7 ms·

To me this is kind of strange, I thought Intel had a good reputation as far as Ethernet and Wireless drivers were concerned. Certainly much better than (old) Br

To me this is kind of strange, I thought Intel had a good reputation as far as Ethernet and Wireless drivers were concerned. Certainly much better than (old) Broadcom, Realtek, Ralink, ST and the like.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wmf 8y ago
I wonder if all Intel's acquisitions have failed while homegrown efforts succeeded.
metildaa 8y ago
I specifically called out Intel's software team as competent/good. They are obviously able to take buggy silicon and make it do impressive things, but when it comes to shaping and interpreting analog RF waves it seems this is outside their capability to tune much beyond what they've done. Broadcom comparatively has crap drivers and decent silicon, meaning your cable modem works fine (with no bufferbloat or jitter issues), but good luck with that random WiFi chipset on Linux :P
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  My experience is that Intel software is crap. For instance my biz dev guy thought that Intel's graph processing toolkit based on Hadoop would be the bee's knees and I didn't have to look at it to know that it was going to be something a junior dev knocked out in two weeks that moves about 20x more data to get the same result as what I knocked out in two days. NVIDIA, on the other hand, impresses me with drivers and release engineering. Once I learned how to bypass their GUI installer I came to appreciate what a good job they do. (They gotta have that GUI installer otherwise some dummy with a Radeon card or Intel Integrated 'Graphics' will post on their forum about how the drivers don't work.)
  - metildaa 8y ago
    NVidia still equals NoVideo in my book, for a time it seemed like every other driver release would brick your card, and Linux support is abysmal. Wayland still isn't supported, despite AMD, Intel and even no-name HDMI Phy manufacturers fully supporting it.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    > They gotta have that GUI installer otherwise some dummy with a Radeon card or Intel Integrated 'Graphics' will post on their forum about how the drivers don't work. Maybe they need a GUI, but it doesn’t need to be such a bloated monstrosity.
    - caspper69 8y ago
      It's because they include game patches in the drivers.
  - xvilka 8y ago
    NVIDIA is the worst video card for Linux, if you don't want to install their blobs.
fopen64 8y ago
RF is difficult.
- madengr 8y ago
  Yep, mostly done by graybeards, which Intel probably fired.
  - dfrage 8y ago
    Using stack ranking to fire 10-15% of their employees every year selects for people who have political talents. Aren't they now comprehensively failing in every area except microarchitectures, with the next Ice Lake one being held up by the 10 nm node debacle?
    - tinus_hn 8y ago
      If they are using stack ranking they deserve to fail.
WeakLanguage 8y ago
On Ethernet, Intel is known for their little frills, stable line of NICs. That said, they have not been a leader since the jump to 10Gbps. Their 10Gbps line eventually came along and is solid, but it was a few years behind everyone else. That same story seems to be repeating itself at every new ethernet standard over the past decade. Come to think of it, the last decade has been really bad for Intel. They no longer have a node advantage. They no longer have a performance advantage in any market space that I can think of outside of frequency hungry low-thread applications (games). Their WiFi chips are good, but second tier. Their Modem chips are third tier. Their node is mostly on par with the competition, for now. Their CPUs are trading blows with AMD. Their ethernet chips are a generation behind. Optane is is a bright spot, but we'll see how they squander that. The next big diversification play by Intel is GPUs, I have no idea how that will pan out.
- metildaa 8y ago
  Optane will be squandered by limited CPU support and slim software support :c Optane is a neat idea, but the severe change in software architecture combined with only select CPUs even supporting it will limit uptake outside FAANGs or organizations with really specialized needs.
  - Tostino 8y ago
    Databases will love Optane. There have been companies showing how much they are willing to spend on database hardware and software for ages. I'm not sure that will change any time soon.
    - metildaa 8y ago
      Yep, exactly what I was getting at. If you have a giant database and a big budget, Optane is great. It could be really useful for smaller users too, but its unlikely to become widely popular as the average developer won't have it available in their laptop or desktop.
    - dman 8y ago
      Not so sure about this. World is increasingly moving to distributed scale out databases. Once you go that way consensus algorithms and rpc costs dwarf disk io speed.
shaklee3 8y ago
Intel is faaaaaaar behind on NICs. They're just now releasing an asic capable of 100G, while their competitors have had one for many years, and are now moving to 200G. I think they were hoping omnipath took off.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

wmf 8y ago

I wonder if all Intel's acquisitions have failed while homegrown efforts succeeded.

