14 ms·

Intel Unleashed, Gelsinger on Intel, IDM 2.0

276 points by kaboro 6y ago

thu2111 6y ago
I'm bullish on Intel. Having an engineer at the top will fix all sorts of subtle problems quite quickly. Their manufacturing process for both 10nm and 7nm are now supposedly back on track, and yet they have a large backlog of designs waiting for the new processes to ramp up. We may see rapid performance increases from them now their pipeline is unblocked. Additionally, US politics is now aligning across the aisle against China, and relying too heavily on TSMC looks like a potential future geopolitical problem. Intel is the only firm that can realistically keep up or out-fab TSMC and thus the USG will be loathe to let it even look like it might fail. Simply having fabs physically within your territory but managed by a remote firm, is clearly no substitute for having fabs actually managed by a domestic company (consider how many ways there must be to do the equivalent of SSH-ing into a fab, or otherwise subtly sabotage it from HQ).
- jcheng 6y ago
  Is this year's claim of "supposedly back on track" more credible than every previous year's? (Honest question!)
  - totalZero 6y ago
    If the first thing Gelsinger does in the new role is to lie about progress, his credibility will be ruined. Conversely, if he were to say "it's worse than I feared," he won't personally be blamed because the problem preceded his return to Intel. So I think the claim can be viewed with a greater sense of honesty than before.
- agloeregrets 6y ago
  > Intel is the only firm that can realistically keep up or out-fab TSMC Samsung? Realistically, Intel needs a route to actually playing at TSMC's game, currently they are instead working on paying TSMC to make them chips. Also, nitpick here, but the TSMC problem is that China might roll in tanks, not that China controls it. Realistically speaking, it's a reasonable cause for US millitary involvement if China did. Lol, there's my World War III Shark-jump Theory: TSMC.
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    Intel's new GPU's need the all the advantages they can get to survive market entry. When Intel's process is ready, shipping, and better then they can switch.
    - dathinab 6y ago
      Through don't forget that due to TSCM being overloaded with requests and Intel having their own fabs they can still sell chips for (for them) good prices even if they are worse. In the end getting a CPU is normally more important then getting the best CPU.
    - agloeregrets 6y ago
      From a product perspective, totally agree, but from a strategy perspective, Intel getting to a level of beating TSMC is very very far off. Currently they are funding the development of the next chip that will beat them elsewhere. Personally, if Xe production funds TSMC's 3nm node that will be bought out by Apple and AMD then Intel probably should realize that the limited money they will make from GPUs will be dwarfed by the losses from improving their competition.
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Just shipping much amount is fine in shortage situation (if lasts until DG2 is released).
  - MangoCoffee 6y ago
    >TSMC problem is that China might roll in tanks TSMC have fab in China and currently building one in the US. TSMC is also opening an expansion in Japan. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-tsmc/tsmc-to-raise-9-billion-for-expansion-open-japan-subsidiary-idUSKBN2A91FR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-tsmc/tsmc-to-raise... the latest tech is probably going to stay in Taiwan but judging from all the recent moves by TSMC. it look like they are spreading their wings to reduce the risk.
  - whatever1 6y ago
    If China rolls in tanks in Taiwan, then the least of our concerns will be iphone cpu manufacturing. Taiwan is not Crimea, to just look at other way.
- madspindel 6y ago
  Not just the US. 8% of the manufacturing is done in EU when like 90% of the global supply is made with European ASML machines... I don't think it was a coincidence that Gelsinger mentioned national security, EU, and ASML in his speech.
  - craigjb 6y ago
    Keep in mind, a semiconductor fab has hundreds of other machines and equipment involved, and US companies are some of the biggest suppliers (Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA-Tencor--all multi-billion dollar companies). Lithography is definitely key, but all the equipment and process must work together.
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  Same here. This looks like the exactly the right move Intel needed. I don't think enough people fully appreciate that just about the entire world's leading edge supply is located within cruise missile range of China. The CCP could cripple the global economy in under an hour. Having supply chains out of their reach is not a nice to have, it is a must.
  - MarkSweep 6y ago
