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Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

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Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#661

Post by acyou »

I am old enough to remember when AMD was nowhere, and Intel was the only game in town for both consumer and server chips, laptop and desktop. I think it was 2011.

Then 2013 rolled around and I built a desktop with an AMD processor, because it was dirt cheap. I remember people saying that they were excited and looking forward to the upcoming AMD architectures and roadmap. I couldn't understand how AMD could possibly have come from behind to beat Intel.

Realistically, you just need to come up with a good roadmap, get good people, get the resources, execute.

Roadmap is good, people - not so sure about this one, resources - seem a little low, execution - seems hampered by too many cooks. If Intel broke up into smaller companies and their new leading edge chip design group had 500 good people, I honestly think they would have a better shot. So I think we are seeing what makes the most sense, Intel must die and let the phoenixes rise from the ashes.

Fast forward to 2024/2025, and remember, anything is possible if AMD beat 2011 Intel.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#662

Post by seanmcdirmid »

cogman10 wrote: post #114
phkahler wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If 18a is not ready I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD. Aside from the x86 monopoly that would create, I don't think Intel has much of value to AMD at this point other than the fabs (which aren't delivering). IMHO if Intel is failing, let them fail and others will buy the pieces in bankruptcy. This would probably benefit several other companies that could use 22nm and up fab capacity and…

Yeah, what both companies would need to be competitive in the GPU sector is a cuda killer. That's perhaps the one benefit of merging Antel can more easily standardize something.

Why doesn’t NVIDIA buy intel? They have the cash and they have the pairing (M chips being NVIDIA and intel’s biggest competitors now). It would be an AMD/ATI move, and maybe NVIDIA could do its own M CPU competitor with…whatever intel can help with.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#663

Post by runeblaze »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #602
MPSFounder wrote: post #499

I worked for 3 months for Intel. I can genuinely say that there is no saving that company. Recently, they are hiring many PhDs from various US universities (particularly Indians) to try to compensate (they offer generous stocks and are hiring like crazy right now). There are two major problems I saw: lack of genuine interest in fabs (most people are there for the Intel name and then leave or in the case of Indians, t…

> Most of the talent I know is either at Apple or Facebook/Google That's a damn shame. Big tech monopolies are screwing up the talent market. Nobody can match their comp and it's bullshit

I am sure Intel has enough cash to hire some good talent (like just offer talented people next-level salary at $FAANG), the problem is deeper in the hiring pipeline -- convincing people of the budget and actually scouting and retaining good people

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#664

Post by runeblaze »

MPSFounder wrote: post #499

I worked for 3 months for Intel. I can genuinely say that there is no saving that company. Recently, they are hiring many PhDs from various US universities (particularly Indians) to try to compensate (they offer generous stocks and are hiring like crazy right now). There are two major problems I saw: lack of genuine interest in fabs (most people are there for the Intel name and then leave or in the case of Indians, t…

While I am sure the foot soldier quality is important, we ought to put the burden on leadership a bit more. I am not sure AMD had a better talent pool (I don't work in the industry so I don't know!) ten years ago. Culture is predominantly shaped by those already in power -- it sounds like they need a change in culture.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#665

Post by Lammy »

leptons wrote: post #524
alternatex wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the mean time, AMD/ARM already won phones, table and game consoles. Don't forget laptops. Intel has been terrible on laptops due to their lack of efficiency. AMD has been wiping the floor with them for years now. 2024 is the first year that Intel has released a laptop chip that can compete in efficiency. I hope Intel continues to invest in this category and remain neck and neck with AMD if we have any hope of hav…

I doubt most people actually care about efficiency in a laptop. My wife is my anecdotal example. She's had a mac for years but refuses to give Apple one more penny because they've been awful - had to replace her previous laptop motherboard 7 times until we finally had to sue Apple in a class action which resulted in them sending her current 2015 MBP, which has now aged-out of MacOS updates. Sucks that this computer i…

> her current 2015 MBP, which has now aged-out of MacOS updates

Not trying to invalidate or lessen your complaint (which I completely agree with) but want to make sure you are aware of OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It's a little hacky by nature but can give some extra life to that machine: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#666

