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Does anyone working within Intel know the reasoning ? It seems skylake is doing really well. Is it mostly electrical engineers working on the processors or sa

Does anyone working within Intel know the reasoning ? It seems skylake is doing really well. Is it mostly electrical engineers working on the processors or sales and marketing people ?

funkyy 10y ago
Just a guess, but tech companies are occasionally release % of their workers to clean its workforce, boost productivity and make space for new, young and experienced engineers. Stagnation and idea depletion is dangerous for tech companies, fresh employees bring fresh ideas and boost competitiveness between workers.
- levemi 10y ago
  > boost competitiveness between workers. I do not think that this is a good thing...you want collaboration, not politics and back stabbing.
  - funkyy 10y ago
    Its corporation. Morals are not really the top priority. The results are.
    - gjm11 10y ago
      I don't think levemi is saying anything about morals -- rather, that results will be better if employees are cooperating with one another rather than playing zero-sum games in the hope of missing the next round of layoffs.
    - ElysianEagle 10y ago
      But it could just as easily be argued that a highly political environment which necessitates such behaviors leads to poor morale, quality employees leaving etc. etc. which couldn't be good for the company long term...
      - funkyy 10y ago
        I would say it all depends on the point of view of the people in charge. The reality is what they decide and whats their take on that.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Perhaps some people believe that is what happens. But if I were a talented employee, I'd see an 11% staff reduction as a sign to stop ignoring those recruiter emails.
  - fokov 10y ago
    We had layoffs/firings here and that is what happened for a lot of people. There is no point in sticking around when the same moronic manager is kept around while talented, productive people are forced out. Many of us are only here until our shares vest. Our stock price has taken a huge hit as result.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    Which means the best employees are the ones most likely to leave. The ones who weren't fired, but who can't easily get another gig are what you are left with. It's a tough cycle to beat.
vardump 10y ago
I don't know about other people, but my next Intel CPU will have AVX-512, which Skylake doesn't have. I'm expecting AVX-512 to (up to) double integer/FPU vector computation capacity. I also want to see some proof future Intel processors (especially 10nm and smaller) have not lost durability due to electromigration [1] (or some other durability issues small feature size can cause). There's already some indication this might be happening on current Skylake CPUs. Of course not all workloads will get faster, but it could help with things like parsing (XML, json, etc.), games, media processing, compression, physics simulation, etc. -- or really anything vectorizable that needs to run on CPU for reason or another. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration
- eloff 10y ago
  You might be surprised to learn that AVX-512 is not available in Skylake - it will only be in the Xeon line. It also won't give you anywhere near double performance, since a lot of AVX2 code is memory bandwidth bound anyway (which is probably one of the reasons it's not in the desktop chips.) I would've bought a Skylake so that I can test code on an AV-512 machine. Now I'll keep my money and wait and see.
  - vardump 10y ago
    Current Skylake Xeons don't have AVX-512 either. For example no AVX-512 in this Skylake Xeon: http://ark.intel.com/products/93354/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1575M-v5-8M-Cache-3_00-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/93354/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-... I know about bandwidth issues, but you can also use big vector sizes to mitigate, more opportunities for simple schemes for realtime (de)compression of data. (Usually called packing/unpacking). But where you can work around bandwidth issues, you can get up to twice as much work done. I've also been looking for such a chip to test my code. Of course it's possible to use SDE. https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-software-development-emulator https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-software-dev...
    - eloff 10y ago
      Yeah the E3 Xeons won't have it, they're basically desktop chips dressed up. The E5s are supposed to have it though.
tma-1 10y ago
I would bet they want restructure so they can do more stock buybacks...
dntrkv 10y ago
My bet is on falling PC sales. I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier, to be honest. PC sales by year: http://i.imgur.com/IxSo1oy.png http://i.imgur.com/IxSo1oy.png
- spriggan3 10y ago
  Does this include laptops ?
