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"fighting for their future" is often shooting themselves in the foot in my experience. A company I was at agreed to transition off of ARM to x86 for the next co

by lnanek2 10y ago

"fighting for their future" is often shooting themselves in the foot in my experience. A company I was at agreed to transition off of ARM to x86 for the next cost down revision of their embedded product. During the negotiations Intel promised libhoudini ARM translation support. Once we were committed and many weeks down the design path with development boards they broke their promise and refused to provide libhoudini. It was a really terrible position to be in because Intel was forcing us to get all our very expensive third party software relicensed in x86 versions, and we had no money for that. Honestly, we would have been a lot better off just sticking with ARM instead of buying Intel's lies. In the end, if Intel had provided an ARM option, though, they would have been a competitive solution at least instead what they were which was just a bad idea. So this insistence on fighting to get companies on x86 is not helping them necessarily.

djcapelis 10y ago
I agree their existing attempts have been disheartening and hard to watch. I don't think fighting for their future necessarily involves keeping x86 as their only chip architecture. I think that right now their "fights" and entries into these markets have mostly involved trying to keep the world from changing, not really fighting to survive. Less new and interesting strategies, more taking out old dusty x86 cores, polishing them up a bit and shoving them into the packages and market segments where they aren't dominant. This is their fault at this point. It used to be that without x86 compat, you had an uphill battle. They don't have that high ground anymore. The fact that companies like yours were more locked to ARM than other options should be a huge, amazingly large warning sign for them. I think what they should have done was the work the RISC-V team already started. I'm not sure they have the right architects to do it there though, frankly. The last time they tried to start a new architecture they really messed up on keeping it simple and providing clean hardware. They didn't recover confidence after Itanium and I think there was probably a lot of "Never Again" sentiment (probably rightfully so) both inside and outside the company. But I think at some point it is going to become clear to them that they don't have any option but to try a move that desperate and risky again if they want to be a dominant player in the processor design business in the future. Who knows if they'll actually get it right though. I probably would bet against it and would expect them to shift more and more towards a legacy designer (see also IBM) with substantial fab tech and capabilities that remain world class even if the processor design part loses most of the device markets.
gameshot911 10y ago
What ended up happening? Did Intel breach any contract they had with you guys?
mariuolo 10y ago
> During the negotiations Intel promised libhoudini ARM translation support. Once we were committed and many weeks down the design path with development boards they broke their promise and refused to provide libhoudini. How come this wasn't put in the contract?

by lnanek2 10y ago

djcapelis 10y ago

I agree their existing attempts have been disheartening and hard to watch. I don't think fighting for their future necessarily involves keeping x86 as their only chip architecture. I think that right now their "fights" and entries into these markets have mostly involved trying to keep the world from changing, not really fighting to survive. Less new and interesting strategies, more taking out old dusty x86 cores, polishing them up a bit and shoving them into the packages and market segments where they aren't dominant. This is their fault at this point. It used to be that without x86 compat, you had an uphill battle. They don't have that high ground anymore. The fact that companies like yours were more locked to ARM than other options should be a huge, amazingly large warning sign for them. I think what they should have done was the work the RISC-V team already started. I'm not sure they have the right architects to do it there though, frankly. The last time they tried to start a new architecture they really messed up on keeping it simple and providing clean hardware. They didn't recover confidence after Itanium and I think there was probably a lot of "Never Again" sentiment (probably rightfully so) both inside and outside the company. But I think at some point it is going to become clear to them that they don't have any option but to try a move that desperate and risky again if they want to be a dominant player in the processor design business in the future. Who knows if they'll actually get it right though. I probably would bet against it and would expect them to shift more and more towards a legacy designer (see also IBM) with substantial fab tech and capabilities that remain world class even if the processor design part loses most of the device markets.

gameshot911 10y ago

What ended up happening? Did Intel breach any contract they had with you guys?

mariuolo 10y ago

> During the negotiations Intel promised libhoudini ARM translation support. Once we were committed and many weeks down the design path with development boards they broke their promise and refused to provide libhoudini. How come this wasn't put in the contract?