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Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

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Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#621

Post by shmerl »

jpc0 wrote: post #616
shmerl wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking very long to implement stuff is a perfect argument of bad support for the platform. Timely support isn't any less important than support in general.

Are you a product manager? Or do you just not see the irony on your comment? Long term support means my thing that has been working great continues to work great. New feature implementation has nothing to do with that and is arguably directly against long term support. And Nvidia seems justified in this since effectively no distro dropper X11 until Nvidia had support.

If you think taking decades is an acceptable rate while others do it in a timely manner it's your own problem. For any normal user it's completely unacceptable and is the opposite of great (add to it, that even after decades of dragging their feet they only offer half cooked support and still can't even sort out upstreaming their mess). Garbage support is what it is.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#623

Post by ksec »

evanjrowley wrote: post #211

Nvidia's stake in Intel could have terrible consequences. First, it is in Nvidia's interest to kill Intel's Arc graphics, and that would be very bad because it is the only thing brighing GPU prices down for consumers. Second, the death of Intel graphics / Arc would be extremely bad for Linux, because Intel's approach to GPU drivers is the best for compatibility, wheras Nvidia is actively hostile to drivers on Linux.…

Do we want Intel to fall and bankrupt? Or do we want Intel to survive. I dont think most people are clear what is happening here. This is it. The Margin call moment.

Intel could either transform into Fabless company compete on design, and manufacture with TSMC. Or they continue to be a Foundry player, crucial to US strategic interest. You can only pick one, and competing on just one of them is already a monumental task.

GPU is burning money. With no short term success in sight that could make them cash flow positive in 3 - 4 years time frame. I have been stating this since 2016 and we are now coming close to 2026, recent market share suggest Intel is at less than 1% discrete market share. Especially given the strong roadmap Nvidia has.

This gives a perfect excuse for Intel to quit GPU. Nvidia to provide the cash flow to hopefully continue to develop A18 and A14. Manufacture Nvidia GPU for them, and slowly transition itself out to only x86 + Foundry model. Or even solely manufacture for Nvidia. US administration further force Apple, Qualcomm and Broadcom to use Intel in some capacity. Assuming Intel can keep up with TSMC, which is probably a comparatively easier task than to tackle the GPU market.

I am assuming the Intel board is happy with that direction though. Because so far they have shown they are completely lack of any strategic vision.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#624

Post by jpc0 »

shmerl wrote: post #621
jpc0 wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a product manager? Or do you just not see the irony on your comment? Long term support means my thing that has been working great continues to work great. New feature implementation has nothing to do with that and is arguably directly against long term support. And Nvidia seems justified in this since effectively no distro dropper X11 until Nvidia had support.

If you think taking decades is an acceptable rate while others do it in a timely manner it's your own problem. For any normal user it's completely unacceptable and is the opposite of great (add to it, that even after decades of dragging their feet they only offer half cooked support and still can't even sort out upstreaming their mess). Garbage support is what it is.

AMD is notorious for not having ROCM support on in production currently sold GPUs, and horrendous bugs that actually make using the devices unusable.

I use AMD gpus on linux, I generally regret not just buying an Nvidia GPU purely because of AMDs lacklustre support for compute use cases in general.

Intel is still too new in the dGPU market to trust and on top of that there is so much uncertainty about whether that entire product line will disappear.

So at this point the CUDA moat makes is a non issue, on top of that what works works and keeps working, whereas with AMD I constantly wonder whether something will randomly not work after an update.

A timeline of decades for “features” your biggest consumers don’t care about is a reasonable tradeoff, even more so if actually pushing those features would reduce stability.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#625

Post by shmerl »

jpc0 wrote: post #624
shmerl wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think taking decades is an acceptable rate while others do it in a timely manner it's your own problem. For any normal user it's completely unacceptable and is the opposite of great (add to it, that even after decades of dragging their feet they only offer half cooked support and still can't even sort out upstreaming their mess). Garbage support is what it is.

AMD is notorious for not having ROCM support on in production currently sold GPUs, and horrendous bugs that actually make using the devices unusable. I use AMD gpus on linux, I generally regret not just buying an Nvidia GPU purely because of AMDs lacklustre support for compute use cases in general. Intel is still too new in the dGPU market to trust and on top of that there is so much uncertainty about whether that en…

That's exactly the point. Nvidia might care about industrial use cases, while they don't care about desktop Linux usage and their support is garbage in result.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#626

Post by throwaway2037 »

high_na_euv wrote: post #582
throwaway2037 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nvidia is fabless and has concentrated supplier and geopolitical risk with TSMC. Intel is one of the only other leading fabs onshor[e] TSMC is building state of the art fabs in Arizona, USA. Samsung in Texas, USA. I assume these are being done to reduce geopolitical risk on all sides. Something that I never read about: Why can't NVidia use Samsung fabs? They are very close to TSMC state of the art.

TSMC will not have state of the art on US soil. Taiwanese gov prevents them from doing it. Leading node has to be on Taiwanese soil

    > Taiwanese gov prevents them from doing it. Leading node has to be on Taiwanese soil
This is bold claim. Do you have a public evidence to share? I have never once seen this mentioned in any newspaper articles that I have read about TSMC and their expansion in the US.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#627

Post by smegger001 »

yvdriess wrote: post #590
smegger001 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a plateauing in AI development leading to another AI Winter causing dotcom bubble 2 electric boogaloo.

If anything that would be a boost to Intel. One of their problems is GPU capex sucking the air out of the room.

well the question i answered was "Why would anything that isn't Intel implode" and an AI winter and another dotcom boom would do that to everyone not named Intel.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#628

Post by franciseni722 »

IFS Bottleneck means; NVIDIA buys time, Intel loses it and Blackwell ultra slips. RISC-V (Tenstorrent) + AMD ROCm keep the pipeline moving while NVIDIA polishes it's hammer. Lesson; Adage (Old Norse inspired)

“Hamarr klofnaði, er vé fann eigi leið; Spjót fló, en skjár var eigi bundinn.”

Translation back to English

“The hammer split, when craft found not its path; The spear flew forth, yet screen was never bound.”

This mirrors the original iambic pentameter adage, but cast in skaldic-styled compactness, tying the hammer (Mjölnir) to the broken driver/kernel path, and the spear (Gungnir) to the unpatched Wayland/X11 display stack. Something like Snorri Sturlosson might've slipped into the prose Edda? except it's about GPUs and Linux drivers.

Re: Nvidia buys $5B in Intel

#630

Post by 93po »

andsoitis wrote: post #424
93po wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get a share in the business, you can also just buy stock in the business like everyone else, not increasing the total share count or causing dilution. They chose not to do this because it would have been more expensive due to properly compensating existing shareholders. So it's spiritually just theft.

> To get a share in the business, you can also just buy stock The business is looking for additional capital. You can only do that by either selling new shares or raising debt. > in the business like everyone else, not increasing the total share count or causing dilution. They chose not to do this because it would have been more expensive due to properly compensating existing shareholders. So it's spiritually just th…

Intel has treasury shares - its own stock that it owns. It had enough to cover this $5B deal. Nvidia could have bought that without screwing over existing shareholders.
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