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Before Zen, we all kind of assumed they were so far ahead that AMD were more likely to be out of business before they would ever be a credible threat again. I

Before Zen, we all kind of assumed they were so far ahead that AMD were more likely to be out of business before they would ever be a credible threat again. I actually thought Intel must have had some tricks up their sleeves in terms of performance gains that we hadn't seen yet, simply because there was no market need to roll them out and they had so many years of coasting on marginal gains. Seeing them taking this stance looks a lot like the microcode hit is that bad, and that the emperor has no clothes. Clearly, they don't have an answer to AMD at all. If this is true, their shareholders should be asking serious questions about why they've nothing significant to show for all that time and money spent when they were raking it in without a serious competitor.

carlmr 8y ago
>they've nothing significant to show for all that time and money spent when they were raking it in without a serious competitor. Big companies rarely innovate without competition around.
- yohann305 8y ago
  This is certainly a myth. Everyone knows, including big companies, that as you grow in size you have a harder time innovating. The classic "lean startup" book mentions this issue and gives the example of Intuit's in-house accelerator/incubator. No way Intel doesn't know about it too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/19/innovation-isnt-just-for-startups-how-big-companies-can-tap-their-creative-power/#535dd848686b https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/19/in...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - gowld 8y ago
    What myth? As you say, bigger companies have a harder time innovting.
    - gray_-_wolf 8y ago
      Yeah, but it's not necessarily related to competion, size is primary factor. At least I believe that was his point.
      - js8 8y ago
        I think it is related to competition. Lack of competition brings complacency of executives, who think they can get free money for shareholders without having to reinvest into innovation. (And I think that was carlmr's point.) Of course, if you are bigger, the more likely it is that there is no competition at certain times.
        carlmr 8y ago
        Yeah, my point was that a big company can coast without innovating. They usually have a lot of stuff to sell that they have done in the past. The pressure to rejuvenate comes from outside, rarely from the inside (surely there are exceptions as with every good rule). If you can survive without investing, a lot of companies choose not to.
    - gehsty 8y ago
      Apple / Google / Amazon don’t seem to struggle? Microsoft / IBM and now Intel defintely did. I think it has more to do with the leadership of the company than the size of the company.
      - senozhatsky 8y ago
        Does Google innovate? -ss
        lordlimecat 8y ago
        Have you seen how many messaging apps theyve made in the last few years?
        8y ago
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    wasn't bell labs part of a very big corporation when they invented basically everything about the modern world?
    - nutjob2 8y ago
      Bell Labs invented Google, Facebook, etc? Wow, did not know that. But as you say, the labs were a very small, independent part of a very big corporation, which is likely why they did interesting things. The other thing is that they were forced by the government to license transistor patents to others, who actually created almost everything else. By your theory the military invented the internet, so they invented the modern world. A huge and wasteful military is the key!
      - jrockway 8y ago
        Google and Facebook would look a lot different without transistors.
        cestith 8y ago
        And lasers. And Unix. And switched networking. And binary digital computers. And long-haul undersea cables. And the first successful communications satellite. And data networking. http://blog.tmcnet.com/next-generation-communications/2011/08/the-top-bell-labs-innovations---part-i-the-game-changers.html http://blog.tmcnet.com/next-generation-communications/2011/0...
        grkvlt 8y ago
        Yes, but apart from that, what have the Romans, er, Bell Labs ever given us?
      - wlesieutre 8y ago
        They didn't invent Google and Facebook, but they're responsible for transistors, lasers, Unix, C and C++, CCD digital image sensors, long distance microwave radio relays, the first transatlantic phone cable, MOSFETs, communication satellites, and cell networks. Not modern internet services no, but all of the infrastructure it's built on is grounded on theirs.
  - pcnix 8y ago