    I assume that China uses some TSMC chips. Though their “Made in China 2025” plan involves creating more of their own chips.
- hctaw 6y ago
  > Their manufacturing process for both 10nm and 7nm are now supposedly back on track, and yet they have a large backlog of designs waiting for the new processes to ramp up From what (little) I know of the industry this isn't a good sign. Engineers working on the fab processes and packaging have to work closely with designers throughout the product design cycle, repeatedly taping out variations to fit onto the process as it is built out. That's part of why Intel historically used the tick/tock design cycle, designing a new thing to be built on a new process has a multiplicative effect on the time to market because of the way the unknown-unknowns of both sides impact each other, and the large amount of specialized labor to mitigate everything. It doesn't help that they lost a ton of institutional knowledge over the last decade to their competitors through layoffs disproportionately hitting senior staff.
  - genericone 6y ago
    The way I've heard it is that the layoffs were strategically/discriminatorily targeting senior staff, because of course they are the ones with the most institutional knowledge and therefore paid the most.
- valuearb 6y ago
  He just announced another delay to 7 nm.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > Having an engineer at the top will fix all sorts of subtle problems quite quickly. Note that Intel's current fab problems were well underway when there was an engineer on top, and that engineer was a fab person. Pat is not.
kcorbitt 6y ago
Seems like the biggest news here is Intel committing strongly to its fab business. Walling that division off from Intel's own chip design business is critical to giving it a chance to succeed. Having a third fab with competitive tech (along with TSMC and Samsung) is great for the world! This is pretty bad for Taiwan geopolitically though... once US chipmakers have a plausible local manufacturing alternative, the US is less likely to risk WW3 by standing up to China if/when it tries to annex Taiwan.
- Nursie 6y ago
  IIRC TSMC is planning on building fab capacity in the US soon anyway, which adds a new twist to that tale.
  - gumby 6y ago
    To double click on that: TSMC has been playing the geostrategic game for a while. Taiwan wasn't simply a good choice because it had labor, transport access, and a supportive government: it played to certain Cold War issues. Then as the mainland market developed they increased their mainland footprint as a hedge (makes it harder for the Chinese government to attack TSMC, though as we've seen from Alibaba, Xi appears happy to "move fast and break things"). That did in fact forestall investment in a competitor until recently. They have also been expanding outside China-Taiwan, distributing their capacity and developing support in the USA and Europe. Worst case (actual shooting war between China and Taiwan) they would have a lot to fall back on. Hon Hai has followed the same geostrategy (to even greater extreme) with its Foxconn subsidiary.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      > They have also been expanding outside China-Taiwan, distributing their capacity and developing support in the USA and Europe. Worst case (actual shooting war between China and Taiwan) they would have a lot to fall back on. Very unlikely. In case of a shooting war, the industry will run out of consumables sooner, or later. As a fact, 90%+ of them come from the Taiwan/Japan/Korea triangle, and just any military move in the region will be effectively shutting the industry down globally.
jerrysievert 6y ago
I had always wondered why intel hadn't been actively fabbing chips for other customers - it's not like they destroy a fab completely when a new process comes on line (if you live in the Portland area, you can see the rapid and constant build outs of fab space), why not sell that process to others? there does happen to be a global chip shortage after all. nice to see someone addressing that. I welcome technical leadership back to intel.
- MangoCoffee 6y ago
  >why intel hadn't been actively fabbing chips for other customers Intel foundry have to be a pure play in order to win customers trust. Apple move away from Samsung and now a core customer of TSMC, trust is an issue.
  - meepmorp 6y ago
    Is that for IntelFoundaries giving newer process node capacity preferentially to Intel, or corporate IP theft reasons? Or something else I hadn't considered.
    - ksec 6y ago
      >or corporate IP theft reasons This. It is the reason why Apple dont Fab their SoC with Samsung Foundry.
      - jerrysievert 6y ago
        not all things that need to be fabbed are cpu/gpu components though, there are plenty of other things that need fab space.
        ksec 6y ago
