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Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B? But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out. See: cloud

Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B? But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out. See: cloud services ca. 1997 and IoT ca. every 3 years since 2013.

ars 7y ago
> Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B? That's what the article says. They had two lines that did basically the same thing, and axed one of them. According to the article, the hardware on Nervana was better, but the software was worse.
- trsohmers 7y ago
  Not the case... AFAIK (based on talking to people who have played with Habana test systems), any real performant applications still need to be hand optimized with their assembly.
- UncleOxidant 7y ago
  Word on the street was that Nervana power consumption was much too high and a big problem (likely thermal issues). The software will be repurposed for use on Habana. So no, AFAICT it wasn't the software, it was the actual Nervana chip that was the problem.
pinewurst 7y ago
It was web hosting in 1997 not cloud services - I remember it well, as I was working for a vendor. It seemed like such a stupid grab for incremental income and coolness even then. Now they're doing drone shows and sports as incremental business attempts. Sometimes I think of Intel as a PR agency with a semiconductor fab in the backyard...
- Spooky23 7y ago
  A former colleague worked for them in those days and had insane stories. They would fly him first class to Oregon from Virginia or Jersey every two weeks, just for a staff meeting!
  - 0xff00ffee 7y ago
    Intel would fly Fellow Fred Pollock flew back and forth between Cali and his home in Florida for years in the late 80's early 90's. The guy was OG brilliant, for REAL, but it still was funny that he had Intel by the shorties.
- _jal 7y ago
  A bit later ('98 or '99, I think) I worked at a content/community site for older folks. Intel gave us this odd speech-synth software/API bolted on to a low poly 3D face that could move its lips in vaguely realistic ways. There was a plugin needed to use it in a browser, and we were given money to figure out something useful enough to do with it that people would bother to install the plugin. Pretty sure you can guess how well that worked. My suggestion, making the tacky 90's robot recite Cartman lines or otherwise swear in ridiculous ways, was... not exactly in alignment with the rest of our content strategy, you might say. And probably not what Intel had in mind. But I bet adoptions would have broken the two-digit barrier.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    With numbers that low you could just use the money to pay people to install it.
    - _jal 7y ago
      I mean, it seems like at some point, someone inside Intel should have been capable of saying, "You built this literal talking head and you don't know why, so you're proposing we pay a media company that specializes in health, retirement investing, and old people sex to come up with a reason for us?"
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  20 years ago at Intel the description was Intel is a Fab company that designs microprocessors and motherboard chip sets on the side. I think they have a tendency to ditch products prematurely. They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear. They even do this to divisions that are actually turning a profit. Which goes over really badly with their customers.
  - CountSessine 7y ago
    I seem to recall Linley Gwennap or someone at the Microprocessor Report saying that this was because these other industries were too different, in terms of R&D requirements and margins, from Intel’s core business, making PC CPUs; none of these other businesses could ever produce the margins that Intel would need and none of them required the level of R&D that Intel could direct at them. This was when Intel was about to debut Larrabee.
