4 ms·

Yup. Burned here also. Intel has a very short attention span. And they don't seem to understand the concept of "EOL Warning" and "Final buy opportunity". Unt

Yup. Burned here also. Intel has a very short attention span. And they don't seem to understand the concept of "EOL Warning" and "Final buy opportunity". Until they rid themselves of the habit of jerking their customer around, they should be treated as unreliable vendor. Which makes me sad, because I was Intel blue-badge for 11 years back in the day. But the current management seems to be sprinting aimlessly after mirages.

cptskippy 9y ago
> But the current management seems to be sprinting aimlessly after mirages. I wouldn't say they're sprinting for mirages. They're hastily entering solid markets but relying solely on their name and prestige. They're not making any investments, beyond marketing, and when the customers don't materialize overnight they're exiting hastily rather than figuring out what they're doing wrong.
- 40acres 9y ago
  Intel spent billions on Altera, MobileEye and Movidus, it's hard to say they aren't making any investments.
  - dmix 9y ago
    I believe the OP means time and dedication in their investments, not simply money. The type of things that startups grind through to become successful. Appropriate amounts of money do need to be injected - but at the right times, not necessarily from the beginning. Bigger companies have a bad habit of comparing the early results of experimental internal businesses with the ROI of their mainline business and cut the cord before the product/market was actually ready to be flooded with cash to scale up. It's funny how the business classic "Innovator's Dilemma" was written largely about companies like Intel who exist in traditional technology markets with predictable evolutionary modes... yet they still suffer from the same lack of 'intrapreneurship' mentality by treating internal startups with immature markets as if they were mature product lines. They should probably stick to acquisitions of real startups in the growth stage or actually stick-it-out for the long run with the markets they invest in, rather than looking for high growth opportunities within a short-timeframe or nothing. Burning early adopters is never a wise choice if that market turns out to have legs.
    - dbcurtis 9y ago
      Very interesting that you should mention "Innovator's Delimma". I remember when Andy Grove made that required reading for all of executive staff, and divisions had to incorporate the thought process in their plans. You are right that this is showing classic signs of not giving innovative business units enough runway to find their product-market fit. That's really hard to do given Intel's culture. Craig Barrett did a lot of damage. One Intel mid-level manager described him as a pinata. "Who ever hits him the hardest gets the most candy." So managers reported synthetic disasters in order to get more funding. Paul Otellini was great, I have huge respect for him, but his tenure was too short lived. Otellini understood how to build a market.
      - dmix 9y ago
        That's an interesting backstory, I was not familiar with the fact Andy Grove made it required reading. It really should be for every tech company management, regardless of it's age. The farther a company gets from it's early roots the harder it gets for them to recreate the 'early days'. Unless they get a shake up in management. But the typical people good at startup culture would get killed pretty quickly in bigco corporate culture.
  - deepnotderp 9y ago
    Exactly, but how many of those were good decisions? Altera-- Not actually a bad decision, but it seems to have done nothing but bolstered Xilinx's position. MobileEye-- A great way to burn ~$15 billion. The fact that Intel felt that it had to purchase that company with really no defensible advantage other than its maps highlights the huge challenges facing Intel if they're unable to cultivate an internal SDC team. Movidius-- Legitimately I have no idea why they paid so much for a glorified DSP. But then again, so are most "Deep Learning Processors" right now.
    - FractalNerve 9y ago
      >> Movidius ⸺ Legitimately I have no idea why they paid so much for a glorified DSP. But then again, so are most "Deep Learning Processors" right now. Curious, do you know alternative "DSPs" able to achieve similar results for Deep-Learning, Computer Vision or Machine-Learning algorithm acceleration? I would highly appreciate a real answer, because I intended to buy one of these movidius "sticks". And further accelerate the Laptop with an eGPU.
      - deepnotderp 9y ago
        I'm very biased here, don't ask me on that :) That being said, I think pretty much everything I say (admittedly with some hyperbole) is backed up by data. So I would recommend at the moment, for a shipping processor, get a GPU.
      - nl 9y ago
        It's really hard to compare Movidius with anything else because there are so few published benchmarks. A few notes though: Movidius is inference only. That might be useful if you have the specific requirements that needs low power, high speed inference and also somehow has to have a x86 CPU. If you want high speed, low power inference and don't need x86 then the NVidia Jetson wipes the floor with it. If you want low speed (~2 inference/second), low power then RPi is a good option. If you want high speed, you need GPU(s).
        aseipp 9y ago

cptskippy 9y ago

> But the current management seems to be sprinting aimlessly after mirages. I wouldn't say they're sprinting for mirages. They're hastily entering solid markets but relying solely on their name and prestige. They're not making any investments, beyond marketing, and when the customers don't materialize overnight they're exiting hastily rather than figuring out what they're doing wrong.

