5 ms·

Why? Intel made billions last year. They will make billions this year. They will make billions next year.

mschuster91 9y ago
> Why? Because the fallout will cost billions over the next years. Intel as a company due to class-action lawsuits, recalls, rebates, and the shareholders because the drop in stock value after the announcement will cost them quite a chunk of money. In addition, more long-term, I sincerely hope that the cloud vendors (and maybe even Apple!) recognize that their total dependence on Intel (and NVIDIA in deep learning...) is bad and they need to diversify their base.
- gaadd33 9y ago
  You do know that INTC is up compared to 1 month ago? If it didn't drop that much on the initial announcement, why would it plummet in the coming months?
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    Because there is no quantifiable impact yet. Right now all that's known is "mh, it's bad, but the OS vendors are patching it"... now give the situation a couple weeks to brew, wait for more data on the CPU impact of these patches and the inevitable lawsuits. Plus, Intel might want to think about delaying the next CPU releases (or introduce a new stepping of existing CPUs) to fix the bugs in hardware... all stuff that ain't cheap.
    - scarhill 9y ago
      If the market agreed with you that Intel will suffer greatly in the future due to Meltdown/Spectre the price would have dropped already. Of course you might be correct and the market wrong. You’re short Intel, right?
- cm2187 9y ago
  Until Intel fixes their architecture, wouldn't all the major cloud providers switch new purchases to AMD for the time being?
- brianwawok 9y ago
  > Because the fallout will cost billions over the next years. Doubtful. Intel has a near monopoly in data centers in 2017. They will have a near monopoly in data centers in 2018 and 2019 I predict as well. Really very few things they can do to lose their business at this point.
- rodonn 9y ago
  Unclear that diversifying helps solve this sort of problem. More vendors could lead to the same number of bugs, but less investment in quality control per product e.g. if you make $1b and spend 1% on quality control, then you spend $10m checking your product for bugs. If the market fragments into 10 $100m vendors, then to get the same amount of money spent checking each chip for bugs, you'd have to spend 10x as much of your budget on quality control. It gets even worse when you consider the incentives of private/academic/third party researchers to search for bugs, since there is a lot less prestige in catching a bug in a smaller/less well known product. e.g. I'm pretty sure no white-hat security researcher has checked for security problems in the cheap wifi light switches I bought on Amazon.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Different vendors have different bugs. The aerospace industry has realized this a long time, and for some things they will have 3 different devices from 3 different vendors doing the same job
  - naasking 9y ago
    > If the market fragments into 10 $100m vendors, then to get the same amount of money spent checking each chip for bugs, you'd have to spend 10x as much of your budget on quality control. But there's a much smaller attack surface and the incentives for attackers are significantly changed. Homogeneity is always more vulnerable to disaster, whether we're talking about food supply or chips.
    - sitkack 9y ago
      And quality is not directly a function of money spent. Customers will start demanding to see the machine checked proofs that your hardware is correct. Intel has been cowboy coding CPUs for way too long.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Unclear that diversifying helps solve this sort of problem. At least having the option of another vendor as a fallback (e.g. in case there's a severe RCE vulnerability in ME/PSP) is a better alternative than having to shutter your entire business. I would not be surprised if these management engines have a backdoor that can be invoked from a guest VM... and then an all-Intel (or all-AMD) shop has a massive problem.
- ed312 9y ago
  The problem is chip R&D is super capital-intensive and the space is highly competitive even with so few companies.
- Aloha 9y ago
  The intel CEO took over in 2012 - some of these vulnerabilities go back as far as the Pentium Pro (Meltdown) and the other one, effects (I believe) as far back as the original Pentium (Spectre) - why would you fire someone for something that happened under a predecessors leadership (Andy Grove, in this case was CEO when the Meltdown attack was added) - it makes no sense - I see nothing here that doesnt jive up with similar efforts with other bugs.
  - JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
    Him selling his maximum allowed grant and also options when he knew before everyone is plenty.
    - sudhirj 9y ago
      That would be clear insider trading, with SEC prosecution and jail time. Unlikely if the executive has half a brain.
      - bartread 9y ago
        Yeah, exactly: it's too easy for people to draw a direct line between the selling and the announcement (which, of course, people have done) for him to have been stupid enough to do it with that intent. He seems to have simply been following the pattern of previous trades. That being said, even though I don't think it's the case here, greed has been known to make people do some very stupid things.
    - bostik 9y ago
      According to Matt Levine, Krzanich has a consistent history of selling the maximum or near-maximum amount of his stock grants every year.[0] If one wants to be truly cynical, you could say he has been expecting something like this all the time and cashing out to ensure his money isn't tied to Intel. I am inclined to being slightly less cynical - I'd say he has been just cashing out regardless of the the company's performance. 0: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-05/citi-forgot-to-fix-its-money-laundering-systems https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-05/citi-forg...

