10 ms·

I believe your analogy is flawed unless there has been some massive shift in the chip industry that invalidates a large body of pre-existing knowledge about the

I believe your analogy is flawed unless there has been some massive shift in the chip industry that invalidates a large body of pre-existing knowledge about the industry. How is today's chip industry compared with yesterday's chip industry as dramatic of a shift as going from oil to batteries? That seems like a much more significant leap than x86 to ARM. What am I missing?

Sargos 9y ago
Intel makes x86 (Exxon makes oil). Most things are moving to ARM (batteries). Intel (Exxon) now loses the market it built its entire business on as the world moves on to different products. Exxon can make batteries and Intel can make things like ARM chips. But they aren't really because they aren't good at it.
- crazypyro 9y ago
  Yeah, but what I'm saying is how is the scale of a move of x86 to ARM comparable to oil to batteries? From the outside, looking in, it seems like the two leaps are on massively different scales which I feel is important when talking about things that will kill a large corporation. I guess my key question is what makes ARM so much different than x86 that it invalidates Intel's existing knowledge? Batteries have a completely different product life cycle than oil. For one, batteries don't burn away and they recharge. This creates completely different business models. Is there some major difference between ARM chips and x86 chips that I am missing?
  - Sargos 9y ago
    I'm not an electrical engineer or hardware expert but there must be something because Intel has been trying to compete with ARM for many years with no success. It doesn't seem like it's just something you can just pivot too (or Intel is just really, really, bad at pivoting.)
  - blihp 9y ago
    There are two things about x86 vs <pick an architecture... right now its ARM> that are significantly different than they were 10+ years ago: 1) Binary compatibility doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to. This was everything in the 80's, 90's and still important into the early 00's. It's why people were willing to pay top dollar for Intel CPUs for decades. First it was to run DOS apps like Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and then it was to run Windows apps including Microsoft Office which were the primary thing most people had PCs for back then. Most mainstream computing users (business and personal) would be hard pressed to come up with a specific need that requires x86. Thanks to the web, Linux, Apple, mobile, etc. x86 is just another architecture that can be used, not the architecture it once was. 2) Competing products are anywhere from a fraction to an order of magnitude less expensive than Intel's offerings. Unless you absolutely need maximum performance, cheap and good enough is where the majority of the market is. Look at what Intel has been banking on first with their failed attempt in mobile and now with their failed attempt at IoT: they thought that because they had 1 (the thing that doesn't matter much anymore) that they could disregard 2 (the thing that does). Intel sure looks like it's having a Kodak moment: the market that exists today is much smaller in terms of $/CPU or $/perf or $/watt but Intel refuses to do what it needs to adapt.
    - makomk 9y ago
      Also, stupidly a lot of these Intel IoT lines weren't actually binary compatible with existing x86 code for various reasons. Some of them had a hardware bug where the LOCK prefix locked up the hardware, some were outright missing less-used instructions, and the documentation of what was actually supported was terrible.
      - naikrovek 9y ago
        The Galileo supported i386 instructions only, no MMX or anything later. The Joule, Edison, and Minnowboard Max are all Atom processors, and support full, modern instruction sets.
  - tonyplee 9y ago
    Part of the reason probably more biz related. CEO/CFO of Intel looked at the balance sheet every Quarters and make decision if they should continue to invest in ARM SOC (A few years back before they sold that div to Marvell.) x86 has 50% + margin, #1 market position. ARM is #4,5, 6 in market position behind TI, Qualcomm, Freescale and lossing $$$ every quarters. One need to investment huge amount of $$$ continuously fundamentally at IP for GSM, LTE, Mobile OS Team, SOC team and there were almost zero chance to catch up with #1 #2 players of the time -- Qualcomm, TI, 8-10 years ago.
johngalt 9y ago
You're too focused on the technology aspect, when that is only the linchpin. There are a number of contributing factors here, but I will summarize. 1. CPUs are diminishing in importance. They aren't the bottleneck for most applications. Whatever the new hot tech is, it's probably limited by GPU, RAM, or storage. ARM doesn't have to be better than Intel, they just have to be good enough and more ubiquitous. The top of the market will go GPU and the bottom will go ARM, and the middle will be an ever shrinking x86 market share. The few places that will need heavy CPU resources will be the same people who can apply pressure to Intel's margins. 2. Intel can't force ARM chips out of the market, because they aren't playing the same game as AMD. The licensing business model of ARM has allowed them to separate Intel from their traditional allies while also pooling the efforts of Intel's competitors. 3. The next generation will know ARM. The hobby chips that Intel is discontinuing now means that they are handing over the next generation of 'learners' to ARM. ARM based training/learning boards are proliferating fast. Right now "everyone knows/runs X86", but that will change. The process of chip making will look very similar in the future, but the brand of the CPU will matter less every year. Intel's not "dead in five years", but Intel will definitely cross the point of no return in that timeframe. Shifting a big company's focus is more difficult than growing another company who already has the right focus. Back to the analogy: Batteries wouldn't invalidate oil. There are a multitude of other areas where petrochemicals are used. Batteries would shift the market enough to make it difficult for exxonmobil to follow.
- crazypyro 9y ago
  Thank you. This is the kind of explanation I was looking for. Poor phrasing on my part.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Doesn't Intel license some ARM architecture, and fab some ARM chip?
tyingq 9y ago
>massive shift in the chip industry I would argue that there has been, specifically that Moore's law isn't working as it once did, so the competition is catching up. It's becoming a commodity space now that smaller process sizes are hard, and gains from that are paltry.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Another thing is that the increasing use of bytecode and managed languages make the CPUs less relevant. For example on the mobile space, for the applications fully written in Java, .NET, Swift[1], JavaScript, how the CPU looks like doesn't matter at all. [1] - When using LLVM bitcode as deployment target, although it is leaky.