        That was in the context of parents point of Apple / Samsung or Intel / Nvidia and AMD. If you have no direct competition with them then of course you can Fab with Samsung.
PaulHoule 6y ago
My take is kinda the opposite. It is like a WWII movie where the ship is rudderless and the enemy submarine is circling around and they're wondering if they need one or two torpedoes to finish it off and the captain is on the bridge shouting that the king is still on the throne and the pound is still worth a pound. Intel becoming the best foundry in the world might be the only way they can sell vastly more chips, but it's not easy; and it's not being headed by a turnaround king, but rather the master of harvesting (why is there still vmware around since virtualization became a feature of chips and operating systems?)
- windexh8er 6y ago
  > why is there still vmware around since virtualization became a feature of chips and operating systems? I'd have to say - if you think VMware is delivering only virtualization to their customers then you probably haven't looked at their portfolio as of recent. They have over 60 unique products that target many different areas of compute in the enterprise. Gelsinger is generally attributed for keeping VMware relevant. Not everybody is a consumer of a hyperscaler and some customers want extended enterprise functionality for virtualized (VM and containers) environments.
- mathgorges 6y ago
  > (why is there still vmware around since virtualization became a feature of chips and operating systems?) Because VMware (mostly through acquisitions) makes a whole bunch of other stuff now too.
- anyfoo 6y ago
  > why is there still vmware around since virtualization became a feature of chips and operating systems? Because, besides the need for a frontend, there's a lot of devices to emulate.
  - xxpor 6y ago
    Any even then, it's like asking why VMWare still exists when qemu is out there for free. Completely different markets.
gumby 6y ago
Geslinger was smart to reference Grove: I think people at all levels of Intel finally realize that their ship is on fire and are willing to change. I believe the M1, though costing them a very small amount of sales, was the true wake up call, despite being just the most recent arrow from a flock of arrows that has been piercing Intel for decades. If Intel can pull this off it will be one of the most impressive recoveries in history, up there with Watson at IBM, Gerstner at IBM, and Jobs' return to Apple. And if Intel can pull this off I wonder if someone will be able to do the same for GE.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  First time I've felt cautiously optimistic about 'Intel the company' in 10+ years. I think it's possible Intel makes a comeback, but it'll be several years. Hope the new IBM research partnership becomes more integrated as well, I can only imagine positive outcomes from trying to consolidate fundamental semi research there. Compared to GE... there's been more structural changes to GE over the years which would hurt its ability to regain a useful position in vertical integration from where they're at - they need multiple decades of long term planning to get around this, especially as their industrial side becomes increasingly costly. This is unlike Intel, who is still in a "good" position to pivot on the reality that x86 is a lot less valuable compared to 2009 into a more up-to-date vertical monopoly.
- ZeroCool2u 6y ago
  I'm sorry, I was totally on board and in full agreement with your comment until you mentioned IBM. Am I correct in understanding you're calling Watson a successful recovery for IBM? Jobs returning to Apple, sure. But I don't think I know anyone that would describe IBM as anything other than a flagging behemoth. Please, feel free to convince me otherwise, maybe I missed something.
  - gumby 6y ago
    I mean Thomas J. Watson Sr (turned CTR into IBM) and Thomas J Watson Jr (turned IBM into a computer company), not the dumb software platform that the sad, current IBM is overselling. Perhaps you didn't realize why the program bears that name. Gerstner was astonishing too. I just thought of him as the "cookie guy" when he showed up. But he saved a company that was spiraling towards the ground...he didn't restore it to its former glory but did bring it back to a successful life. An achievement subsequently squandered.
deadalus 6y ago
IDM = Internet Download Manager , in most people's mind
- IncRnd 6y ago
  > IDM = Internet Download Manager , in most people's mind IDM in most people's minds is Intelligent Dance Music. But, in Tech I am familiar with many people using IDM for IDentity Management. When I was associated with a different Tech vertical than I am now, people used IDM as an acronym for Integrated Document Mangement.
  - technofiend 6y ago
    Eh? IDM = Industrial Dance Music for me. I guess there are a few definitions floating around.
    - pantulis 6y ago