Post by maeil »

cogman10 wrote: post #405
bluGill wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can those users get all the software they need? Many users who want a mac are told no because some weird software they need doesn't run on it. Others only get a mac because some executive demanded IT port that software to mac. So long as companies have any x86 only software they won't let people switch. Often "art" departments get a specific exception and they get to avoid all the jobs that require x86 only software…

> Of course these days more and more of that is moving the the cloud and all IT needs to a web browser that works. Thus making their job easier. This was the point I was going to make. While not completely dead, the days of desktop applications are quickly coming to a close. Almost everything is SAAS now or just electron apps which are highly portable. Even if it's not saas or electron, the only two languages I'd do…

The big problem is Excel. Microsoft will make sure never to give that one up. Browser version isn't enough. I'm sure Apple has their reasons for not financing a full-fledged, compatible version, but if they would it would massively increase market share. I'm guessing it's strategic - e.g. not incurring the wrath of Microsoft or a different non-technical, non-marketshare reason.

The world outside of the SV tech bubble runs on Excel.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#667

Post by shiroiushi »

alecco wrote: post #578
jiggawatts wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read the Intel QAT / IAA / DSA whitepaper I knew it was the beginning of the end for Intel. Every aspect of that document was just dripping in corporate dinosaur / MBA practices. For example, they include 4 cores of these accelerators in most of their Xeons, but soft fuse them off unless you buy a license. Nobody is going to buy that license. Okay, maybe one or two hyperscalers, but nobody else for certain. It…

Preach. I gave up hoping on Intel after getting burned. I feel sorry for the good talent there and I hope they find a home somewhere better.

It sounds like most of the good talent has already left; the people still there are just there for the paycheck or resume padding and not for the long-term.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#668

Post by maeil »

anthonyskipper wrote: post #378
lotsofpulp wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet 95%+ of people who use Excel are not affected by any difference between Excel for macOS versus Windows.

I work in a large enterprise company, have both windows and mac machines, and excel works equally great in both, but more and more excel runs in a browser. We mostly email links to spreadsheets running in cloud. So it really doesn't matter what your OS is any more from an excel perspective, as long as your computer can run a modern browser you are good.

From what I've seen your company is an exception. Yes, for 95% of users, browser/Mac Excel is more than enough. But the non-tech companies I've seen still don't want to get Macs because of that 5%, they just don't want to bother with having to support two platforms. And leadership obviously doesn't care/have no idea.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#669

Post by Const-me »

roenxi wrote: post #649
cogman10 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I've seen anyone try the problem isn't that the card lacks a library, but rather that calling the function that does what is needed causes a kernel panic. Do you have experience with SYCL? My experience with OpenCL was that it's really a PITA to work with. The thing that CUDA makes nice is the direct and minimal exercise to start running GPGPU kernels. write the code, compile with nvcc, cudaed. OpenCL ha…

> Do you have experience with SYCL? No, I bought a Nvidia card and just use CUDA. > OpenCL had just a weird dance to perform to get a kernel running... Yeah but that entire list, if you step back and think big picture, probably isn't the problem. Programmers have a predictable response to that sort of silliness. Build a library over it & abstract it away. The sheer number of frameworks out there is awe-inspiring. I g…

> Programmers have a predictable response to that sort of silliness. Build a library over it & abstract it away

Impossible. GPGPU runtimes are too close to hardware, and the hardware is proprietary with many trade secrets. You need support from GPU vendors.

BTW, if you want reliable cross-vendor GPU, just use Direct3D 11 compute shaders. Modern videogames use a lot of compute, to the point that UE5 even renders triangle meshes with compute shaders. AMD hardware is totally fine, it’s the software ecosystem.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#670

Post by gigatexal »

Only CEOs get to press release their firings as something else: retirement, wanting to spend more time with family, voluntarily leaving etc.

He was sacked. The board fired him. Tell it like it is.

What does this mean for Intel? I think they’re too important to get bought or broken up because they have fabs in the US. They’re like Boeing in that sense. Or a big bank. They’re too big (strategically important) for the US to let them fail. But maybe they’ll get bought by another US company or investor. I dunno.

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