    This is also the topic of the book "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  I don't think this is necessarily true for big hardware companies. If you're selling a subscription to a best-in-market service, there's not a lot of motive to innovate, agreed. Maybe you'd try a new product or a premium variant, but there's no reason to sink effort into advances that won't let you expand userbase or raise prices. But for Intel? Before AMD got going, Intel's biggest competition was itself 9/18 months previously. Innovation wasn't just for new devices and new buyers, it was how they sold updated processors for machines that were already Intel Inside. They're not waiting on processors to die, they're actively pushing for them to be replaced for performance reasons. That might create an incentive to release 'good enough' updates and dole out big improvements gradually, but in practice any of that which happened was already ending. Intel appears to be up against the wall regarding 10nm even with a competitor, and has been attempting major innovations to handle 7nm and below for years. With a revenue stream that relies on annual improvements to their product, they seem to have been learning hard into innovation and struggling, rather than waiting for a competitor.
  - fpoling 8y ago
    It is really a nice point about competing with themselves. The volume of Intel is rather big that they have to sell to the same customer each 2-3 years even if CPUs are in principle can last 10 years or more. So they must increase the performance substantially to justify the sales.
  - chrischen 8y ago
    This is a great argument to be against the recent trends of companies moving to subscription models just for the heck of it.
    - Bartweiss 8y ago
      Definitely. The common complaint about subscription models is obviously good: if the company folds you have nothing, instead of an unsupported product. But it neglects the other issue, which is that companies intentionally cut off the possibility of "good enough" to guarantee revenue. I don't think its an accident that products like Microsoft Office went to subscriptions around the time it becomes very hard to imagine a new feature actually worth buying for.
frozenport 8y ago
The only problem with Intel is the price point. Given that the R&D is sunk, and the COGs are about 8x, their profitability is entirely market demand.
snaky 8y ago
> Clearly, they don't have an answer to AMD at all They still have a huge opportunity for CPU+FPGA, they bought Altera for the purpose.
- dzdt 8y ago
  But CPU+FPGA will forever be a tiny niche, right? I don't see any path where mainstream programs get a boost from FPGA.
  - abainbridge 8y ago
    That depends what you mean by mainstream. These days the cloud data centre is a mainstream market for hardware vendors. In that environment FPGAs can make sense. They might have advantages in throughput, latency, power consumption, security (no spectre), reliability (no software updates). For example, Microsoft use them for Azure virtual networking, machine learning and something inside Bing. You can imagine a world where every blade server has an FPGA. In fact, you can imagine a world where many blade servers have an FPGA and only a small support CPU.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      You can spin up an FPGA-accelerated EC2 instance right now. There are a few highly specialised applications where every scrap of performance matters, but for the most part the software development costs are prohibitive compared to just spinning up more CPU or GPU instances. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/f1/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/f1/
      - snaky 8y ago
        There are some interesting ideas about programmability, like automagically offloading some computation parts to FPGA. http://conal.net/blog/posts/haskell-to-hardware-via-cccs http://conal.net/blog/posts/haskell-to-hardware-via-cccs http://conal.net/blog/posts/circuits-as-a-bicartesian-closed-category http://conal.net/blog/posts/circuits-as-a-bicartesian-closed... https://github.com/conal/lambda-ccc/blob/master/doc/notes.md https://github.com/conal/lambda-ccc/blob/master/doc/notes.md
jdietrich 8y ago
Equally troubling for Intel is the fact that they're losing their advantage in fabrication. The performance of their architecture is going backwards with every microcode patch, while their move to 10nm is hugely delayed. https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-cpu-10nm-earnings-amd,news-58336.html https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-cpu-10nm-earnings-amd,n...
- djsumdog 8y ago
  I'm kinda curious to see how Zhaoxin, Hygon and other manufacturers in the x86_64 space are going to play out. It would be nice to see some real competition, not just Intel vs AMD, in this space. There are other services like Packet that offer bare-metal hosting on small Atom and ARM processors. It'd be nice to see some alt x86 processors in this space.
  - kscz 8y ago