      Was going the say the same, it's "Industrial" for me, but I've also heard the term referred to "Intelligent".
    - monocasa 6y ago
      Industrial sort of lost the war for IDM, and the Industrial Dance Music genre is now called EBM "Electronic Body Music".
    - IncRnd 6y ago
      True. Industrial Dance Music is not the same as Intelligent Dance Music.
paulpan 6y ago
Great keynote and clearly it's a massive improvement to have a former silicon veteran at the helm again at Intel. For all the major announcements made, I think looking at them in context of the industry and other competitors reveals some interesting nuances: 1. This is Intel's proverbial hailmary rather than "unleashed". The industry is moving on from x86 and with its other bets (e.g. radio modem, mobileeye) not paid/paying off, the revenue will quickly nosedive within the next few years. 2. IDM 2.0 is an involuntary move due to Intel's loss of both performance leadership (to AMD/ARM) and fabrication node leadership (to TSMC). Clearly their factories are becoming liabilities and opening up to outside business cushions the freefall. 3. 2023 is a long time away in the silicon industry. As pointed out in Stratechery, 7nm is actually further delayed than what Bob Swan previously announced. Apple is rumored to be on TSMC 3nm this year and AMD will likely move down to 5nm by next year. Unless Meteor Lake is a massive performance uplift, then it may not change the overall trajectory. Intel's saving grace at this point is the capacity constraints at both TSMC and Samsung.
- MangoCoffee 6y ago
  >7nm is actually further delayed than what Bob Swan previously announced Intel can't even solve their 10nm yield problem. Its great to have another foundry but Intel needs to step up.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    Sounds like Intel has solved 10nm and is confident it'll release on desktop this year.
    - chao- 6y ago
      EDIT: I am incorrect, and was mis-remembering something I had read, in a completely backwards manner! PREVIOUS (incorrect): You can buy them (the "Rocket Lake S" platform) beginning March 30th, I believe. One issue they are having with 10nm (though not intently a fatal one) is that it doesn't seem to achieve market-leading single-thread performance without being ridiculously power-inefficient. In lower-power environments, e.g. in laptops, the 10nm chips seem to be "fine", in that they are improvements over 14nm+++. They're still not market-leading, but they are an improvement and not at the cost of power (relative to previous generation).
phcordner 6y ago
I see the "geopolitical" angle again and it's still not vindicated by this announcement. Nothing that Gelsinger said indicated he came to those decisions by seeing what was cookin' on the threat board: > We are committed to ensuring this capacity will support commercial customers, as well as address unique government and security requirements in the U.S. Geographic distribution makes a certain amount of business sense and getting those nice DoD contracts makes even more. What doesn't make sense is China having Wing Attack Plan R ready to go against TSMC and Samsung.
SavantIdiot 6y ago
I'm curious to see if Gelsinger can fix Intel's 127x fiascos (there are multiple). It's not like the process engineers are sitting around scratching their butts, they are on call nonstop and I know two that have quit due to pressure. He can't drive the engineers any harder, so how is he going to fix it?
- ac29 6y ago
  For those not in the know, the 127x processes include Intel's 10nm, 7nm, and 5nm manufacturing. I had to look it up. I'm under the impression 10nm is largely working by now, it just took a long time to become competitive with Intel's ultra optimized 14nm process. Supposedly they have already shipped 100K+ units of Ice Lake Xeon Scalable CPUs: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16539/intel-ice-lake-xeon-scalable-shipments-to-date-30-customers-100k-units https://www.anandtech.com/show/16539/intel-ice-lake-xeon-sca...
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  Smarter, not harder, seems to be the solution ;) Like, say, giving the engineers more say in the goals for the next process(es) to make them achievable. Talking, not ruling.
  - SavantIdiot 6y ago
    That statement is cliche for a reason: because there's no way to make the distinction and is entirely subjective. I want to hear his concrete actions from my friends that are still fighting the good fight and haven't quit.
extesy 6y ago
I wonder if Intel is also going to increase compensation across the board to be able to execute on this bold plan. Historically, Intel's salaries were among the lowest and it has been losing talent left and right to its chip-making competitors (Apple, Nvidia, etc).
ece 6y ago
x86 is IP, Intel Foundry Services is new, and EUV has been embraced. I'm not sure you could ask for more other than execution.

