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I think we've all taken the ability to reliably introduce process node improvements for granted to some extent. Intel has clearly been caught out by its inabili

I think we've all taken the ability to reliably introduce process node improvements for granted to some extent. Intel has clearly been caught out by its inability to get 10nm - which I understand was overambitious - to work and pretty much everything else follows on from there. At the same time AMD has been fortunate that TSMC has been able to continue with its node shrinks - supported by demand from and cash generated by high end mobile devices. None of which is to say that Intel has been well run (cough McAfee cough) or that your criticisms aren't valid to some extent.

hinkley 6y ago
Are there any industries where high-end manufacturing doesn't subsidize low-end and low-middle products substantially? Are we saying this all started to unravel when most of the money moved to mobile and Intel still, after 20 years of warning shots, didn't have a compelling strategy there?
- wmf 6y ago
  For Intel I think ~90% of the PC market plus ~90% of the server market provides enough volume to easily cover their R&D. The rest of the industry may have needed to pivot to mobile to fill their fabs but that's not Intel's problem.
  - yourapostasy 6y ago
    Is there an electric generator evolution scenario here Intel should be watching for? Back in the day before the electric grid really caught on, hydro- and coal-powered electric generators could be found in businesses large and small that had needs that went well beyond the limited voltage and amperage requirements of the meager electrified buildings at the time. It made sense for a business to have its own power plant engineering department to just feed and maintain the beasties if the productivity from thirsty electrically-powered machines far outweighed the enormous cost of an in-house power plant, consumables and staffing. As the grid evolved though, this need went away, and only really heavy industry these days exceed the delivery capabilities of the grid will run their own on-site power plant (more often they just try to "peer" co-locate next to a "real" power plant, kind of like HFT's with exchanges). Power plant manufacturing is now a heavily-specialized industry with margins much lower than Intel has become accustomed to. Could the "grid" of the Net, cloud and mobile devices evolve to the point where the existing PC and server markets retreats in relative scale into "heavy industrial" applications like cloud infrastructure, and shift out Intel's cash flow from under them? Under such a scenario, the PC and server markets don't shrink as much as grow dramatically slower on a relative basis to B2C-grade gear and infrastructure that explodes in growth comparatively. Intel will still be plenty profitable if well-run, and still be mighty, but won't grab all the headlines, and evolve into a GE-like "mainstream" business.
    - webmaven 6y ago
      > Could the "grid" of the Net, cloud and mobile devices evolve to the point where the existing PC and server markets retreats in relative scale into "heavy industrial" applications like cloud infrastructure, and shift out Intel's cash flow from under them? It could, but the extractable rents of centralized data (eg. the Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits) will continue to push against this for a while yet. Arguably, the hardware and connectivity we have now is already more than capable of dispensing with data centralization for most use-cases, relegating the cloud to niches like commodity backup-and-restore services, and premium on-demand compute capacity analogous to the use-cases for supercomputers (of which AI/ML is a growing subset). We're already hitting use-cases and scenarios where centralized synchronization is becoming a hindrance that imposes additional costs, but the loss of control of a locus for extracting attractive profit margins implied by alternative software architectures generally limit investment.
    - wmf 6y ago
      Could the "grid" of the Net, cloud and mobile devices evolve to the point where the existing PC and server markets retreats in relative scale into "heavy industrial" applications like cloud infrastructure, and shift out Intel's cash flow from under them? Absolutely. Many analysts are predicting that the future is mostly public cloud (heavily ARM) accessed from mobile devices (100% ARM) so they're imploring Intel to get back into mobile before it's too late.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
topspin 6y ago
> Intel has clearly been caught out by its inability to get 10nm - which I understand was overambitious - to work and pretty much everything else follows on from there. It's more than process node. Zen 3 now has superior IPC as well; the now unqualified performance lead of AMD devices happens at lower frequency. The process node problem is just the most visible and embarrassing problem Intel has. It is not the only problem. Intel's 10th gen is also still well behind the curve wrt side channel attacks. That gap will persist until Rocket Lake appears. The rot at Intel is old and runs deep. The one area that Intel has managed to maintain superiority is quality. Intel is still the thing to buy if you want minimum glitches.
- klelatti 6y ago
  Not disagreeing that Intel has deep problems but doesn't greater transistor density support more sophisticated architectures and hence superior IPC? Also the failure to get 10nm working has presumably been problematic for the architecture team who have to design for two processes at the same time rather than focus on just 10nm?
  - topspin 6y ago
    > doesn't greater transistor density support more sophisticated architectures and hence superior IPC? Intel claims Rocket Lake will deliver 10% IPC improvement over Cannon Lake on the same 14nm node. Clearly 14nm hasn't been tapped out despite the five years and 3-4 (depending on who you ask) previous microarchitectures they've used it for. Yes, smaller devices enable better designs. Ironically if Rocket Lake actually delivers 10% then it's corroboration that Intel has been slacking on microarchitecture as well. > for the architecture team who have to design for two processes at the same time rather than focus on just 10nm? Intel has been designing devices for at least two nodes as SOP for 13 years now; they called it "tick-tock" which is the cycle of developing a new microarchitecture on one node and then porting to a smaller node. The difference this time is that they're going backwards... In any case the argument that there is some great difficulty with moving cores between nodes is tough to support given the history.
    - 6y ago

hinkley 6y ago

Are there any industries where high-end manufacturing doesn't subsidize low-end and low-middle products substantially? Are we saying this all started to unravel when most of the money moved to mobile and Intel still, after 20 years of warning shots, didn't have a compelling strategy there?