    Hygon is just AMD's EPYC CPU [0]. I am uncertain if they will differentiate themselves more as time goes on, but at the moment almost the only difference in the kernel is that it has a different name. I think you're more likely to see some ARM CPUs which have comparable performance to low-end and mid-range x86 before you see a new x86 competitor [1] - the overhead to making x86 perform well is just so high that I can't imagine anyone new bothering to get into the space. VIA has been in the market forever as the third seller of x86, and despite the theoretical benefits of entering into the datacenter CPU market, they've never made that leap (though I don't know enough about their history to know if they tried). I'm hoping that ARM becoming competitive in the client CPU space ends up making the cross-compile overheads of enough drivers/kernel stuff that we can start to see some more diversity in the CPU market overall. I'm excited about RISC-V, especially now that they have shipping hardware you can play with today [2]. The Mill CPU sounds super cool in a bunch of ways, but the architecture has made so many decisions that I'm unsure will play out in practice I'm holding my excitement until I see real silicon somewhere [3] [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/china-producing-x86-chips-nearly-identical-to-amd-server-processors/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/china... [1] https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/16/arm-says-chips-will-outperform-intel-laptop-cpus/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/16/arm-says-chips-will-outp... [2] https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/ https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_architecture
ksec 8y ago
>Before Zen, we all kind of assumed they were so far ahead that AMD were more likely to be out of business before they would ever be a credible threat again. It depends where about on the timeline. AMD's hired of Lisa Su and Jim Keller in 2012, we all thought it was too little too late. Look back at the Roadmap Intel were giving at the time, I used to joke about Tick Tock were like the sound of AMD's death clock. In 2012 we were looking at 10nm in 2016, 7nm in 2018, and 5nm in 2020. We just had Sandy Bridge, but that was the last big IPC improvement we have had. Fast forward to 2018 / 2019, No 10nm, and I would have been happy if they were selling me 14nm++++++ Quad Core Sandy Bridge. Broadwell and Skylake brings nothing much substantial. Intel were suppose to break the ARM Mobile Market with tour de force, and that didn't happen. We all assumed Intel had many other tricks up its sleeves, new uArch or 10nm waiting in the wings when things are needed. Turns out they have nothing. Why did they buy McAfee?( Which has been sold off already ) And Infineon? Nearly eight years after the acquisition they are just about to ship their first Mobile Baseband made by their own Fabs, Eight Years! What an achievement! Nearly three years after their acquisition of Altera, which itself has been previously working with Intel Custom Fab before that. What do they have to show? During that time, the Smartphone revolution scale has helped Pure Play Fab like TSMC to made enough profits and fund their R&D rivalling Intel. And in a few more weeks time we will have an TSMC / Apple 7nm node shipping in millions of units per week. In terms of HVM and leading node, making TSMC over taking Intel for the first time in history. AMD has been executing well following their Roadmap, and Lisa Su did not disappoint. Nothing on those slides were marketing speaks or tricks that Intel used. No over hyped performance improvement, but promise of incremental progress. She reminds me of Pat Gelsinger from Intel, Down to Earth, and telling the truth. Judging from the Results though, AMD aren't making enough of dent in OEM and enterprise. Well I guess if you are not buying those CPU with your own money, why would you not buy Intel? The consumer market and Small Web Hosting market though seems to be doing better, where the owners are paying. I hope Zen 2 will make enough improvement and change those people's mind, better IPC, better memory controller. If you loathe Intel after all the lies they have been telling and marketing speaks, you should buy AMD. If you love Intel still after all, you should still buy AMD, teach them a painful lesson to wake them up.
- rasz 8y ago
  Dont forget Puma series of broadband modem chipsets bought from Texas Instruments in 2010. All defective, 3 generations and hardware is still not fixed, just this month Intel released some half assed software patches. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/09/intel_puma_modem_woes/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/09/intel_puma_modem_wo...
mtgx 8y ago
> Clearly, they don't have an answer to AMD at all. If this is true, their shareholders should be asking serious questions about why they've nothing significant to show for all that time and money spent when they were raking it in without a serious competitor. But they have lots to show for that money! Brand change implementations such as "Gold" and "Platinum", which gouge the customers more than ever before.
KozmoNau7 8y ago
Intel are still ahead in low power mobile (laptop) CPU race, and the clear leader in the laptop market. Who knows for how long, though?
- lawlessone 8y ago