  - MrFoof 10y ago
    Yes. Around 60% of "personal computers" (excluding tablets) sold are laptops. What's interesting is tablets. The number of tablets sold basically equals the number of desktop and laptops sold combined.
supernintendo 10y ago
I asked a friend who worked at Intel and he said part of it has to do with the company's hiring and organizational structure. The basic gist is that people are brought onto teams that only exist long enough to fulfill their initial objective. While some teams are dedicated to long-lived consumer product lines, others might focus on R&D or custom B2B orders. Once a team has fulfilled its responsibilities within the larger company, it is likely to be dissolved and there's no guarantee for room in other teams for the leftover employees. That's how I understood it, at least. If anyone more familiar with Intel's inner-workings thinks I'm off-base, please feel free to correct me.
- shostack 10y ago
  Is this a similar issue to what was reported about Amazon getting rid of people after their product launches (even if successful)?
  - delecti 10y ago
    I don't believe that's a thing that happens at Amazon. I've worked here nearly 4 years, across several product launches (hardware and software) and only known of one person being let go, and that was for entirely unrelated reasons (politics and such).
  - supernintendo 10y ago
    I'm not aware of what you're referring to. The most recent series of layoffs at Amazon was due to poor sales of the Fire Phone [1][2]. Most companies in Amazon's position would have done the same thing. [1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/08/fire-phone-flop-blamed-for-layoffs-and-reorganisation-at-amazon-wsj-says/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/08/fire-phone-flop-blam... [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-curtails-development-of-consumer-devices-1440632203 http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-curtails-development-of-c...
intelthrow 10y ago
I hope it's the hardware side of the company waking up that the software and "solutions" side of the company is a gangrenous fifth limb. Things like trying to start an app store when they didn't have content (e.g. Steam) or a platform (Google, Apple, Microsoft), trying to pivot that abomination into a media store after Netflix already won and the studios are all trying to start their own, trying for way too long to deliver solutions of putting parts in verticals (e.g. tablets, micros) where they are at best only competitive on one of price, power, or performance and immediately face-planting, but limping along seemingly oblivious to why any of these projects fail. The mention of IoT though makes me think this isn't the case. Definitely part of the brain-dead trendy "solutions" thinking. I don't think you're going to compete with commodity cheap micros with the best IP or the best process size... price is king. There are too many layers at Intel, and that leaves too many of those layers too well insulated, able to believe it was the brand that won them their markets (not the economics: Wintel monopoly in personal computing history, having the best server and laptop parts currently), and that despite the economics of new products and "solutions", the brand will somehow convince people to buy in. Like, why do I ever see you on Television, Intel? Who is the audience for these ads, potential investors? Shouldn't they rather see higher dividends? People don't go to the mall and buy Intel chips, they go buy Macbooks and they use Instagram. Facebook and Apple buy your chips at a scale where it's all ROI, and you deliver that, so what are the ads for? This shit is why I left, and why always did the quicksale on the stock purchase plan. Intel needs to just keep making the best parts and leave it to the market to conjure up asinine things to do with them. Kill all the product lines where there's no road to being #1 ROI within 10 years, keep those in the lab.
- wrong_variable 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing and providing that wonderful insight ! I agree with all your points - the last time I though about Intel as a brand was in 2002 while wanting to build my own PC ( a very small market of geeks at that ) What particular thing would you say that makes it difficult for them to built good software as compared to amazon ? Intel seems to have a bottomless pit when it comes to money. thanks again !
- emp_zealoth 10y ago
bronson 10y ago
Intel finally realized that ARM is dominating growing sectors (mobile and embedded[1]), while they're dominating the shrinking ones (desktop and server). [1] still can't bring myself to say IoT.
- wrong_variable 10y ago
  embedded makes more sense :)
T-A 10y ago
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3054605/computers/pc-sales-plunge-further-as-windows-10-and-skylake-cpus-fail-to-inspire-upgrades.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3054605/computers/pc-sales-pl...