276 points by kaboro 6y ago

I'm bullish on Intel. Having an engineer at the top will fix all sorts of subtle problems quite quickly. Their manufacturing process for both 10nm and 7nm are now supposedly back on track, and yet they have a large backlog of designs waiting for the new processes to ramp up. We may see rapid performance increases from them now their pipeline is unblocked. Additionally, US politics is now aligning across the aisle against China, and relying too heavily on TSMC looks like a potential future geopolitical problem. Intel is the only firm that can realistically keep up or out-fab TSMC and thus the USG will be loathe to let it even look like it might fail. Simply having fabs physically within your territory but managed by a remote firm, is clearly no substitute for having fabs actually managed by a domestic company (consider how many ways there must be to do the equivalent of SSH-ing into a fab, or otherwise subtly sabotage it from HQ).

jcheng 6y ago
Is this year's claim of "supposedly back on track" more credible than every previous year's? (Honest question!)
- totalZero 6y ago
  If the first thing Gelsinger does in the new role is to lie about progress, his credibility will be ruined. Conversely, if he were to say "it's worse than I feared," he won't personally be blamed because the problem preceded his return to Intel. So I think the claim can be viewed with a greater sense of honesty than before.
agloeregrets 6y ago
> Intel is the only firm that can realistically keep up or out-fab TSMC Samsung? Realistically, Intel needs a route to actually playing at TSMC's game, currently they are instead working on paying TSMC to make them chips. Also, nitpick here, but the TSMC problem is that China might roll in tanks, not that China controls it. Realistically speaking, it's a reasonable cause for US millitary involvement if China did. Lol, there's my World War III Shark-jump Theory: TSMC.
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  Intel's new GPU's need the all the advantages they can get to survive market entry. When Intel's process is ready, shipping, and better then they can switch.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Through don't forget that due to TSCM being overloaded with requests and Intel having their own fabs they can still sell chips for (for them) good prices even if they are worse. In the end getting a CPU is normally more important then getting the best CPU.
  - agloeregrets 6y ago
    From a product perspective, totally agree, but from a strategy perspective, Intel getting to a level of beating TSMC is very very far off. Currently they are funding the development of the next chip that will beat them elsewhere. Personally, if Xe production funds TSMC's 3nm node that will be bought out by Apple and AMD then Intel probably should realize that the limited money they will make from GPUs will be dwarfed by the losses from improving their competition.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Just shipping much amount is fine in shortage situation (if lasts until DG2 is released).
- MangoCoffee 6y ago
  >TSMC problem is that China might roll in tanks TSMC have fab in China and currently building one in the US. TSMC is also opening an expansion in Japan. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-tsmc/tsmc-to-raise-9-billion-for-expansion-open-japan-subsidiary-idUSKBN2A91FR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-tsmc/tsmc-to-raise... the latest tech is probably going to stay in Taiwan but judging from all the recent moves by TSMC. it look like they are spreading their wings to reduce the risk.
- whatever1 6y ago
  If China rolls in tanks in Taiwan, then the least of our concerns will be iphone cpu manufacturing. Taiwan is not Crimea, to just look at other way.
madspindel 6y ago
Not just the US. 8% of the manufacturing is done in EU when like 90% of the global supply is made with European ASML machines... I don't think it was a coincidence that Gelsinger mentioned national security, EU, and ASML in his speech.
- craigjb 6y ago
  Keep in mind, a semiconductor fab has hundreds of other machines and equipment involved, and US companies are some of the biggest suppliers (Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA-Tencor--all multi-billion dollar companies). Lithography is definitely key, but all the equipment and process must work together.
onepointsixC 6y ago
Same here. This looks like the exactly the right move Intel needed. I don't think enough people fully appreciate that just about the entire world's leading edge supply is located within cruise missile range of China. The CCP could cripple the global economy in under an hour. Having supply chains out of their reach is not a nice to have, it is a must.
- MarkSweep 6y ago
  I assume that China uses some TSMC chips. Though their “Made in China 2025” plan involves creating more of their own chips.
hctaw 6y ago
> Their manufacturing process for both 10nm and 7nm are now supposedly back on track, and yet they have a large backlog of designs waiting for the new processes to ramp up From what (little) I know of the industry this isn't a good sign. Engineers working on the fab processes and packaging have to work closely with designers throughout the product design cycle, repeatedly taping out variations to fit onto the process as it is built out. That's part of why Intel historically used the tick/tock design cycle, designing a new thing to be built on a new process has a multiplicative effect on the time to market because of the way the unknown-unknowns of both sides impact each other, and the large amount of specialized labor to mitigate everything. It doesn't help that they lost a ton of institutional knowledge over the last decade to their competitors through layoffs disproportionately hitting senior staff.
- genericone 6y ago
  The way I've heard it is that the layoffs were strategically/discriminatorily targeting senior staff, because of course they are the ones with the most institutional knowledge and therefore paid the most.
valuearb 6y ago
He just announced another delay to 7 nm.
BeetleB 6y ago
> Having an engineer at the top will fix all sorts of subtle problems quite quickly. Note that Intel's current fab problems were well underway when there was an engineer on top, and that engineer was a fab person. Pat is not.