  >Intel are still ahead in low power mobile CPU race, I never met a person with a smart phone that uses an intel chip. They probably exist but i know none. Apple aren't using them. Samsung aren't.. HTC nope.. Google pixel nope... Intel basically sold off/scuttled their mobile division right before the iphone took off.
  - bocklund 8y ago
    I think “mobile” was supposed to refer to laptops, not phones or tablets.
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    I meant "mobile" as in laptop CPUs, I've edited my post to clarify.
    - lawlessone 8y ago
      My apologies, you're right about laptops.
  - Nightshaxx 8y ago
    I think it's referring to laptops. That said I had the ASUS Zenfone 2 and the performance seemed alright, but certain apps didn't work because of the architecture difference, most notably Pokemon Go for the whole time it was popular (although it's probably for the better that I missed that whole craze).
    - lawlessone 8y ago
      oh yeah i forgot laptops.
    - 8y ago
agumonkey 8y ago
After reading a few articles, here's what I got: it seems that Intel couldn't jump into EUV manufacturing when they were in full domination because it was too expensive and new so they started improving multipatterning so improve resolution, which proved too hard to ship (hence the delays) meanwhile smaller players went their way until recently and now EUV is accessible so they can jump in swiftly while intel is still caught inside his intermediate strategy, lazy market behavior and unforeseen failures. They also have EUV planned but not until the next-generation. Note that even at larger pitch their process is near competitive with smaller ones today, but it sounds terrible.
Keyframe 8y ago
They did hire Keller, no? I wonder if AMD has an answer to AMD in the coming years. Not only CPU, GPU as well. Especially GPU. They missed the boat on AI, and now Nvidia is pushing RTRT left and right. That's seemingly two areas they still don't have an answer to. It's a big battlefront, and intel is only a step or two away from possibly bringing an answer to AMD. Not to mention whole laptop domination by intel, and mobile by ARM.
- ArPDent 8y ago
  > Not to mention whole laptop domination by intel, and mobile by ARM traditionally yes, intel has absolutely dominated the laptop market however i have been seeing a lot more laptops lately with a Ryzen processor and Vega graphics AMD making gains into a very lucrative market
tomaskafka 8y ago
Here's a Stratechery article, nothing more to add. https://stratechery.com/2018/intel-and-the-danger-of-integration/ https://stratechery.com/2018/intel-and-the-danger-of-integra...
clarkmoody 8y ago
Most of the emperors out there have no clothes.
unethical_ban 8y ago
I just want to throw it out there that it might be impossible for AMD to actually go out of business. They're Intel's only major x86 competitor, IIRC their x86 license is non-transferrable, and no way Intel would be permitted in the USA to have an actual monopoly on x86 production. I kick myself for not buying AMD at $2 (or buying a LOT more at $5).
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  > I just want to throw it out there that it might be impossible for AMD to actually go out of business. Even if you buy this, (I don't), there's no point for them to stay in business with absolutely non-competitive products. The remarkable thing is that thanks to Zen that did not happen and Intel actually feels some heat for the first time in years.
- ValentineC 8y ago
  > They're Intel's only major x86 competitor, IIRC their x86 license is non-transferrable, and no way Intel would be permitted in the USA to have an actual monopoly on x86 production. I just looked this up, and it seems to boil down to the patent cross-licensing agreement between Intel, which developed the x86 architecture, and AMD, which developed the 64-bit instruction set. I don't think there's a unilateral "non-transferable license" per se — and they're free to enter into a new agreement if either party does get acquired. This Reddit thread seems pretty good at explaining it in much more detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3b0ytk/discussion_what_is_an_x86_license_and_why_do/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3b0ytk/discussion...
ptero 8y ago
> shareholders should be asking serious questions about why they've nothing significant to show for all that time and money spent when they were raking it in without a serious competitor. This might be the answer. No competition and a good cash flow is a comfortable position. You defend this model with ads, policy, etc. and technical innovation can languish. I am not saying this is necessarily the case, but it is possible that Intel just got comfortable, slow and fat. Having a scrappy, smart competitor can be a good thing.
blablabla123 8y ago
Pretty stupid that they didn't continue their Itanium architecture. It does have In-Order-Branch-Prediction and we are at a point again where a significant number of users don't really care what kind of CPU they are using. ARM and RISC-V have become a serious thread and are on the way to get standardized ecosystems...