Does anyone working within Intel know the reasoning ? It seems skylake is doing really well. Is it mostly electrical engineers working on the processors or sales and marketing people ?

funkyy 10y ago

Just a guess, but tech companies are occasionally release % of their workers to clean its workforce, boost productivity and make space for new, young and experienced engineers. Stagnation and idea depletion is dangerous for tech companies, fresh employees bring fresh ideas and boost competitiveness between workers.

levemi 10y ago
> boost competitiveness between workers. I do not think that this is a good thing...you want collaboration, not politics and back stabbing.
- funkyy 10y ago
  Its corporation. Morals are not really the top priority. The results are.
  - gjm11 10y ago
    I don't think levemi is saying anything about morals -- rather, that results will be better if employees are cooperating with one another rather than playing zero-sum games in the hope of missing the next round of layoffs.
  - ElysianEagle 10y ago
    But it could just as easily be argued that a highly political environment which necessitates such behaviors leads to poor morale, quality employees leaving etc. etc. which couldn't be good for the company long term...
    - funkyy 10y ago
      I would say it all depends on the point of view of the people in charge. The reality is what they decide and whats their take on that.
rayiner 10y ago
Perhaps some people believe that is what happens. But if I were a talented employee, I'd see an 11% staff reduction as a sign to stop ignoring those recruiter emails.
- fokov 10y ago
  We had layoffs/firings here and that is what happened for a lot of people. There is no point in sticking around when the same moronic manager is kept around while talented, productive people are forced out. Many of us are only here until our shares vest. Our stock price has taken a huge hit as result.
- jonknee 10y ago
  Which means the best employees are the ones most likely to leave. The ones who weren't fired, but who can't easily get another gig are what you are left with. It's a tough cycle to beat.

vardump 10y ago

I don't know about other people, but my next Intel CPU will have AVX-512, which Skylake doesn't have. I'm expecting AVX-512 to (up to) double integer/FPU vector computation capacity. I also want to see some proof future Intel processors (especially 10nm and smaller) have not lost durability due to electromigration [1] (or some other durability issues small feature size can cause). There's already some indication this might be happening on current Skylake CPUs. Of course not all workloads will get faster, but it could help with things like parsing (XML, json, etc.), games, media processing, compression, physics simulation, etc. -- or really anything vectorizable that needs to run on CPU for reason or another. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration

eloff 10y ago
You might be surprised to learn that AVX-512 is not available in Skylake - it will only be in the Xeon line. It also won't give you anywhere near double performance, since a lot of AVX2 code is memory bandwidth bound anyway (which is probably one of the reasons it's not in the desktop chips.) I would've bought a Skylake so that I can test code on an AV-512 machine. Now I'll keep my money and wait and see.
- vardump 10y ago
  Current Skylake Xeons don't have AVX-512 either. For example no AVX-512 in this Skylake Xeon: http://ark.intel.com/products/93354/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1575M-v5-8M-Cache-3_00-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/93354/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-... I know about bandwidth issues, but you can also use big vector sizes to mitigate, more opportunities for simple schemes for realtime (de)compression of data. (Usually called packing/unpacking). But where you can work around bandwidth issues, you can get up to twice as much work done. I've also been looking for such a chip to test my code. Of course it's possible to use SDE. https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-software-development-emulator https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-software-dev...
  - eloff 10y ago
    Yeah the E3 Xeons won't have it, they're basically desktop chips dressed up. The E5s are supposed to have it though.

tma-1 10y ago

I would bet they want restructure so they can do more stock buybacks...

dntrkv 10y ago

My bet is on falling PC sales. I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier, to be honest. PC sales by year: http://i.imgur.com/IxSo1oy.png http://i.imgur.com/IxSo1oy.png

spriggan3 10y ago
Does this include laptops ?
- MrFoof 10y ago
  Yes. Around 60% of "personal computers" (excluding tablets) sold are laptops. What's interesting is tablets. The number of tablets sold basically equals the number of desktop and laptops sold combined.

