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> Do we know what really went wrong at Intel? Now this doesn't come from any position of authority or knowledge of the industry but if I had to guess I'd say t

> Do we know what really went wrong at Intel? Now this doesn't come from any position of authority or knowledge of the industry but if I had to guess I'd say their problem has been twofold: shareholder value and lack of competition. Intel, for years, has been the standard choice for the datacenter: AMD never really had a look in there. As a result, Intel has still been making tons of money for years and, by extension, the shareholders have also been making it too so there hasn't been any real reason to take too many risks or change direction especially as AMD was a fraction of the size. AMD have only just recently (last couple of years) been an actual, quantifiable, threat to them so, if I had to guess, Intel are in a bit of a panic as the world makes a slow shift to AMD (possibly ARM and more specialized chips too!). I can imagine that the lead time for chip designs is measured in years so Intel can't just make a massive direction change overnight, hence the reason to ask for external help. Time will tell if this turns out to be a brilliant move for Intel...

jjoonathan 6y ago
That's the opposite of what I'm hearing, which is that Intel placed a large bet on a risky basket of technologies in order to stay ahead (specifically cobalt wiring and contact-over-active-gate) and burned enough time trying to get them working that TSMC was able to get their own relatively safe basket of technologies working in the meantime.
- klelatti 6y ago
  That's interesting. These comments are on 10nm? Is the view that these technologies will eventually be fine or that they were fundamentally bad bets?
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    10nm was the first node to use the problematic features, but Intel certainly hoped to use the same technologies at smaller nodes as well. Cobalt and COAG become more relevant, not less, with finer features. As for whether or not they will eventually work, that's the many-billion dollar question. In mid-2018 the boots-on-the-ground were not hopeful (the "10nm will never work" leaks) but clearly someone at Intel thought there was hope because they didn't just abandon the features. I think we just saw that "someone" get fired, though, so I suspect the attempts to save these features have failed.
    - klelatti 6y ago
      Thanks. I guess it's difficult because 'working' is not binary, rather a question of yields etc and how those are progressing as the process matures. Intel can clearly manufacture 10nm parts - I have one in my laptop - but the economics need to work too.
  - paulmd 6y ago
    supposedly the 10nm problems were related to the quad-patterning that Intel was using to reduce cost until EUV became more economical. But now the EUV-based 7nm is apparently having problems too. It's certainly possible that EUV fixes everything and 7nm is a relatively smooth node, maybe this is just the one oops and it's all smooth sailing from here, but I don't think anyone really believes that. Everyone is worried it's going to be 10nm all over again where the schedule slides 4 years in 4 years, 6 months at a time. Everything I've heard from Intel engineers is that they have a culture problem. It's a high-stress, low-empowerment environment with overbearing, micromanaging bosses and over the last ten years as AMD faded out the beancounters overtook the engineers and started making decisions that hurt the product. The middle managers and beancounters are in control and mostly concerned with (respectively) cover-your-ass and rent extraction than engineering the next generation of a great product. A quote from someone else was that he guessed they needed to cut away "the top 3 layers" to get the rot. Unfortunately, rototilling the staff to cut away the rot will probably produce even more delays in the short term. Institutional knowledge gets lost, people start to look for other job opportunities, etc. Intel is in deep shit. I don't even know what the short-term fix would be. The designs are tied to the process, the process is fucked because the approaches they're using are fucked and don't work, and they aren't going to repeal the laws of physics in the next 2 years. I guess you produce it even if it's not what the profit you normally expect, just to try and maintain marketshare? Middle term they need to find a Jensen Huang or a Lisa Su. An engineer-CEO who understands the tech intimately and the tradeoffs being made, and where the market is going. Comedy option, merge with NVIDIA, and make Jensen the CEO. AMD wanted to do it back in the day, AMD's board just couldn't find their way to "yes", which was a massive mistake (bulldozer probably would not have happened under Huang), led them to acquire ATI at a hugely overvalued price, and the resulting financial troubles caused them to lose their fabs. His work culture is also pretty toxic but they actually get shit done like few other companies. I'm really only half joking, but it'll never happen.
    - klelatti 6y ago
      This sounds awful. I can't think what it does for morale when they spend $900m on Moovit. Certainly doesn't imply management focus on the most important issues. At least investors understand - the questions on the earnings call were basically all about 7nm. Jensen taking over would certainly be interesting!

jjoonathan 6y ago

That's the opposite of what I'm hearing, which is that Intel placed a large bet on a risky basket of technologies in order to stay ahead (specifically cobalt wiring and contact-over-active-gate) and burned enough time trying to get them working that TSMC was able to get their own relatively safe basket of technologies working in the meantime.

klelatti 6y ago
That's interesting. These comments are on 10nm? Is the view that these technologies will eventually be fine or that they were fundamentally bad bets?
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  10nm was the first node to use the problematic features, but Intel certainly hoped to use the same technologies at smaller nodes as well. Cobalt and COAG become more relevant, not less, with finer features. As for whether or not they will eventually work, that's the many-billion dollar question. In mid-2018 the boots-on-the-ground were not hopeful (the "10nm will never work" leaks) but clearly someone at Intel thought there was hope because they didn't just abandon the features. I think we just saw that "someone" get fired, though, so I suspect the attempts to save these features have failed.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    Thanks. I guess it's difficult because 'working' is not binary, rather a question of yields etc and how those are progressing as the process matures. Intel can clearly manufacture 10nm parts - I have one in my laptop - but the economics need to work too.
- paulmd 6y ago
  supposedly the 10nm problems were related to the quad-patterning that Intel was using to reduce cost until EUV became more economical. But now the EUV-based 7nm is apparently having problems too. It's certainly possible that EUV fixes everything and 7nm is a relatively smooth node, maybe this is just the one oops and it's all smooth sailing from here, but I don't think anyone really believes that. Everyone is worried it's going to be 10nm all over again where the schedule slides 4 years in 4 years, 6 months at a time. Everything I've heard from Intel engineers is that they have a culture problem. It's a high-stress, low-empowerment environment with overbearing, micromanaging bosses and over the last ten years as AMD faded out the beancounters overtook the engineers and started making decisions that hurt the product. The middle managers and beancounters are in control and mostly concerned with (respectively) cover-your-ass and rent extraction than engineering the next generation of a great product. A quote from someone else was that he guessed they needed to cut away "the top 3 layers" to get the rot. Unfortunately, rototilling the staff to cut away the rot will probably produce even more delays in the short term. Institutional knowledge gets lost, people start to look for other job opportunities, etc. Intel is in deep shit. I don't even know what the short-term fix would be. The designs are tied to the process, the process is fucked because the approaches they're using are fucked and don't work, and they aren't going to repeal the laws of physics in the next 2 years. I guess you produce it even if it's not what the profit you normally expect, just to try and maintain marketshare? Middle term they need to find a Jensen Huang or a Lisa Su. An engineer-CEO who understands the tech intimately and the tradeoffs being made, and where the market is going. Comedy option, merge with NVIDIA, and make Jensen the CEO. AMD wanted to do it back in the day, AMD's board just couldn't find their way to "yes", which was a massive mistake (bulldozer probably would not have happened under Huang), led them to acquire ATI at a hugely overvalued price, and the resulting financial troubles caused them to lose their fabs. His work culture is also pretty toxic but they actually get shit done like few other companies. I'm really only half joking, but it'll never happen.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    This sounds awful. I can't think what it does for morale when they spend $900m on Moovit. Certainly doesn't imply management focus on the most important issues. At least investors understand - the questions on the earnings call were basically all about 7nm. Jensen taking over would certainly be interesting!