carlmr 8y ago

>they've nothing significant to show for all that time and money spent when they were raking it in without a serious competitor. Big companies rarely innovate without competition around.

yohann305 8y ago
This is certainly a myth. Everyone knows, including big companies, that as you grow in size you have a harder time innovating. The classic "lean startup" book mentions this issue and gives the example of Intuit's in-house accelerator/incubator. No way Intel doesn't know about it too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/19/innovation-isnt-just-for-startups-how-big-companies-can-tap-their-creative-power/#535dd848686b https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/19/in...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gowld 8y ago
  What myth? As you say, bigger companies have a harder time innovting.
  - gray_-_wolf 8y ago
    Yeah, but it's not necessarily related to competion, size is primary factor. At least I believe that was his point.
    - js8 8y ago
      I think it is related to competition. Lack of competition brings complacency of executives, who think they can get free money for shareholders without having to reinvest into innovation. (And I think that was carlmr's point.) Of course, if you are bigger, the more likely it is that there is no competition at certain times.
      - carlmr 8y ago
        Yeah, my point was that a big company can coast without innovating. They usually have a lot of stuff to sell that they have done in the past. The pressure to rejuvenate comes from outside, rarely from the inside (surely there are exceptions as with every good rule). If you can survive without investing, a lot of companies choose not to.
  - gehsty 8y ago
    Apple / Google / Amazon don’t seem to struggle? Microsoft / IBM and now Intel defintely did. I think it has more to do with the leadership of the company than the size of the company.
    - senozhatsky 8y ago
      Does Google innovate? -ss
      - lordlimecat 8y ago
        Have you seen how many messaging apps theyve made in the last few years?
        8y ago
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  wasn't bell labs part of a very big corporation when they invented basically everything about the modern world?
  - nutjob2 8y ago
    Bell Labs invented Google, Facebook, etc? Wow, did not know that. But as you say, the labs were a very small, independent part of a very big corporation, which is likely why they did interesting things. The other thing is that they were forced by the government to license transistor patents to others, who actually created almost everything else. By your theory the military invented the internet, so they invented the modern world. A huge and wasteful military is the key!
    - jrockway 8y ago
      Google and Facebook would look a lot different without transistors.
      - cestith 8y ago
        And lasers. And Unix. And switched networking. And binary digital computers. And long-haul undersea cables. And the first successful communications satellite. And data networking. http://blog.tmcnet.com/next-generation-communications/2011/08/the-top-bell-labs-innovations---part-i-the-game-changers.html http://blog.tmcnet.com/next-generation-communications/2011/0...
        grkvlt 8y ago
        Yes, but apart from that, what have the Romans, er, Bell Labs ever given us?
    - wlesieutre 8y ago
      They didn't invent Google and Facebook, but they're responsible for transistors, lasers, Unix, C and C++, CCD digital image sensors, long distance microwave radio relays, the first transatlantic phone cable, MOSFETs, communication satellites, and cell networks. Not modern internet services no, but all of the infrastructure it's built on is grounded on theirs.
- pcnix 8y ago
  This is also the topic of the book "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen.
Bartweiss 8y ago
I don't think this is necessarily true for big hardware companies. If you're selling a subscription to a best-in-market service, there's not a lot of motive to innovate, agreed. Maybe you'd try a new product or a premium variant, but there's no reason to sink effort into advances that won't let you expand userbase or raise prices. But for Intel? Before AMD got going, Intel's biggest competition was itself 9/18 months previously. Innovation wasn't just for new devices and new buyers, it was how they sold updated processors for machines that were already Intel Inside. They're not waiting on processors to die, they're actively pushing for them to be replaced for performance reasons. That might create an incentive to release 'good enough' updates and dole out big improvements gradually, but in practice any of that which happened was already ending. Intel appears to be up against the wall regarding 10nm even with a competitor, and has been attempting major innovations to handle 7nm and below for years. With a revenue stream that relies on annual improvements to their product, they seem to have been learning hard into innovation and struggling, rather than waiting for a competitor.
- fpoling 8y ago
  It is really a nice point about competing with themselves. The volume of Intel is rather big that they have to sell to the same customer each 2-3 years even if CPUs are in principle can last 10 years or more. So they must increase the performance substantially to justify the sales.
- chrischen 8y ago
  This is a great argument to be against the recent trends of companies moving to subscription models just for the heck of it.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    Definitely. The common complaint about subscription models is obviously good: if the company folds you have nothing, instead of an unsupported product. But it neglects the other issue, which is that companies intentionally cut off the possibility of "good enough" to guarantee revenue. I don't think its an accident that products like Microsoft Office went to subscriptions around the time it becomes very hard to imagine a new feature actually worth buying for.

