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Much more so than the bugs themselves it seriously undermines my confidence in Intel that in this time of emergency, they can't bring themselves to address cust

by sho_hn 9y ago

Much more so than the bugs themselves it seriously undermines my confidence in Intel that in this time of emergency, they can't bring themselves to address customers with straight talk. Clear information should take precedence over mitigating liability. Yet it's fallen to others to explain defects in their products, and people are even mostly left guessing what their attempts to fix things actually do. Screwups happen. But do I want to go live through the consequences of one with this vendor at my side ever again?

HugoDaniel 9y ago
Do you really think this was a screwup ? Intel is a company that has a highly hierarchical structure and a very thorough process of product development and market approach. Add to that that they are historically one of the key examples of a company that plans their strategy many years ahead and I find it way more sane to default Meltdown to a premeditated conscious decision/tarde-off of their part. Like VW emissions scandal but worse. "We think long term at Epic. We're like Intel. We look at what we're going to do in five to ten years from now, and set our direction that way..." Tim Sweeney in a Kotaku interview 2011
- cjbprime 9y ago
  It's not obvious (at least to me) that Meltdown is caused by a performance optimization. The fix to Meltdown introduces a pessimization, sure, but that's not necessarily the same thing. Meltdown could be a simple bug that doesn't incur a perf loss when designed for properly, but happens to require an expensive fix in the field. Does anyone know?
api 9y ago
Intel is in trouble. They've lost mobile and they're in danger of losing desktop/laptop and cloud. While AMD is some threat there, the much larger threat comes from high performance ARM64 cores. Intel would rather see AMD take market share from them than ARM, since at least AMD Ryzen is still an x64 core and will keep the architectural center of gravity in Intel's area. Of course their longer term strategy seems to be to get ahead in areas like quantum and neuromorphic computing. This is going to keep them relevant in the long term, but in the medium to short term they could have difficulties.
- dmm 9y ago
  Intel is also in trouble in the sense that they have multiple class action lawsuits filed against them regarding meltdown/spectre. Anything they publicly say will no doubt be used against them if possible.
  - outworlder 9y ago
    I do not understand this. I get that for Meltdown, but Spectre affects almost all processors available. What grounds do they have for litigation?

by sho_hn 9y ago

HugoDaniel 9y ago

Do you really think this was a screwup ? Intel is a company that has a highly hierarchical structure and a very thorough process of product development and market approach. Add to that that they are historically one of the key examples of a company that plans their strategy many years ahead and I find it way more sane to default Meltdown to a premeditated conscious decision/tarde-off of their part. Like VW emissions scandal but worse. "We think long term at Epic. We're like Intel. We look at what we're going to do in five to ten years from now, and set our direction that way..." Tim Sweeney in a Kotaku interview 2011

cjbprime 9y ago
It's not obvious (at least to me) that Meltdown is caused by a performance optimization. The fix to Meltdown introduces a pessimization, sure, but that's not necessarily the same thing. Meltdown could be a simple bug that doesn't incur a perf loss when designed for properly, but happens to require an expensive fix in the field. Does anyone know?

api 9y ago

Intel is in trouble. They've lost mobile and they're in danger of losing desktop/laptop and cloud. While AMD is some threat there, the much larger threat comes from high performance ARM64 cores. Intel would rather see AMD take market share from them than ARM, since at least AMD Ryzen is still an x64 core and will keep the architectural center of gravity in Intel's area. Of course their longer term strategy seems to be to get ahead in areas like quantum and neuromorphic computing. This is going to keep them relevant in the long term, but in the medium to short term they could have difficulties.

dmm 9y ago
Intel is also in trouble in the sense that they have multiple class action lawsuits filed against them regarding meltdown/spectre. Anything they publicly say will no doubt be used against them if possible.
- outworlder 9y ago
  I do not understand this. I get that for Meltdown, but Spectre affects almost all processors available. What grounds do they have for litigation?