Sargos 9y ago

Intel makes x86 (Exxon makes oil). Most things are moving to ARM (batteries). Intel (Exxon) now loses the market it built its entire business on as the world moves on to different products. Exxon can make batteries and Intel can make things like ARM chips. But they aren't really because they aren't good at it.

crazypyro 9y ago
Yeah, but what I'm saying is how is the scale of a move of x86 to ARM comparable to oil to batteries? From the outside, looking in, it seems like the two leaps are on massively different scales which I feel is important when talking about things that will kill a large corporation. I guess my key question is what makes ARM so much different than x86 that it invalidates Intel's existing knowledge? Batteries have a completely different product life cycle than oil. For one, batteries don't burn away and they recharge. This creates completely different business models. Is there some major difference between ARM chips and x86 chips that I am missing?
- Sargos 9y ago
  I'm not an electrical engineer or hardware expert but there must be something because Intel has been trying to compete with ARM for many years with no success. It doesn't seem like it's just something you can just pivot too (or Intel is just really, really, bad at pivoting.)
- blihp 9y ago
  There are two things about x86 vs <pick an architecture... right now its ARM> that are significantly different than they were 10+ years ago: 1) Binary compatibility doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to. This was everything in the 80's, 90's and still important into the early 00's. It's why people were willing to pay top dollar for Intel CPUs for decades. First it was to run DOS apps like Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and then it was to run Windows apps including Microsoft Office which were the primary thing most people had PCs for back then. Most mainstream computing users (business and personal) would be hard pressed to come up with a specific need that requires x86. Thanks to the web, Linux, Apple, mobile, etc. x86 is just another architecture that can be used, not the architecture it once was. 2) Competing products are anywhere from a fraction to an order of magnitude less expensive than Intel's offerings. Unless you absolutely need maximum performance, cheap and good enough is where the majority of the market is. Look at what Intel has been banking on first with their failed attempt in mobile and now with their failed attempt at IoT: they thought that because they had 1 (the thing that doesn't matter much anymore) that they could disregard 2 (the thing that does). Intel sure looks like it's having a Kodak moment: the market that exists today is much smaller in terms of $/CPU or $/perf or $/watt but Intel refuses to do what it needs to adapt.
  - makomk 9y ago
    Also, stupidly a lot of these Intel IoT lines weren't actually binary compatible with existing x86 code for various reasons. Some of them had a hardware bug where the LOCK prefix locked up the hardware, some were outright missing less-used instructions, and the documentation of what was actually supported was terrible.
    - naikrovek 9y ago
      The Galileo supported i386 instructions only, no MMX or anything later. The Joule, Edison, and Minnowboard Max are all Atom processors, and support full, modern instruction sets.
- tonyplee 9y ago
  Part of the reason probably more biz related. CEO/CFO of Intel looked at the balance sheet every Quarters and make decision if they should continue to invest in ARM SOC (A few years back before they sold that div to Marvell.) x86 has 50% + margin, #1 market position. ARM is #4,5, 6 in market position behind TI, Qualcomm, Freescale and lossing $$$ every quarters. One need to investment huge amount of $$$ continuously fundamentally at IP for GSM, LTE, Mobile OS Team, SOC team and there were almost zero chance to catch up with #1 #2 players of the time -- Qualcomm, TI, 8-10 years ago.

johngalt 9y ago

You're too focused on the technology aspect, when that is only the linchpin. There are a number of contributing factors here, but I will summarize. 1. CPUs are diminishing in importance. They aren't the bottleneck for most applications. Whatever the new hot tech is, it's probably limited by GPU, RAM, or storage. ARM doesn't have to be better than Intel, they just have to be good enough and more ubiquitous. The top of the market will go GPU and the bottom will go ARM, and the middle will be an ever shrinking x86 market share. The few places that will need heavy CPU resources will be the same people who can apply pressure to Intel's margins. 2. Intel can't force ARM chips out of the market, because they aren't playing the same game as AMD. The licensing business model of ARM has allowed them to separate Intel from their traditional allies while also pooling the efforts of Intel's competitors. 3. The next generation will know ARM. The hobby chips that Intel is discontinuing now means that they are handing over the next generation of 'learners' to ARM. ARM based training/learning boards are proliferating fast. Right now "everyone knows/runs X86", but that will change. The process of chip making will look very similar in the future, but the brand of the CPU will matter less every year. Intel's not "dead in five years", but Intel will definitely cross the point of no return in that timeframe. Shifting a big company's focus is more difficult than growing another company who already has the right focus. Back to the analogy: Batteries wouldn't invalidate oil. There are a multitude of other areas where petrochemicals are used. Batteries would shift the market enough to make it difficult for exxonmobil to follow.

crazypyro 9y ago
Thank you. This is the kind of explanation I was looking for. Poor phrasing on my part.
KGIII 9y ago
Doesn't Intel license some ARM architecture, and fab some ARM chip?

tyingq 9y ago

>massive shift in the chip industry I would argue that there has been, specifically that Moore's law isn't working as it once did, so the competition is catching up. It's becoming a commodity space now that smaller process sizes are hard, and gains from that are paltry.

pjmlp 9y ago
Another thing is that the increasing use of bytecode and managed languages make the CPUs less relevant. For example on the mobile space, for the applications fully written in Java, .NET, Swift[1], JavaScript, how the CPU looks like doesn't matter at all. [1] - When using LLVM bitcode as deployment target, although it is leaky.