frozenport 8y ago

The only problem with Intel is the price point. Given that the R&D is sunk, and the COGs are about 8x, their profitability is entirely market demand.

snaky 8y ago

> Clearly, they don't have an answer to AMD at all They still have a huge opportunity for CPU+FPGA, they bought Altera for the purpose.

dzdt 8y ago
But CPU+FPGA will forever be a tiny niche, right? I don't see any path where mainstream programs get a boost from FPGA.
- abainbridge 8y ago
  That depends what you mean by mainstream. These days the cloud data centre is a mainstream market for hardware vendors. In that environment FPGAs can make sense. They might have advantages in throughput, latency, power consumption, security (no spectre), reliability (no software updates). For example, Microsoft use them for Azure virtual networking, machine learning and something inside Bing. You can imagine a world where every blade server has an FPGA. In fact, you can imagine a world where many blade servers have an FPGA and only a small support CPU.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    You can spin up an FPGA-accelerated EC2 instance right now. There are a few highly specialised applications where every scrap of performance matters, but for the most part the software development costs are prohibitive compared to just spinning up more CPU or GPU instances. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/f1/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/f1/
    - snaky 8y ago
      There are some interesting ideas about programmability, like automagically offloading some computation parts to FPGA. http://conal.net/blog/posts/haskell-to-hardware-via-cccs http://conal.net/blog/posts/haskell-to-hardware-via-cccs http://conal.net/blog/posts/circuits-as-a-bicartesian-closed-category http://conal.net/blog/posts/circuits-as-a-bicartesian-closed... https://github.com/conal/lambda-ccc/blob/master/doc/notes.md https://github.com/conal/lambda-ccc/blob/master/doc/notes.md

jdietrich 8y ago

Equally troubling for Intel is the fact that they're losing their advantage in fabrication. The performance of their architecture is going backwards with every microcode patch, while their move to 10nm is hugely delayed. https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-cpu-10nm-earnings-amd,news-58336.html https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-cpu-10nm-earnings-amd,n...

djsumdog 8y ago
I'm kinda curious to see how Zhaoxin, Hygon and other manufacturers in the x86_64 space are going to play out. It would be nice to see some real competition, not just Intel vs AMD, in this space. There are other services like Packet that offer bare-metal hosting on small Atom and ARM processors. It'd be nice to see some alt x86 processors in this space.
- kscz 8y ago
  Hygon is just AMD's EPYC CPU [0]. I am uncertain if they will differentiate themselves more as time goes on, but at the moment almost the only difference in the kernel is that it has a different name. I think you're more likely to see some ARM CPUs which have comparable performance to low-end and mid-range x86 before you see a new x86 competitor [1] - the overhead to making x86 perform well is just so high that I can't imagine anyone new bothering to get into the space. VIA has been in the market forever as the third seller of x86, and despite the theoretical benefits of entering into the datacenter CPU market, they've never made that leap (though I don't know enough about their history to know if they tried). I'm hoping that ARM becoming competitive in the client CPU space ends up making the cross-compile overheads of enough drivers/kernel stuff that we can start to see some more diversity in the CPU market overall. I'm excited about RISC-V, especially now that they have shipping hardware you can play with today [2]. The Mill CPU sounds super cool in a bunch of ways, but the architecture has made so many decisions that I'm unsure will play out in practice I'm holding my excitement until I see real silicon somewhere [3] [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/china-producing-x86-chips-nearly-identical-to-amd-server-processors/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/china... [1] https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/16/arm-says-chips-will-outperform-intel-laptop-cpus/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/16/arm-says-chips-will-outp... [2] https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/ https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_architecture

