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So much of this holds up, and then you get to RISC vs CISC. It's amazing Intel has managed to survive and even thrive after failing so hard to adapt to the chan

So much of this holds up, and then you get to RISC vs CISC. It's amazing Intel has managed to survive and even thrive after failing so hard to adapt to the changing environment.

AmVess 8y ago
How exactly have they failed? They are making more money now than they ever have. They are behind on tech right now, but they are still the global CPU juggernaut. Failure isn't a label I would attach to them.
- achow 8y ago
  5G, Mobile https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-16/intel-gives-up-on-failed-quest-to-break-into-mobile-market https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-16/intel-giv... Process leadership (7nm chips) https://seekingalpha.com/article/4188142-3-failures-brian-krzanich-part-3 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4188142-3-failures-brian-kr...
  - Aloha 8y ago
    I don't think a player needs to be successful in every market to be a success - I also see no compelling application for 5G yet.
- darkerside 8y ago
  That's why I said "survived, and even thrived". That said, we haven't been in this era very long. Microsoft has done extremely well milking Windows and Office, but that's probably not future proof either.
Taniwha 8y ago
Intel were in a sense lucky, their x86 was just about the most RISCy of the contemporary CISCs - opcodes are (almost) all one memory operand, no indirect memory modes, no autoincrement modes (except for stack) etc etc which means instruction retry on things like page faults are easy because of few side effects
- ghaff 8y ago
  And they were basically able to transition to chips that were architecturally pretty much RISC while maintaining CISC compatibility. Furthermore, they did bet too much on frequency with x86 and compile-time optimization with Itanium, in part because a major partner was so focused on single thread performance. But, although AMD had some short-term success with Opteron, Intel was able to retrench and win out. It continues to have challenges in mobile and other areas but is still more successful than not.
- darkerside 8y ago
  Very interesting. It's lower level than my experience, so thanks for sharing.

So much of this holds up, and then you get to RISC vs CISC. It's amazing Intel has managed to survive and even thrive after failing so hard to adapt to the changing environment.

AmVess 8y ago

How exactly have they failed? They are making more money now than they ever have. They are behind on tech right now, but they are still the global CPU juggernaut. Failure isn't a label I would attach to them.

achow 8y ago
5G, Mobile https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-16/intel-gives-up-on-failed-quest-to-break-into-mobile-market https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-16/intel-giv... Process leadership (7nm chips) https://seekingalpha.com/article/4188142-3-failures-brian-krzanich-part-3 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4188142-3-failures-brian-kr...
- Aloha 8y ago
  I don't think a player needs to be successful in every market to be a success - I also see no compelling application for 5G yet.
darkerside 8y ago
That's why I said "survived, and even thrived". That said, we haven't been in this era very long. Microsoft has done extremely well milking Windows and Office, but that's probably not future proof either.

Taniwha 8y ago

Intel were in a sense lucky, their x86 was just about the most RISCy of the contemporary CISCs - opcodes are (almost) all one memory operand, no indirect memory modes, no autoincrement modes (except for stack) etc etc which means instruction retry on things like page faults are easy because of few side effects

ghaff 8y ago
And they were basically able to transition to chips that were architecturally pretty much RISC while maintaining CISC compatibility. Furthermore, they did bet too much on frequency with x86 and compile-time optimization with Itanium, in part because a major partner was so focused on single thread performance. But, although AMD had some short-term success with Opteron, Intel was able to retrench and win out. It continues to have challenges in mobile and other areas but is still more successful than not.
darkerside 8y ago
Very interesting. It's lower level than my experience, so thanks for sharing.