    - 0xff00ffee 7y ago
      Yes, that is 100% accurate. Their core competency is making wafers. CPUs specifically, high margin servers, low margin latop parts, ... and then chipsets (so many chipsets). Everything else is just a toe in the water. (Their investing arm also does quite well.)
  - HugoHobling 7y ago
    Any counterexamples besides Itanium?
    - pinewurst 7y ago
      Itanium isn’t a good example because HP heavily subsidized its continuation after a few years. Without that cash, Intel would’ve (justifiably) killed it then.
  - johnvanommen 7y ago
    > They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear. Amazon was far from the first company to do cloud. For instance, Sun Microsystems pushed it in the 90s, and Loudcloud, I mean "Opsware" did it in 2003. I think the difference was that Amazon committed to it for a loooooong time.
- 0xff00ffee 7y ago
  You are correct. It was basically a giant "iMac": all-in-one-server-box the size of a small room with racks and roll out keyboards. They were TRYING to write what would become cloud services, but they didn't have the talent: the team was pulled from all over and had no experience in backend/devops let alone the nascent linux kernal that was starting to blossom.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
> But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out Hit the nail on the head! I worked for Intel nearly a decade ago. I was a full time employee for a few years. They saw Android and the Apple app store capturing mobile users and decided to dump $$$ into an app store for the PC (Intel AppUp). The effort lasted a few years before it crashed and burned HARD. During this time they also tried to spin up Meego/Moblin for mobile and tablet, then a partnership with Samsung to work on Tizen, and bought up McAffee. The amount of money Intel flushes down the toilet with fruitless endeavors is sad, especially considering the number of people that end up jobless (like many of my good friends did) because of it.
- throwawa66 7y ago
  I noticed this recurring theme. Seems like that eventually all companies go down this path at some point if they become mega rich. At that point money alone doesn't matter as much as capturing new markets do so lots of money goes down the drain. It's a good thing for the companies that get acquired and get their paycheck. I see as rich people who buy expensive things and let them rot because they forgot they bought them or so.
  - _jal 7y ago
    Public markets demand growth. So boards demand managers who do Growthy Things. When it doesn't grow, you toss the old managers lots of money for their service, find new managers who promise you new Growthy Things, and repeat.
  - eric-hu 7y ago
    Sometimes bets like these turn out to be huge wins, like Microsoft going into the gaming platform space with the Xbox or Amazon building out cloud services. The Intel app store idea doesn't seem like such an idea to me, but I can see how the board could have been pushing for "outside the box" big bets.
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      Probably an intentional attempt to self-disrupt, innovator's dilemma and all.
craftyguy 7y ago
> Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B? Literally the first sentence of the second paragraph in the article (that you read, right?) > The announcement itself isn’t very surprising. In mid December the company announced its acquisition Habana Labs for approximately $2 billion.
johnvanommen 7y ago
> But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out. I worked on OpenStack for a few years. Take this with a grain of salt, but I heard that Intel funded a great deal of it... quietly. Basically they wanted to promote OpenStack, but at the same time they didn't want to piss off companies competing with it.
jiofih 7y ago
That’s exactly what the article says, in its second paragraph.