kcorbitt 6y ago

Seems like the biggest news here is Intel committing strongly to its fab business. Walling that division off from Intel's own chip design business is critical to giving it a chance to succeed. Having a third fab with competitive tech (along with TSMC and Samsung) is great for the world! This is pretty bad for Taiwan geopolitically though... once US chipmakers have a plausible local manufacturing alternative, the US is less likely to risk WW3 by standing up to China if/when it tries to annex Taiwan.

Nursie 6y ago
IIRC TSMC is planning on building fab capacity in the US soon anyway, which adds a new twist to that tale.
- gumby 6y ago
  To double click on that: TSMC has been playing the geostrategic game for a while. Taiwan wasn't simply a good choice because it had labor, transport access, and a supportive government: it played to certain Cold War issues. Then as the mainland market developed they increased their mainland footprint as a hedge (makes it harder for the Chinese government to attack TSMC, though as we've seen from Alibaba, Xi appears happy to "move fast and break things"). That did in fact forestall investment in a competitor until recently. They have also been expanding outside China-Taiwan, distributing their capacity and developing support in the USA and Europe. Worst case (actual shooting war between China and Taiwan) they would have a lot to fall back on. Hon Hai has followed the same geostrategy (to even greater extreme) with its Foxconn subsidiary.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > They have also been expanding outside China-Taiwan, distributing their capacity and developing support in the USA and Europe. Worst case (actual shooting war between China and Taiwan) they would have a lot to fall back on. Very unlikely. In case of a shooting war, the industry will run out of consumables sooner, or later. As a fact, 90%+ of them come from the Taiwan/Japan/Korea triangle, and just any military move in the region will be effectively shutting the industry down globally.

jerrysievert 6y ago

I had always wondered why intel hadn't been actively fabbing chips for other customers - it's not like they destroy a fab completely when a new process comes on line (if you live in the Portland area, you can see the rapid and constant build outs of fab space), why not sell that process to others? there does happen to be a global chip shortage after all. nice to see someone addressing that. I welcome technical leadership back to intel.

MangoCoffee 6y ago
>why intel hadn't been actively fabbing chips for other customers Intel foundry have to be a pure play in order to win customers trust. Apple move away from Samsung and now a core customer of TSMC, trust is an issue.
- meepmorp 6y ago
  Is that for IntelFoundaries giving newer process node capacity preferentially to Intel, or corporate IP theft reasons? Or something else I hadn't considered.
  - ksec 6y ago
    >or corporate IP theft reasons This. It is the reason why Apple dont Fab their SoC with Samsung Foundry.
    - jerrysievert 6y ago
      not all things that need to be fabbed are cpu/gpu components though, there are plenty of other things that need fab space.
      - ksec 6y ago
        That was in the context of parents point of Apple / Samsung or Intel / Nvidia and AMD. If you have no direct competition with them then of course you can Fab with Samsung.