supernintendo 10y ago

I asked a friend who worked at Intel and he said part of it has to do with the company's hiring and organizational structure. The basic gist is that people are brought onto teams that only exist long enough to fulfill their initial objective. While some teams are dedicated to long-lived consumer product lines, others might focus on R&D or custom B2B orders. Once a team has fulfilled its responsibilities within the larger company, it is likely to be dissolved and there's no guarantee for room in other teams for the leftover employees. That's how I understood it, at least. If anyone more familiar with Intel's inner-workings thinks I'm off-base, please feel free to correct me.

shostack 10y ago
Is this a similar issue to what was reported about Amazon getting rid of people after their product launches (even if successful)?
- delecti 10y ago
  I don't believe that's a thing that happens at Amazon. I've worked here nearly 4 years, across several product launches (hardware and software) and only known of one person being let go, and that was for entirely unrelated reasons (politics and such).
- supernintendo 10y ago
  I'm not aware of what you're referring to. The most recent series of layoffs at Amazon was due to poor sales of the Fire Phone [1][2]. Most companies in Amazon's position would have done the same thing. [1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/08/fire-phone-flop-blamed-for-layoffs-and-reorganisation-at-amazon-wsj-says/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/08/fire-phone-flop-blam... [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-curtails-development-of-consumer-devices-1440632203 http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-curtails-development-of-c...

intelthrow 10y ago

I hope it's the hardware side of the company waking up that the software and "solutions" side of the company is a gangrenous fifth limb. Things like trying to start an app store when they didn't have content (e.g. Steam) or a platform (Google, Apple, Microsoft), trying to pivot that abomination into a media store after Netflix already won and the studios are all trying to start their own, trying for way too long to deliver solutions of putting parts in verticals (e.g. tablets, micros) where they are at best only competitive on one of price, power, or performance and immediately face-planting, but limping along seemingly oblivious to why any of these projects fail. The mention of IoT though makes me think this isn't the case. Definitely part of the brain-dead trendy "solutions" thinking. I don't think you're going to compete with commodity cheap micros with the best IP or the best process size... price is king. There are too many layers at Intel, and that leaves too many of those layers too well insulated, able to believe it was the brand that won them their markets (not the economics: Wintel monopoly in personal computing history, having the best server and laptop parts currently), and that despite the economics of new products and "solutions", the brand will somehow convince people to buy in. Like, why do I ever see you on Television, Intel? Who is the audience for these ads, potential investors? Shouldn't they rather see higher dividends? People don't go to the mall and buy Intel chips, they go buy Macbooks and they use Instagram. Facebook and Apple buy your chips at a scale where it's all ROI, and you deliver that, so what are the ads for? This shit is why I left, and why always did the quicksale on the stock purchase plan. Intel needs to just keep making the best parts and leave it to the market to conjure up asinine things to do with them. Kill all the product lines where there's no road to being #1 ROI within 10 years, keep those in the lab.

wrong_variable 10y ago
Thanks for sharing and providing that wonderful insight ! I agree with all your points - the last time I though about Intel as a brand was in 2002 while wanting to build my own PC ( a very small market of geeks at that ) What particular thing would you say that makes it difficult for them to built good software as compared to amazon ? Intel seems to have a bottomless pit when it comes to money. thanks again !
emp_zealoth 10y ago

bronson 10y ago

Intel finally realized that ARM is dominating growing sectors (mobile and embedded[1]), while they're dominating the shrinking ones (desktop and server). [1] still can't bring myself to say IoT.

wrong_variable 10y ago
embedded makes more sense :)

T-A 10y ago

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3054605/computers/pc-sales-plunge-further-as-windows-10-and-skylake-cpus-fail-to-inspire-upgrades.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3054605/computers/pc-sales-pl...