4 ms·

Intel's recent string of "what the fuck" failures are what happens when a monopolist emerges and goes unchallenged for a long enough period to become lazy. May

Intel's recent string of "what the fuck" failures are what happens when a monopolist emerges and goes unchallenged for a long enough period to become lazy. May the market penalize them in kind.

close04 8y ago
Unfortunately the market probably won't. Intel still has enough clout and resources to incentivize OEMs to sell as many Intel systems as possible. For consumer hardware most buyers are completely oblivious to the situation but they are most likely familiar with the Intel brand. For enterprise the inertia is a lot higher and they are probably waiting to see that AMD manages to deliver for an extended period (multiple generations) before considering wider scale adoption.
- nolok 8y ago
  Anecdotical at best but I upgrade a few dozen desktops a year for my customers during the early months of the year, and this year is the first year in a long time that there was some AMD in my purchases, in fact most of it was AMD. Not by choice, but because 1. it was available, 2. it was the best option (for a branded below 450 euros desktop with ssd, the fight was mostly ryzen 5 with 8 GB of ram vs i3 with 8 GB or ram vs i5 with 4 GB of ram). Lenovo especially had some great offering with Ryzen cpu.
  - blfr 8y ago
    Security and price aside, I would expect Ryzen with its many cores to be excellent in office use. Is it?
    - close04 8y ago
      I think any modern CPU is enough for regular office use. You don't really need lots of cores for that. But if you can get them at a lower price point, lower power consumption maybe, and perhaps even better security then why not?
    - lightedman 8y ago
      I use a Ryzen 5 1400. The only thing "slow" abut is is running Windows. Every stupid update slows things down.
    - nolok 8y ago
      Yes, but it's even better than you think given that you can find ryzen 3 at the price point that used to be modern "pentium" playground; Windows 10 and a browser with a few tabs and office with a couple spreadsheets opened just don't do well on two cores anymore And in fact ryzen 5 2200/2400 is so cheap that competing offers price wise are i3 based (or i5 but with less ram, and 4 GB is just not enough in 2019, when windows want 2, chrome wants 2, office wants 2, ...). Ryzen 5 2xxx vs i3 is simply not a fair fight, it's not even a fight at all. I guess I'm usually so focused on high / super high / server needs that it didn't fully hit me how intel was getting eaten alive even in the low / middle market right now. And medium sized business replacing office computers really don't care about the brand of their cpu, "cheaper, works better" is going to win every time.
      - close04 8y ago
        > And medium sized business replacing office computers really don't care about the brand of their cpu, "cheaper, works better" is going to win every time. I'm not sure if there's enough of that at going around now in order for AMD to gain any substantial market share fast. If Intel's response is anything short of Core 2 vs. Athlon then it might go AMD's way.
    - paulmd 8y ago
      Most Ryzen chips lack integrated graphics, which drives up system costs. Also, while the chips are cheaper, saving $100 on the CPU doesn't necessarily make a big impact in total system costs, especially since you now need to buy a discrete GPU for $100 extra too. Also Ryzen performance really falls off in 4C configurations due to lack of cache (its memory performance is not great and once you fall below a critical level of cache you start leaning harder on the memory for performance). The 2400G and 2200G models (which are the only models with graphics) are particularly heavily affected but the 1500X is not a stellar performer either compared to the 6C and 8C configurations. Normally they fall somewhere around Haswell-level IPC, but as a ballpark let's say the 2200G/2400G is more like Sandy Bridge. Finally, a lot of the 1000-series chips are subject to a manufacturing fault that