ksec 8y ago

>Before Zen, we all kind of assumed they were so far ahead that AMD were more likely to be out of business before they would ever be a credible threat again. It depends where about on the timeline. AMD's hired of Lisa Su and Jim Keller in 2012, we all thought it was too little too late. Look back at the Roadmap Intel were giving at the time, I used to joke about Tick Tock were like the sound of AMD's death clock. In 2012 we were looking at 10nm in 2016, 7nm in 2018, and 5nm in 2020. We just had Sandy Bridge, but that was the last big IPC improvement we have had. Fast forward to 2018 / 2019, No 10nm, and I would have been happy if they were selling me 14nm++++++ Quad Core Sandy Bridge. Broadwell and Skylake brings nothing much substantial. Intel were suppose to break the ARM Mobile Market with tour de force, and that didn't happen. We all assumed Intel had many other tricks up its sleeves, new uArch or 10nm waiting in the wings when things are needed. Turns out they have nothing. Why did they buy McAfee?( Which has been sold off already ) And Infineon? Nearly eight years after the acquisition they are just about to ship their first Mobile Baseband made by their own Fabs, Eight Years! What an achievement! Nearly three years after their acquisition of Altera, which itself has been previously working with Intel Custom Fab before that. What do they have to show? During that time, the Smartphone revolution scale has helped Pure Play Fab like TSMC to made enough profits and fund their R&D rivalling Intel. And in a few more weeks time we will have an TSMC / Apple 7nm node shipping in millions of units per week. In terms of HVM and leading node, making TSMC over taking Intel for the first time in history. AMD has been executing well following their Roadmap, and Lisa Su did not disappoint. Nothing on those slides were marketing speaks or tricks that Intel used. No over hyped performance improvement, but promise of incremental progress. She reminds me of Pat Gelsinger from Intel, Down to Earth, and telling the truth. Judging from the Results though, AMD aren't making enough of dent in OEM and enterprise. Well I guess if you are not buying those CPU with your own money, why would you not buy Intel? The consumer market and Small Web Hosting market though seems to be doing better, where the owners are paying. I hope Zen 2 will make enough improvement and change those people's mind, better IPC, better memory controller. If you loathe Intel after all the lies they have been telling and marketing speaks, you should buy AMD. If you love Intel still after all, you should still buy AMD, teach them a painful lesson to wake them up.

rasz 8y ago
Dont forget Puma series of broadband modem chipsets bought from Texas Instruments in 2010. All defective, 3 generations and hardware is still not fixed, just this month Intel released some half assed software patches. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/09/intel_puma_modem_woes/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/09/intel_puma_modem_wo...

mtgx 8y ago

> Clearly, they don't have an answer to AMD at all. If this is true, their shareholders should be asking serious questions about why they've nothing significant to show for all that time and money spent when they were raking it in without a serious competitor. But they have lots to show for that money! Brand change implementations such as "Gold" and "Platinum", which gouge the customers more than ever before.

