4 ms·

I think it has less to do with everyone switching to Apple silicon and more to do with the clarification of viable business models: you either become an IP comp

I think it has less to do with everyone switching to Apple silicon and more to do with the clarification of viable business models: you either become an IP company and outsource production (AMD) or you go completely vertical and design and produce custom-designed SoCs to be used exclusively in your consumer products (Apple). The Intel model of designing and producing all-purpose commodity CPUs seems to have hit a wall due to both lack of demand and unanticipated manufacturing problems.

toast0 6y ago
The (apparent) lack of demand for intel chips is because their manufacturing problems have disrupted their roadmaps. Because their 10 nm process is still not really working, and they were working on multiple releases assuming the process would be there when the design was, they're in a bad place. From public statements, it seems like they've thought 10 nm was going to work soon for the whole time since 2018 that it's been in limited production. And they haven't really done substantial design work on the 14 nm processors (there's some releases, but it's mostly smashing more cores on there, and less architectural changes; afaik, coffe lake and comet lake don't have much in the way of ipc gains vs kaby lake). Also, they clearly need a new naming person. It doesn't help that they killed their atom for phones program wheb they did. Right around the time Microsoft announced continuum for windows mobile 10, which would have been much cooler if it was running on an x86 chip (and if Microsoft didn't do a terrible job with Windows mobile 10 in general).
- seabrookmx 6y ago
  Atom underperformed too though. There was a Lenovo Zenfone that shipped with an atom and even in Java apps or running the few Android NDK apps that shipped x86 APK's, they weren't fast. Fun fact, Android used libhoudini (basically, reverse Rosetta2) allowing arm NDK apps to run (but they were pretty rough).

toast0 6y ago

The (apparent) lack of demand for intel chips is because their manufacturing problems have disrupted their roadmaps. Because their 10 nm process is still not really working, and they were working on multiple releases assuming the process would be there when the design was, they're in a bad place. From public statements, it seems like they've thought 10 nm was going to work soon for the whole time since 2018 that it's been in limited production. And they haven't really done substantial design work on the 14 nm processors (there's some releases, but it's mostly smashing more cores on there, and less architectural changes; afaik, coffe lake and comet lake don't have much in the way of ipc gains vs kaby lake). Also, they clearly need a new naming person. It doesn't help that they killed their atom for phones program wheb they did. Right around the time Microsoft announced continuum for windows mobile 10, which would have been much cooler if it was running on an x86 chip (and if Microsoft didn't do a terrible job with Windows mobile 10 in general).

seabrookmx 6y ago
Atom underperformed too though. There was a Lenovo Zenfone that shipped with an atom and even in Java apps or running the few Android NDK apps that shipped x86 APK's, they weren't fast. Fun fact, Android used libhoudini (basically, reverse Rosetta2) allowing arm NDK apps to run (but they were pretty rough).