71–80 of 198 posts
Perfect storm if AMD continue to pile on pressure and ARM licensees start making inroads into servers.
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Except they wouldn't. It took Apple a decade to up their silicon to a level where it is now. For most of that time, their activity was a money sink for them. And even today, even with some of the best talent in IC design one can get in USA (PA Semi and its veteran designers from HP, Sun, Freescale, and whatever else was remaining of American semi industry), their chips are still half outsourced, 70% external IP if yo…
> Yet, what took them at least 5 years, and extremely expensive to make reticule limit chips, was bested by a no-name Chinese fabless that blew TPUs out of the water on power/cost/performance ratio. I'm not familiar with what company or product you're referring to. What is it?
Cambricon - possibly a scam, though also claims performance on an equal level with moderately sound technical approach. They never released much info other than fancy CG videos.
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The headline is definitely sensationalist but there are threats and missed opportunities on Intel's horizon and past. The lure of mobile is the upgrade cycle as those are much shorter. The same, short upgrade cycles were a boon for intel in the hey day of desktops/laptops. The bigger threat the article fails to focus on is ARM. Singularity for apps has always hinged on write-once-run-everywhere. Intel hasn't been abl…
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.
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Intel is fine as long as ARM doesn’t compete in their core markets. Then it’s a sudden and violent change. I guess you don’t see ARM attaining parity with x86?
Apple is the only manufacturer that actually produces competitive processors. Qualcomm is lagging behind x86 by at least a factor 2 compared to laptop chips and by factor 6 compared to desktop chips. On top of that the arm laptops that have been announced were significantly more expensive than an equivalent x86 laptop and the x86 emulation isn't good enough to count on it.
ARM tech is on an intersect trajectory with x86 tech, and it’s only a matter of time before those lines cross. Up until then Intel will do fine. After that, all bets are off. Fortunately for Intel, they’re a couple of steps ahead of you in that at least they now see the problem.
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."
> Mobile is a decelerating market, while cloud and servers, where Intel has a huge lead is an expanding market and profitable. No, it is not decelerating, it's still growing [0]. Besides, demand from other low-power applications such as IoT will only lead to increased demand for low-power (mobile) chips. > In 2017, Intel's revenue hit an all-time high, as it did the year before, and its stock is an all time high. Thi…
New opportunities in an existing market are equally as effective in spurring on growth. For example, there doesn't seem to be any reduction in appetite for servers, and Intel has been the market leader in this space for a while. Just because we've had server market for over half a century doesn't mean it's lacking in potential growth.
If it's accurate, the following graph is quite telling:
https://3s81si1s5ygj3mzby34dq6qf-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
Graph was part of the following article:
https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/12/01/booming-server-marke...
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> Yet, what took them at least 5 years, and extremely expensive to make reticule limit chips, was bested by a no-name Chinese fabless that blew TPUs out of the water on power/cost/performance ratio. I'm not familiar with what company or product you're referring to. What is it?
Novumind, they showed their engineering samples few months ago. And yes, they got quite close to their initial promise of 3 teraflops per watt. Cambricon - possibly a scam, though also claims performance on an equal level with moderately sound technical approach. They never released much info other than fancy CG videos.
I'd take the statement "Unknown Chinese company beating Google with fewer resources and less time" with a huge grain of salt.
Also, why is Krzanich still CEO? He's made terrible decision after terrible decision. Buying Broadcom now reminds me a lot of Ballmer wanting to buy Yahoo for $40 billion. In hindsight that looks like a terrible deal, doesn't it? I think if Intel buys Broadcom, this will look the same in 10 years.
Intel has strong conflicts of interest against other non-x86 chip divisions, which would be Broadcom, I'm sure it's the same with Altera, too. In a few years they'll regret buying FPGAs, too.
The "synergy" is a lie.
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Apple is the only manufacturer that actually produces competitive processors. Qualcomm is lagging behind x86 by at least a factor 2 compared to laptop chips and by factor 6 compared to desktop chips. On top of that the arm laptops that have been announced were significantly more expensive than an equivalent x86 laptop and the x86 emulation isn't good enough to count on it.
Your talking about what’s on the market right now, or coming out based on existing tech. It’s exactly that kind one short term “everything’s fine, we’re doing great as we are” thinking that the OP article is deconstructing. It’s what killed Nokia, Blackberry and Palm, as he pointed out. Chip fabricators like Intel are making investments now that won’t affect the market for 6 years (2014 announcement of expected launc…
Not trying to be pedantic, just so that no one gets confused.
Jim Keller, who's been on both sides of the table, x86 with AMD and ARM with Apple, expects that a fully developed ARM CPU will be 15-30% more efficient than their x86 counterparts.
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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/
for me the camera is one major reason to upgrade every 1.5-2 years. But I buy a phone(asus) that is at least 50% cheaper than most of the high end phones so I figure I'm coming out ahead. They probably have better cameras but mine has been good enough until the next refresh cycle
Things will always improve, but for cameras, we are getting to the point where if your smartphone camera isn't good enough for you, you are probably at least an enthusiast and you probably want to get a real camera.
Since then, I've seen absolutely no game changing improvement.
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>And talking like Amazon/Google/Microsoft only have talents for web programming is short sighted and simply not sure. Well, I am saying that they do obviously spend an ennormous effort trying to do so. To better formulate what I said, the fact that they did acquire some hardware/semi expertise in house, does not mean that this expertise drives them as a company. If tomorrow 2 engineers, one from semi side, and one fr…
> "If tomorrow 2 engineers, one from semi side, and one fromwebdev, will knock at the door of CEO with "I found a way to do things A and B 250 times better, but you have to scrap half of your business plan," a webdev will be heard, and semi guys not." What are you basing this assumption on? Have you worked for one of these companies? Do you know anyone that does? Also, regarding Microsoft, any suggestion that they're…