KozmoNau7 8y ago

Intel are still ahead in low power mobile (laptop) CPU race, and the clear leader in the laptop market. Who knows for how long, though?

lawlessone 8y ago
>Intel are still ahead in low power mobile CPU race, I never met a person with a smart phone that uses an intel chip. They probably exist but i know none. Apple aren't using them. Samsung aren't.. HTC nope.. Google pixel nope... Intel basically sold off/scuttled their mobile division right before the iphone took off.
- bocklund 8y ago
  I think “mobile” was supposed to refer to laptops, not phones or tablets.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  I meant "mobile" as in laptop CPUs, I've edited my post to clarify.
  - lawlessone 8y ago
    My apologies, you're right about laptops.
- Nightshaxx 8y ago
  I think it's referring to laptops. That said I had the ASUS Zenfone 2 and the performance seemed alright, but certain apps didn't work because of the architecture difference, most notably Pokemon Go for the whole time it was popular (although it's probably for the better that I missed that whole craze).
  - lawlessone 8y ago
    oh yeah i forgot laptops.
  - 8y ago

agumonkey 8y ago

After reading a few articles, here's what I got: it seems that Intel couldn't jump into EUV manufacturing when they were in full domination because it was too expensive and new so they started improving multipatterning so improve resolution, which proved too hard to ship (hence the delays) meanwhile smaller players went their way until recently and now EUV is accessible so they can jump in swiftly while intel is still caught inside his intermediate strategy, lazy market behavior and unforeseen failures. They also have EUV planned but not until the next-generation. Note that even at larger pitch their process is near competitive with smaller ones today, but it sounds terrible.

Keyframe 8y ago

They did hire Keller, no? I wonder if AMD has an answer to AMD in the coming years. Not only CPU, GPU as well. Especially GPU. They missed the boat on AI, and now Nvidia is pushing RTRT left and right. That's seemingly two areas they still don't have an answer to. It's a big battlefront, and intel is only a step or two away from possibly bringing an answer to AMD. Not to mention whole laptop domination by intel, and mobile by ARM.

ArPDent 8y ago
> Not to mention whole laptop domination by intel, and mobile by ARM traditionally yes, intel has absolutely dominated the laptop market however i have been seeing a lot more laptops lately with a Ryzen processor and Vega graphics AMD making gains into a very lucrative market

tomaskafka 8y ago

Here's a Stratechery article, nothing more to add. https://stratechery.com/2018/intel-and-the-danger-of-integration/ https://stratechery.com/2018/intel-and-the-danger-of-integra...

clarkmoody 8y ago

Most of the emperors out there have no clothes.

unethical_ban 8y ago

I just want to throw it out there that it might be impossible for AMD to actually go out of business. They're Intel's only major x86 competitor, IIRC their x86 license is non-transferrable, and no way Intel would be permitted in the USA to have an actual monopoly on x86 production. I kick myself for not buying AMD at $2 (or buying a LOT more at $5).

AsyncAwait 8y ago
> I just want to throw it out there that it might be impossible for AMD to actually go out of business. Even if you buy this, (I don't), there's no point for them to stay in business with absolutely non-competitive products. The remarkable thing is that thanks to Zen that did not happen and Intel actually feels some heat for the first time in years.
ValentineC 8y ago
> They're Intel's only major x86 competitor, IIRC their x86 license is non-transferrable, and no way Intel would be permitted in the USA to have an actual monopoly on x86 production. I just looked this up, and it seems to boil down to the patent cross-licensing agreement between Intel, which developed the x86 architecture, and AMD, which developed the 64-bit instruction set. I don't think there's a unilateral "non-transferable license" per se — and they're free to enter into a new agreement if either party does get acquired. This Reddit thread seems pretty good at explaining it in much more detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3b0ytk/discussion_what_is_an_x86_license_and_why_do/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3b0ytk/discussion...

ptero 8y ago

> shareholders should be asking serious questions about why they've nothing significant to show for all that time and money spent when they were raking it in without a serious competitor. This might be the answer. No competition and a good cash flow is a comfortable position. You defend this model with ads, policy, etc. and technical innovation can languish. I am not saying this is necessarily the case, but it is possible that Intel just got comfortable, slow and fat. Having a scrappy, smart competitor can be a good thing.

blablabla123 8y ago

Pretty stupid that they didn't continue their Itanium architecture. It does have In-Order-Branch-Prediction and we are at a point again where a significant number of users don't really care what kind of CPU they are using. ARM and RISC-V have become a serious thread and are on the way to get standardized ecosystems...