wmf 6y ago
For Intel I think ~90% of the PC market plus ~90% of the server market provides enough volume to easily cover their R&D. The rest of the industry may have needed to pivot to mobile to fill their fabs but that's not Intel's problem.
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  Is there an electric generator evolution scenario here Intel should be watching for? Back in the day before the electric grid really caught on, hydro- and coal-powered electric generators could be found in businesses large and small that had needs that went well beyond the limited voltage and amperage requirements of the meager electrified buildings at the time. It made sense for a business to have its own power plant engineering department to just feed and maintain the beasties if the productivity from thirsty electrically-powered machines far outweighed the enormous cost of an in-house power plant, consumables and staffing. As the grid evolved though, this need went away, and only really heavy industry these days exceed the delivery capabilities of the grid will run their own on-site power plant (more often they just try to "peer" co-locate next to a "real" power plant, kind of like HFT's with exchanges). Power plant manufacturing is now a heavily-specialized industry with margins much lower than Intel has become accustomed to. Could the "grid" of the Net, cloud and mobile devices evolve to the point where the existing PC and server markets retreats in relative scale into "heavy industrial" applications like cloud infrastructure, and shift out Intel's cash flow from under them? Under such a scenario, the PC and server markets don't shrink as much as grow dramatically slower on a relative basis to B2C-grade gear and infrastructure that explodes in growth comparatively. Intel will still be plenty profitable if well-run, and still be mighty, but won't grab all the headlines, and evolve into a GE-like "mainstream" business.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > Could the "grid" of the Net, cloud and mobile devices evolve to the point where the existing PC and server markets retreats in relative scale into "heavy industrial" applications like cloud infrastructure, and shift out Intel's cash flow from under them? It could, but the extractable rents of centralized data (eg. the Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits) will continue to push against this for a while yet. Arguably, the hardware and connectivity we have now is already more than capable of dispensing with data centralization for most use-cases, relegating the cloud to niches like commodity backup-and-restore services, and premium on-demand compute capacity analogous to the use-cases for supercomputers (of which AI/ML is a growing subset). We're already hitting use-cases and scenarios where centralized synchronization is becoming a hindrance that imposes additional costs, but the loss of control of a locus for extracting attractive profit margins implied by alternative software architectures generally limit investment.
  - wmf 6y ago
    Could the "grid" of the Net, cloud and mobile devices evolve to the point where the existing PC and server markets retreats in relative scale into "heavy industrial" applications like cloud infrastructure, and shift out Intel's cash flow from under them? Absolutely. Many analysts are predicting that the future is mostly public cloud (heavily ARM) accessed from mobile devices (100% ARM) so they're imploring Intel to get back into mobile before it's too late.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

topspin 6y ago

> Intel has clearly been caught out by its inability to get 10nm - which I understand was overambitious - to work and pretty much everything else follows on from there. It's more than process node. Zen 3 now has superior IPC as well; the now unqualified performance lead of AMD devices happens at lower frequency. The process node problem is just the most visible and embarrassing problem Intel has. It is not the only problem. Intel's 10th gen is also still well behind the curve wrt side channel attacks. That gap will persist until Rocket Lake appears. The rot at Intel is old and runs deep. The one area that Intel has managed to maintain superiority is quality. Intel is still the thing to buy if you want minimum glitches.

klelatti 6y ago
Not disagreeing that Intel has deep problems but doesn't greater transistor density support more sophisticated architectures and hence superior IPC? Also the failure to get 10nm working has presumably been problematic for the architecture team who have to design for two processes at the same time rather than focus on just 10nm?
- topspin 6y ago
  > doesn't greater transistor density support more sophisticated architectures and hence superior IPC? Intel claims Rocket Lake will deliver 10% IPC improvement over Cannon Lake on the same 14nm node. Clearly 14nm hasn't been tapped out despite the five years and 3-4 (depending on who you ask) previous microarchitectures they've used it for. Yes, smaller devices enable better designs. Ironically if Rocket Lake actually delivers 10% then it's corroboration that Intel has been slacking on microarchitecture as well. > for the architecture team who have to design for two processes at the same time rather than focus on just 10nm? Intel has been designing devices for at least two nodes as SOP for 13 years now; they called it "tick-tock" which is the cycle of developing a new microarchitecture on one node and then porting to a smaller node. The difference this time is that they're going backwards... In any case the argument that there is some great difficulty with moving cores between nodes is tough to support given the history.
  - 6y ago