> Why? Because the fallout will cost billions over the next years. Intel as a company due to class-action lawsuits, recalls, rebates, and the shareholders because the drop in stock value after the announcement will cost them quite a chunk of money. In addition, more long-term, I sincerely hope that the cloud vendors (and maybe even Apple!) recognize that their total dependence on Intel (and NVIDIA in deep learning...) is bad and they need to diversify their base.

gaadd33 9y ago
You do know that INTC is up compared to 1 month ago? If it didn't drop that much on the initial announcement, why would it plummet in the coming months?
- mschuster91 9y ago
  Because there is no quantifiable impact yet. Right now all that's known is "mh, it's bad, but the OS vendors are patching it"... now give the situation a couple weeks to brew, wait for more data on the CPU impact of these patches and the inevitable lawsuits. Plus, Intel might want to think about delaying the next CPU releases (or introduce a new stepping of existing CPUs) to fix the bugs in hardware... all stuff that ain't cheap.
  - scarhill 9y ago
    If the market agreed with you that Intel will suffer greatly in the future due to Meltdown/Spectre the price would have dropped already. Of course you might be correct and the market wrong. You’re short Intel, right?
cm2187 9y ago
Until Intel fixes their architecture, wouldn't all the major cloud providers switch new purchases to AMD for the time being?
brianwawok 9y ago
> Because the fallout will cost billions over the next years. Doubtful. Intel has a near monopoly in data centers in 2017. They will have a near monopoly in data centers in 2018 and 2019 I predict as well. Really very few things they can do to lose their business at this point.
rodonn 9y ago
Unclear that diversifying helps solve this sort of problem. More vendors could lead to the same number of bugs, but less investment in quality control per product e.g. if you make $1b and spend 1% on quality control, then you spend $10m checking your product for bugs. If the market fragments into 10 $100m vendors, then to get the same amount of money spent checking each chip for bugs, you'd have to spend 10x as much of your budget on quality control. It gets even worse when you consider the incentives of private/academic/third party researchers to search for bugs, since there is a lot less prestige in catching a bug in a smaller/less well known product. e.g. I'm pretty sure no white-hat security researcher has checked for security problems in the cheap wifi light switches I bought on Amazon.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Different vendors have different bugs. The aerospace industry has realized this a long time, and for some things they will have 3 different devices from 3 different vendors doing the same job
- naasking 9y ago
  > If the market fragments into 10 $100m vendors, then to get the same amount of money spent checking each chip for bugs, you'd have to spend 10x as much of your budget on quality control. But there's a much smaller attack surface and the incentives for attackers are significantly changed. Homogeneity is always more vulnerable to disaster, whether we're talking about food supply or chips.
  - sitkack 9y ago
    And quality is not directly a function of money spent. Customers will start demanding to see the machine checked proofs that your hardware is correct. Intel has been cowboy coding CPUs for way too long.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Unclear that diversifying helps solve this sort of problem. At least having the option of another vendor as a fallback (e.g. in case there's a severe RCE vulnerability in ME/PSP) is a better alternative than having to shutter your entire business. I would not be surprised if these management engines have a backdoor that can be invoked from a guest VM... and then an all-Intel (or all-AMD) shop has a massive problem.
ed312 9y ago
The problem is chip R&D is super capital-intensive and the space is highly competitive even with so few companies.
Aloha 9y ago
The intel CEO took over in 2012 - some of these vulnerabilities go back as far as the Pentium Pro (Meltdown) and the other one, effects (I believe) as far back as the original Pentium (Spectre) - why would you fire someone for something that happened under a predecessors leadership (Andy Grove, in this case was CEO when the Meltdown attack was added) - it makes no sense - I see nothing here that doesnt jive up with similar efforts with other bugs.
- JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
  Him selling his maximum allowed grant and also options when he knew before everyone is plenty.
  - sudhirj 9y ago
    That would be clear insider trading, with SEC prosecution and jail time. Unlikely if the executive has half a brain.
    - bartread 9y ago
      Yeah, exactly: it's too easy for people to draw a direct line between the selling and the announcement (which, of course, people have done) for him to have been stupid enough to do it with that intent. He seems to have simply been following the pattern of previous trades. That being said, even though I don't think it's the case here, greed has been known to make people do some very stupid things.
  - bostik 9y ago
    According to Matt Levine, Krzanich has a consistent history of selling the maximum or near-maximum amount of his stock grants every year.[0] If one wants to be truly cynical, you could say he has been expecting something like this all the time and cashing out to ensure his money isn't tied to Intel. I am inclined to being slightly less cynical - I'd say he has been just cashing out regardless of the the company's performance. 0: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-05/citi-forgot-to-fix-its-money-laundering-systems https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-05/citi-forg...