PaulHoule 6y ago

My take is kinda the opposite. It is like a WWII movie where the ship is rudderless and the enemy submarine is circling around and they're wondering if they need one or two torpedoes to finish it off and the captain is on the bridge shouting that the king is still on the throne and the pound is still worth a pound. Intel becoming the best foundry in the world might be the only way they can sell vastly more chips, but it's not easy; and it's not being headed by a turnaround king, but rather the master of harvesting (why is there still vmware around since virtualization became a feature of chips and operating systems?)

windexh8er 6y ago
> why is there still vmware around since virtualization became a feature of chips and operating systems? I'd have to say - if you think VMware is delivering only virtualization to their customers then you probably haven't looked at their portfolio as of recent. They have over 60 unique products that target many different areas of compute in the enterprise. Gelsinger is generally attributed for keeping VMware relevant. Not everybody is a consumer of a hyperscaler and some customers want extended enterprise functionality for virtualized (VM and containers) environments.
mathgorges 6y ago
> (why is there still vmware around since virtualization became a feature of chips and operating systems?) Because VMware (mostly through acquisitions) makes a whole bunch of other stuff now too.
anyfoo 6y ago
> why is there still vmware around since virtualization became a feature of chips and operating systems? Because, besides the need for a frontend, there's a lot of devices to emulate.
- xxpor 6y ago
  Any even then, it's like asking why VMWare still exists when qemu is out there for free. Completely different markets.

gumby 6y ago

Geslinger was smart to reference Grove: I think people at all levels of Intel finally realize that their ship is on fire and are willing to change. I believe the M1, though costing them a very small amount of sales, was the true wake up call, despite being just the most recent arrow from a flock of arrows that has been piercing Intel for decades. If Intel can pull this off it will be one of the most impressive recoveries in history, up there with Watson at IBM, Gerstner at IBM, and Jobs' return to Apple. And if Intel can pull this off I wonder if someone will be able to do the same for GE.

DetroitThrow 6y ago
First time I've felt cautiously optimistic about 'Intel the company' in 10+ years. I think it's possible Intel makes a comeback, but it'll be several years. Hope the new IBM research partnership becomes more integrated as well, I can only imagine positive outcomes from trying to consolidate fundamental semi research there. Compared to GE... there's been more structural changes to GE over the years which would hurt its ability to regain a useful position in vertical integration from where they're at - they need multiple decades of long term planning to get around this, especially as their industrial side becomes increasingly costly. This is unlike Intel, who is still in a "good" position to pivot on the reality that x86 is a lot less valuable compared to 2009 into a more up-to-date vertical monopoly.
ZeroCool2u 6y ago
I'm sorry, I was totally on board and in full agreement with your comment until you mentioned IBM. Am I correct in understanding you're calling Watson a successful recovery for IBM? Jobs returning to Apple, sure. But I don't think I know anyone that would describe IBM as anything other than a flagging behemoth. Please, feel free to convince me otherwise, maybe I missed something.
- gumby 6y ago
  I mean Thomas J. Watson Sr (turned CTR into IBM) and Thomas J Watson Jr (turned IBM into a computer company), not the dumb software platform that the sad, current IBM is overselling. Perhaps you didn't realize why the program bears that name. Gerstner was astonishing too. I just thought of him as the "cookie guy" when he showed up. But he saved a company that was spiraling towards the ground...he didn't restore it to its former glory but did bring it back to a successful life. An achievement subsequently squandered.

deadalus 6y ago

IDM = Internet Download Manager , in most people's mind

IncRnd 6y ago
> IDM = Internet Download Manager , in most people's mind IDM in most people's minds is Intelligent Dance Music. But, in Tech I am familiar with many people using IDM for IDentity Management. When I was associated with a different Tech vertical than I am now, people used IDM as an acronym for Integrated Document Mangement.
- technofiend 6y ago
  Eh? IDM = Industrial Dance Music for me. I guess there are a few definitions floating around.
  - pantulis 6y ago
    Was going the say the same, it's "Industrial" for me, but I've also heard the term referred to "Intelligent".
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Industrial sort of lost the war for IDM, and the Industrial Dance Music genre is now called EBM "Electronic Body Music".
  - IncRnd 6y ago
    True. Industrial Dance Music is not the same as Intelligent Dance Music.

