm not a fan of. But what if they are being asked by 3-letter agencies for chips with custom circuitry that w…

This is already a standard practice and wouldn’t require changing their business model.

It also wouldn't require a public announcement.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#58

Post by Tobu »

pinewurst wrote: post #8
caleb-allen wrote: post #2

Intel seems to be making all the right moves. I'm excited to see what Pat Gelsinger can do over the next 5 years (I'm long INTC).

Really? Name a single successful Intel acquisition, especially open source.

Wind River seems like it did okay. Bought for $884 million and sold for $4.3 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_River_Systems

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#59

Post by jacobr1 »

missedthecue wrote: post #35
dannyw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, that's probably where the industry will be in 5 years. You might not like it, but X-as-a-service make way more money for the company, and shareholders. It'll probably look like this: buy a 'cheap' Intel CPU for $99 (say, 4P, 12E cores clocked at 2 GHz), with "Turbo" to 4.5 GHz being a $79/year subscription and "Extreme Turbo Max" to 5.1 GHz being an additional $35/year. First year free, of course, to…

That's just leasing, which unlike SaaS, is not a new business model. It's been around for thousands of years, and there are a lot of problems with it. How do you repo from a non-paying account for instance? With a SaaS, their account is automatically turned off. This isn't the case when leasing out an actual physical product.

Depends upon the default rate. It might still make sense even accounting for the losses. Especially if the upfront fees cover the marginal manufacturing costs.

Re: Intel acquires Linutronix

#60

Post by silisili »

zmk5 wrote: post #50
hansendc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so too! But, I was trying to think of if I've ever seen the Linutronix folks working on the Intel graphics code. I don't think I have: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... For very selfish reasons, I'm hoping that this acquisition will give the Linutronix folks even more of an opportunity to contribute to the core kernel and especially arch/x86. Disclaimer: I work on Linux at Intel.

Thanks for your hard work!

Echoing this. Intel has by far the best working out of the box graphics drivers. I usually go Intel APUs for this reason, and am excited by the move into discrete.
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