ars 7y ago

> Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B? That's what the article says. They had two lines that did basically the same thing, and axed one of them. According to the article, the hardware on Nervana was better, but the software was worse.

trsohmers 7y ago
Not the case... AFAIK (based on talking to people who have played with Habana test systems), any real performant applications still need to be hand optimized with their assembly.
UncleOxidant 7y ago
Word on the street was that Nervana power consumption was much too high and a big problem (likely thermal issues). The software will be repurposed for use on Habana. So no, AFAICT it wasn't the software, it was the actual Nervana chip that was the problem.

pinewurst 7y ago

It was web hosting in 1997 not cloud services - I remember it well, as I was working for a vendor. It seemed like such a stupid grab for incremental income and coolness even then. Now they're doing drone shows and sports as incremental business attempts. Sometimes I think of Intel as a PR agency with a semiconductor fab in the backyard...

Spooky23 7y ago
A former colleague worked for them in those days and had insane stories. They would fly him first class to Oregon from Virginia or Jersey every two weeks, just for a staff meeting!
- 0xff00ffee 7y ago
  Intel would fly Fellow Fred Pollock flew back and forth between Cali and his home in Florida for years in the late 80's early 90's. The guy was OG brilliant, for REAL, but it still was funny that he had Intel by the shorties.
_jal 7y ago
A bit later ('98 or '99, I think) I worked at a content/community site for older folks. Intel gave us this odd speech-synth software/API bolted on to a low poly 3D face that could move its lips in vaguely realistic ways. There was a plugin needed to use it in a browser, and we were given money to figure out something useful enough to do with it that people would bother to install the plugin. Pretty sure you can guess how well that worked. My suggestion, making the tacky 90's robot recite Cartman lines or otherwise swear in ridiculous ways, was... not exactly in alignment with the rest of our content strategy, you might say. And probably not what Intel had in mind. But I bet adoptions would have broken the two-digit barrier.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  With numbers that low you could just use the money to pay people to install it.
  - _jal 7y ago
    I mean, it seems like at some point, someone inside Intel should have been capable of saying, "You built this literal talking head and you don't know why, so you're proposing we pay a media company that specializes in health, retirement investing, and old people sex to come up with a reason for us?"
Gibbon1 7y ago
20 years ago at Intel the description was Intel is a Fab company that designs microprocessors and motherboard chip sets on the side. I think they have a tendency to ditch products prematurely. They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear. They even do this to divisions that are actually turning a profit. Which goes over really badly with their customers.
- CountSessine 7y ago
  I seem to recall Linley Gwennap or someone at the Microprocessor Report saying that this was because these other industries were too different, in terms of R&D requirements and margins, from Intel’s core business, making PC CPUs; none of these other businesses could ever produce the margins that Intel would need and none of them required the level of R&D that Intel could direct at them. This was when Intel was about to debut Larrabee.
  - 0xff00ffee 7y ago
    Yes, that is 100% accurate. Their core competency is making wafers. CPUs specifically, high margin servers, low margin latop parts, ... and then chipsets (so many chipsets). Everything else is just a toe in the water. (Their investing arm also does quite well.)
- HugoHobling 7y ago
  Any counterexamples besides Itanium?
  - pinewurst 7y ago
    Itanium isn’t a good example because HP heavily subsidized its continuation after a few years. Without that cash, Intel would’ve (justifiably) killed it then.
- johnvanommen 7y ago
  > They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear. Amazon was far from the first company to do cloud. For instance, Sun Microsystems pushed it in the 90s, and Loudcloud, I mean "Opsware" did it in 2003. I think the difference was that Amazon committed to it for a loooooong time.
0xff00ffee 7y ago
You are correct. It was basically a giant "iMac": all-in-one-server-box the size of a small room with racks and roll out keyboards. They were TRYING to write what would become cloud services, but they didn't have the talent: the team was pulled from all over and had no experience in backend/devops let alone the nascent linux kernal that was starting to blossom.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

y-c-o-m-b 7y ago

> But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out Hit the nail on the head! I worked for Intel nearly a decade ago. I was a full time employee for a few years. They saw Android and the Apple app store capturing mobile users and decided to dump $$$ into an app store for the PC (Intel AppUp). The effort lasted a few years before it crashed and burned HARD. During this time they also tried to spin up Meego/Moblin for mobile and tablet, then a partnership with Samsung to work on Tizen, and bought up McAffee. The amount of money Intel flushes down the toilet with fruitless endeavors is sad, especially considering the number of people that end up jobless (like many of my good friends did) because of it.

throwawa66 7y ago
I noticed this recurring theme. Seems like that eventually all companies go down this path at some point if they become mega rich. At that point money alone doesn't matter as much as capturing new markets do so lots of money goes down the drain. It's a good thing for the companies that get acquired and get their paycheck. I see as rich people who buy expensive things and let them rot because they forgot they bought them or so.
- _jal 7y ago
  Public markets demand growth. So boards demand managers who do Growthy Things. When it doesn't grow, you toss the old managers lots of money for their service, find new managers who promise you new Growthy Things, and repeat.
- eric-hu 7y ago
  Sometimes bets like these turn out to be huge wins, like Microsoft going into the gaming platform space with the Xbox or Amazon building out cloud services. The Intel app store idea doesn't seem like such an idea to me, but I can see how the board could have been pushing for "outside the box" big bets.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Probably an intentional attempt to self-disrupt, innovator's dilemma and all.

craftyguy 7y ago

> Could it be they bought Habana for US$2B? Literally the first sentence of the second paragraph in the article (that you read, right?) > The announcement itself isn’t very surprising. In mid December the company announced its acquisition Habana Labs for approximately $2 billion.

johnvanommen 7y ago

> But this is very intel: get psyched about a technology, dump billions into it for a few years, flake out. I worked on OpenStack for a few years. Take this with a grain of salt, but I heard that Intel funded a great deal of it... quietly. Basically they wanted to promote OpenStack, but at the same time they didn't want to piss off companies competing with it.

jiofih 7y ago

That’s exactly what the article says, in its second paragraph.