metildaa 8y ago

I specifically called out Intel's software team as competent/good. They are obviously able to take buggy silicon and make it do impressive things, but when it comes to shaping and interpreting analog RF waves it seems this is outside their capability to tune much beyond what they've done. Broadcom comparatively has crap drivers and decent silicon, meaning your cable modem works fine (with no bufferbloat or jitter issues), but good luck with that random WiFi chipset on Linux :P

PaulHoule 8y ago
My experience is that Intel software is crap. For instance my biz dev guy thought that Intel's graph processing toolkit based on Hadoop would be the bee's knees and I didn't have to look at it to know that it was going to be something a junior dev knocked out in two weeks that moves about 20x more data to get the same result as what I knocked out in two days. NVIDIA, on the other hand, impresses me with drivers and release engineering. Once I learned how to bypass their GUI installer I came to appreciate what a good job they do. (They gotta have that GUI installer otherwise some dummy with a Radeon card or Intel Integrated 'Graphics' will post on their forum about how the drivers don't work.)
- metildaa 8y ago
  NVidia still equals NoVideo in my book, for a time it seemed like every other driver release would brick your card, and Linux support is abysmal. Wayland still isn't supported, despite AMD, Intel and even no-name HDMI Phy manufacturers fully supporting it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- mr_toad 8y ago
  > They gotta have that GUI installer otherwise some dummy with a Radeon card or Intel Integrated 'Graphics' will post on their forum about how the drivers don't work. Maybe they need a GUI, but it doesn’t need to be such a bloated monstrosity.
  - caspper69 8y ago
    It's because they include game patches in the drivers.
- xvilka 8y ago
  NVIDIA is the worst video card for Linux, if you don't want to install their blobs.

fopen64 8y ago

RF is difficult.

madengr 8y ago
Yep, mostly done by graybeards, which Intel probably fired.
- dfrage 8y ago
  Using stack ranking to fire 10-15% of their employees every year selects for people who have political talents. Aren't they now comprehensively failing in every area except microarchitectures, with the next Ice Lake one being held up by the 10 nm node debacle?
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    If they are using stack ranking they deserve to fail.

WeakLanguage 8y ago

On Ethernet, Intel is known for their little frills, stable line of NICs. That said, they have not been a leader since the jump to 10Gbps. Their 10Gbps line eventually came along and is solid, but it was a few years behind everyone else. That same story seems to be repeating itself at every new ethernet standard over the past decade. Come to think of it, the last decade has been really bad for Intel. They no longer have a node advantage. They no longer have a performance advantage in any market space that I can think of outside of frequency hungry low-thread applications (games). Their WiFi chips are good, but second tier. Their Modem chips are third tier. Their node is mostly on par with the competition, for now. Their CPUs are trading blows with AMD. Their ethernet chips are a generation behind. Optane is is a bright spot, but we'll see how they squander that. The next big diversification play by Intel is GPUs, I have no idea how that will pan out.

metildaa 8y ago
Optane will be squandered by limited CPU support and slim software support :c Optane is a neat idea, but the severe change in software architecture combined with only select CPUs even supporting it will limit uptake outside FAANGs or organizations with really specialized needs.
- Tostino 8y ago
  Databases will love Optane. There have been companies showing how much they are willing to spend on database hardware and software for ages. I'm not sure that will change any time soon.
  - metildaa 8y ago
    Yep, exactly what I was getting at. If you have a giant database and a big budget, Optane is great. It could be really useful for smaller users too, but its unlikely to become widely popular as the average developer won't have it available in their laptop or desktop.
  - dman 8y ago
    Not so sure about this. World is increasingly moving to distributed scale out databases. Once you go that way consensus algorithms and rpc costs dwarf disk io speed.

shaklee3 8y ago

Intel is faaaaaaar behind on NICs. They're just now releasing an asic capable of 100G, while their competitors have had one for many years, and are now moving to 200G. I think they were hoping omnipath took off.