causes random segmentation faults under heavy load. Compilation is a reliable way to trigger it, but it can occur in anything, it's basically a uop cache bug. Supposedly fixed after mid-2017, and it's RMA'able if you have it, but a few people still find it in their later-production processors. As a matter of philosophy, a lot of "office stuff" really prefers fast cores to many cores. An i7 4770 or even one of the new quad-core i3s (no HT) is better suited to typical office tasks on paper, and includes onboard graphics. With that said, "office stuff" doesn't really need high performance to begin with. Ryzen performance is fine, even the weaker -G processors. But in turn, a lot of users would be OK with even less performance - Intel's Goldmont Plus atom processors are now hitting between Core2 and Nehalem level performance, and that's more than fine for a lot of office stuff. You can pick up a barebones J4005 NUC for like $130 now, or a J5005 NUC for ~$170. Add memory and an SSD and you're done. The prices on the first-gen stuff are really appealing. I've seen the 1700 for as low as $130. And a home user is probably going to be using a discrete GPU anyway, so that cost penalty doesn't really matter. But, that's not a deal that would be institutionally purchased in volume, that's max quantity 5 from newegg, and companies usually don't buy discrete GPUs if they don't have to.
bo1024 8y ago
The tech industry in general undervalues security (at least in my opinion). I agree part of the reason Intel does is about being a monopolist, but I see this as a bigger trend of fancy/shiny/innovative at the expense of solid/secure/stable.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  But Intel has stalled out pretty hard on fancy/shiny/innovative. They hit a brick wall with 7nm.
  - wybiral 8y ago
    But you can still speed things up with shiny tricks like speculative execution...
    - dustindiamond 8y ago
      ...and here we are.
    - archgoon 8y ago
      Speculative execution (Branch Prediction) is hardly flashy. It's been present in Intel chips (Pentium) (and just about everyone else) since the early 90s (a quarter of a century ago). This was back when die resolution was 600 nm.
      - wybiral 8y ago
        Right, my point was that they're doing more than just reducing the nm.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  I would argue that tech people overvalue security, since they think about what could happen if you're violated, and then they discuss the expected value of making the secure decision.
carlivar 8y ago
Also see: Boeing
Chris_Chambers 8y ago
It’s disappointing that there are actually people who think these backdoors are accidental.
nickpsecurity 8y ago
"May the market penalize them in kind. " Intel made innovative, security-enhanced CPU's such as i432 APX, i960, and Itanium. They lost billions as the market punished them for breaking backward compatibility among a few other things. Mainly backward compatibility with insecure architecture market depended on. Market also wanted chips to maximize speed per dollar which always trades against security. Market also rarely picks secure products over insecure products whenever offered a choice. So, our current situation is the market's responsibility, not Intel's. The market punished Intel for trying to make better products. Say what you will about two, the i960MC was pretty nice design even if BiiN wasn't. A RISC chip with object-based protection and high availability should've taken off if market really cared about reliability and security. Instead, the market rewarded what met their price/performance (x86/POWER) or price/performance/watt (ARM or MIPS) punishing all else. They also built on it non-portably in a way that led to lock-in. Now, they're reaping what they sow with everything they've done up to this point making any investment in secure chips or OS's a risk not worth taking for most suppliers. Good news is that all the recent bad news is encouraging some companies to try secure offerings again. Might get more buyers this time. Still high risk, though.