paulpan 6y ago

Great keynote and clearly it's a massive improvement to have a former silicon veteran at the helm again at Intel. For all the major announcements made, I think looking at them in context of the industry and other competitors reveals some interesting nuances: 1. This is Intel's proverbial hailmary rather than "unleashed". The industry is moving on from x86 and with its other bets (e.g. radio modem, mobileeye) not paid/paying off, the revenue will quickly nosedive within the next few years. 2. IDM 2.0 is an involuntary move due to Intel's loss of both performance leadership (to AMD/ARM) and fabrication node leadership (to TSMC). Clearly their factories are becoming liabilities and opening up to outside business cushions the freefall. 3. 2023 is a long time away in the silicon industry. As pointed out in Stratechery, 7nm is actually further delayed than what Bob Swan previously announced. Apple is rumored to be on TSMC 3nm this year and AMD will likely move down to 5nm by next year. Unless Meteor Lake is a massive performance uplift, then it may not change the overall trajectory. Intel's saving grace at this point is the capacity constraints at both TSMC and Samsung.

MangoCoffee 6y ago
>7nm is actually further delayed than what Bob Swan previously announced Intel can't even solve their 10nm yield problem. Its great to have another foundry but Intel needs to step up.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Sounds like Intel has solved 10nm and is confident it'll release on desktop this year.
  - chao- 6y ago
    EDIT: I am incorrect, and was mis-remembering something I had read, in a completely backwards manner! PREVIOUS (incorrect): You can buy them (the "Rocket Lake S" platform) beginning March 30th, I believe. One issue they are having with 10nm (though not intently a fatal one) is that it doesn't seem to achieve market-leading single-thread performance without being ridiculously power-inefficient. In lower-power environments, e.g. in laptops, the 10nm chips seem to be "fine", in that they are improvements over 14nm+++. They're still not market-leading, but they are an improvement and not at the cost of power (relative to previous generation).

phcordner 6y ago

I see the "geopolitical" angle again and it's still not vindicated by this announcement. Nothing that Gelsinger said indicated he came to those decisions by seeing what was cookin' on the threat board: > We are committed to ensuring this capacity will support commercial customers, as well as address unique government and security requirements in the U.S. Geographic distribution makes a certain amount of business sense and getting those nice DoD contracts makes even more. What doesn't make sense is China having Wing Attack Plan R ready to go against TSMC and Samsung.

SavantIdiot 6y ago

I'm curious to see if Gelsinger can fix Intel's 127x fiascos (there are multiple). It's not like the process engineers are sitting around scratching their butts, they are on call nonstop and I know two that have quit due to pressure. He can't drive the engineers any harder, so how is he going to fix it?

ac29 6y ago
For those not in the know, the 127x processes include Intel's 10nm, 7nm, and 5nm manufacturing. I had to look it up. I'm under the impression 10nm is largely working by now, it just took a long time to become competitive with Intel's ultra optimized 14nm process. Supposedly they have already shipped 100K+ units of Ice Lake Xeon Scalable CPUs: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16539/intel-ice-lake-xeon-scalable-shipments-to-date-30-customers-100k-units https://www.anandtech.com/show/16539/intel-ice-lake-xeon-sca...
ahartmetz 6y ago
Smarter, not harder, seems to be the solution ;) Like, say, giving the engineers more say in the goals for the next process(es) to make them achievable. Talking, not ruling.
- SavantIdiot 6y ago
  That statement is cliche for a reason: because there's no way to make the distinction and is entirely subjective. I want to hear his concrete actions from my friends that are still fighting the good fight and haven't quit.

extesy 6y ago

I wonder if Intel is also going to increase compensation across the board to be able to execute on this bold plan. Historically, Intel's salaries were among the lowest and it has been losing talent left and right to its chip-making competitors (Apple, Nvidia, etc).

ece 6y ago

x86 is IP, Intel Foundry Services is new, and EUV has been embraced. I'm not sure you could ask for more other than execution.