40acres 9y ago
Intel spent billions on Altera, MobileEye and Movidus, it's hard to say they aren't making any investments.
- dmix 9y ago
  I believe the OP means time and dedication in their investments, not simply money. The type of things that startups grind through to become successful. Appropriate amounts of money do need to be injected - but at the right times, not necessarily from the beginning. Bigger companies have a bad habit of comparing the early results of experimental internal businesses with the ROI of their mainline business and cut the cord before the product/market was actually ready to be flooded with cash to scale up. It's funny how the business classic "Innovator's Dilemma" was written largely about companies like Intel who exist in traditional technology markets with predictable evolutionary modes... yet they still suffer from the same lack of 'intrapreneurship' mentality by treating internal startups with immature markets as if they were mature product lines. They should probably stick to acquisitions of real startups in the growth stage or actually stick-it-out for the long run with the markets they invest in, rather than looking for high growth opportunities within a short-timeframe or nothing. Burning early adopters is never a wise choice if that market turns out to have legs.
  - dbcurtis 9y ago
    Very interesting that you should mention "Innovator's Delimma". I remember when Andy Grove made that required reading for all of executive staff, and divisions had to incorporate the thought process in their plans. You are right that this is showing classic signs of not giving innovative business units enough runway to find their product-market fit. That's really hard to do given Intel's culture. Craig Barrett did a lot of damage. One Intel mid-level manager described him as a pinata. "Who ever hits him the hardest gets the most candy." So managers reported synthetic disasters in order to get more funding. Paul Otellini was great, I have huge respect for him, but his tenure was too short lived. Otellini understood how to build a market.
    - dmix 9y ago
      That's an interesting backstory, I was not familiar with the fact Andy Grove made it required reading. It really should be for every tech company management, regardless of it's age. The farther a company gets from it's early roots the harder it gets for them to recreate the 'early days'. Unless they get a shake up in management. But the typical people good at startup culture would get killed pretty quickly in bigco corporate culture.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  Exactly, but how many of those were good decisions? Altera-- Not actually a bad decision, but it seems to have done nothing but bolstered Xilinx's position. MobileEye-- A great way to burn ~$15 billion. The fact that Intel felt that it had to purchase that company with really no defensible advantage other than its maps highlights the huge challenges facing Intel if they're unable to cultivate an internal SDC team. Movidius-- Legitimately I have no idea why they paid so much for a glorified DSP. But then again, so are most "Deep Learning Processors" right now.
  - FractalNerve 9y ago
    >> Movidius ⸺ Legitimately I have no idea why they paid so much for a glorified DSP. But then again, so are most "Deep Learning Processors" right now. Curious, do you know alternative "DSPs" able to achieve similar results for Deep-Learning, Computer Vision or Machine-Learning algorithm acceleration? I would highly appreciate a real answer, because I intended to buy one of these movidius "sticks". And further accelerate the Laptop with an eGPU.
    - deepnotderp 9y ago
      I'm very biased here, don't ask me on that :) That being said, I think pretty much everything I say (admittedly with some hyperbole) is backed up by data. So I would recommend at the moment, for a shipping processor, get a GPU.
    - nl 9y ago
      It's really hard to compare Movidius with anything else because there are so few published benchmarks. A few notes though: Movidius is inference only. That might be useful if you have the specific requirements that needs low power, high speed inference and also somehow has to have a x86 CPU. If you want high speed, low power inference and don't need x86 then the NVidia Jetson wipes the floor with it. If you want low speed (~2 inference/second), low power then RPi is a good option. If you want high speed, you need GPU(s).
      - aseipp 9y ago