Intel's recent string of "what the fuck" failures are what happens when a monopolist emerges and goes unchallenged for a long enough period to become lazy. May the market penalize them in kind.

close04 8y ago

Unfortunately the market probably won't. Intel still has enough clout and resources to incentivize OEMs to sell as many Intel systems as possible. For consumer hardware most buyers are completely oblivious to the situation but they are most likely familiar with the Intel brand. For enterprise the inertia is a lot higher and they are probably waiting to see that AMD manages to deliver for an extended period (multiple generations) before considering wider scale adoption.

nolok 8y ago
Anecdotical at best but I upgrade a few dozen desktops a year for my customers during the early months of the year, and this year is the first year in a long time that there was some AMD in my purchases, in fact most of it was AMD. Not by choice, but because 1. it was available, 2. it was the best option (for a branded below 450 euros desktop with ssd, the fight was mostly ryzen 5 with 8 GB of ram vs i3 with 8 GB or ram vs i5 with 4 GB of ram). Lenovo especially had some great offering with Ryzen cpu.
- blfr 8y ago
  Security and price aside, I would expect Ryzen with its many cores to be excellent in office use. Is it?
  - close04 8y ago
    I think any modern CPU is enough for regular office use. You don't really need lots of cores for that. But if you can get them at a lower price point, lower power consumption maybe, and perhaps even better security then why not?
  - lightedman 8y ago
    I use a Ryzen 5 1400. The only thing "slow" abut is is running Windows. Every stupid update slows things down.
  - nolok 8y ago
    Yes, but it's even better than you think given that you can find ryzen 3 at the price point that used to be modern "pentium" playground; Windows 10 and a browser with a few tabs and office with a couple spreadsheets opened just don't do well on two cores anymore And in fact ryzen 5 2200/2400 is so cheap that competing offers price wise are i3 based (or i5 but with less ram, and 4 GB is just not enough in 2019, when windows want 2, chrome wants 2, office wants 2, ...). Ryzen 5 2xxx vs i3 is simply not a fair fight, it's not even a fight at all. I guess I'm usually so focused on high / super high / server needs that it didn't fully hit me how intel was getting eaten alive even in the low / middle market right now. And medium sized business replacing office computers really don't care about the brand of their cpu, "cheaper, works better" is going to win every time.
    - close04 8y ago
      > And medium sized business replacing office computers really don't care about the brand of their cpu, "cheaper, works better" is going to win every time. I'm not sure if there's enough of that at going around now in order for AMD to gain any substantial market share fast. If Intel's response is anything short of Core 2 vs. Athlon then it might go AMD's way.
  - paulmd 8y ago
    Most Ryzen chips lack integrated graphics, which drives up system costs. Also, while the chips are cheaper, saving $100 on the CPU doesn't necessarily make a big impact in total system costs, especially since you now need to buy a discrete GPU for $100 extra too. Also Ryzen performance really falls off in 4C configurations due to lack of cache (its memory performance is not great and once you fall below a critical level of cache you start leaning harder on the memory for performance). The 2400G and 2200G models (which are the only models with graphics) are particularly heavily affected but the 1500X is not a stellar performer either compared to the 6C and 8C configurations. Normally they fall somewhere around Haswell-level IPC, but as a ballpark let's say the 2200G/2400G is more like Sandy Bridge. Finally, a lot of the 1000-series chips are subject to a manufacturing fault that causes random segmentation faults under heavy load. Compilation is a reliable way to trigger it, but it can occur in anything, it's basically a uop cache bug. Supposedly fixed after mid-2017, and it's RMA'able if you have it, but a few people still find it in their later-production processors. As a matter of philosophy, a lot of "office stuff" really prefers fast cores to many cores. An i7 4770 or even one of the new quad-core i3s (no HT) is better suited to typical office tasks on paper, and includes onboard graphics. With that said, "office stuff" doesn't really need high performance to begin with. Ryzen performance is fine, even the weaker -G processors. But in turn, a lot of users would be OK with even less performance - Intel's Goldmont Plus atom processors are now hitting between Core2 and Nehalem level performance, and that's more than fine for a lot of office stuff. You can pick up a barebones J4005 NUC for like $130 now, or a J5005 NUC for ~$170. Add memory and an SSD and you're done. The prices on the first-gen stuff are really appealing. I've seen the 1700 for as low as $130. And a home user is probably going to be using a discrete GPU anyway, so that cost penalty doesn't really matter. But, that's not a deal that would be institutionally purchased in volume, that's max quantity 5 from newegg, and companies usually don't buy discrete GPUs if they don't have to.

bo1024 8y ago

The tech industry in general undervalues security (at least in my opinion). I agree part of the reason Intel does is about being a monopolist, but I see this as a bigger trend of fancy/shiny/innovative at the expense of solid/secure/stable.

huffmsa 8y ago
But Intel has stalled out pretty hard on fancy/shiny/innovative. They hit a brick wall with 7nm.
- wybiral 8y ago
  But you can still speed things up with shiny tricks like speculative execution...
  - dustindiamond 8y ago
    ...and here we are.
  - archgoon 8y ago
    Speculative execution (Branch Prediction) is hardly flashy. It's been present in Intel chips (Pentium) (and just about everyone else) since the early 90s (a quarter of a century ago). This was back when die resolution was 600 nm.
    - wybiral 8y ago
      Right, my point was that they're doing more than just reducing the nm.
threatofrain 8y ago
I would argue that tech people overvalue security, since they think about what could happen if you're violated, and then they discuss the expected value of making the secure decision.

carlivar 8y ago

Also see: Boeing

Chris_Chambers 8y ago

It’s disappointing that there are actually people who think these backdoors are accidental.

nickpsecurity 8y ago

"May the market penalize them in kind. " Intel made innovative, security-enhanced CPU's such as i432 APX, i960, and Itanium. They lost billions as the market punished them for breaking backward compatibility among a few other things. Mainly backward compatibility with insecure architecture market depended on. Market also wanted chips to maximize speed per dollar which always trades against security. Market also rarely picks secure products over insecure products whenever offered a choice. So, our current situation is the market's responsibility, not Intel's. The market punished Intel for trying to make better products. Say what you will about two, the i960MC was pretty nice design even if BiiN wasn't. A RISC chip with object-based protection and high availability should've taken off if market really cared about reliability and security. Instead, the market rewarded what met their price/performance (x86/POWER) or price/performance/watt (ARM or MIPS) punishing all else. They also built on it non-portably in a way that led to lock-in. Now, they're reaping what they sow with everything they've done up to this point making any investment in secure chips or OS's a risk not worth taking for most suppliers. Good news is that all the recent bad news is encouraging some companies to try secure offerings again. Might get more buyers this time. Still high risk, though.