7 ms·

It's amazing how far Intel has fallen. The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how

by cletus 5y ago

It's amazing how far Intel has fallen. The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how humiliating must that be? Intel completely missed the mobile revolution. They had a stake in that race but sold it (ie XScale). Intel's product segmentation is bewildering. They've also kept features "enterprise" only to prop up high server chip prices to the detriment to computing as a whole, most notably ECC support. And on the server front, which I'm sure is what's keeping them in business now, they face an existential threat in the form of ARM. Intel had clearly shifted to a strategy of extracting as much money as possible from their captive market. I'm not sure price cuts here are necessarily about AMD but more than their previously captive market now has more options in general. How the mighty have fallen.

mizzack 5y ago
> And on the server front, which I'm sure is what's keeping them in business now, they face an existential threat in the form of ARM. HPC and inertia. Lots of inertia.
- petschge 5y ago
  HPC still has a lot of Intel, because these systems run for ~5 years. But if I look at the Top500, there is systems with AMD Rome (and Milan and Naples). There is systems with IBM POWER9 (and POWER7) and the fastest system in the list is of course running Fujitsu A64FX. And there is exotic systems with Vector Engine, Marvell ThunderX2, Hygon Dhyana or Sunway. And while Xeon Phi (and predecessors) used to be very popular, the accelerator market is now dominated by Nvidia (mostly Volta, but also Ampere and Pascal) and AMD Vega. Actually only two systems (#7 in China and #10 in Texas) of the top 10 systems rely on Intel. And upcoming systems also feature a wild mix of architectures and vendors. So way less inertia that you might think.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Intel has soundly lost HPC to NVidia at this point. Not only because of NVidia GPUs, but also because NVidia bought Mellanox (who makes those fancy InfiniBand NICs that those supercomputers use). Intel's Xeon Phi didn't work out so hot. They're working on Intel Xe (aka: Aurora Supercomputer), but Aurora has been bungled so hard that Intel's losing a lot of reputation right now. Intel needs to deliver Aurora if they want to be taken seriously.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    A lot of stuff in HPC still doesn't utilize GPUs (because the problem is not amenable to GPU architecture or laziness / lack of funding and interest) so at least for commercial deployments with a diverse set of solvers I'd say CPUs remain important. Intel might be unable to outperform their competitors at this time, but they have more than enough money to be temporarily cheaper to (seemingly) make up for that.
mmastrac 5y ago
XScale was an awesome processor. Not only was it competitive, but it was 100% completely open and documented.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago
  I used it in a design. What I remember (it was a while ago) was the lack of OS and driver support from third party software houses. It was a mistake to use it.
  - mmastrac 5y ago
    That's a shame. I only used it at a hobby level and found the Linux kernel to be surprisingly stable on it (before Linux really ran on a lot of phones). This was just before Palm started going all-in on Linux/WebOS. With time I think it could have been a real contender.
woofie11 5y ago
I think one more issue is support. If I want a chip from TI, Analog Devices, etc., I fill out a web form and get a sample. If I want to talk to an engineer, I place a phone call. If I want to order a dozen of a part, I go to Digikey. If I want a datasheet, it's online. Intel won't give you the time of day unless you're HP or Dell. That's optimal for capitalizing on old markets, but it means it's never in new markets. It always starts at a disadvantage. It's not that Intel never has chips startups want to use; it's that it's impossible to engineer with most of them. By the time a product has enough marketshare for Intel to care, they need to displace an existing supplier. This means they could never really diversify outside of PCs.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  Intel and AMD are both like that, and it makes me wonder how much space they have opened up for ARM. I would love a small x86 SoC if it came with the same level of support that an NXP or TI ARM chip has, but they don't.
  - myself248 5y ago
    I wonder how a small outfit like UDOO manages to design around an AMD embedded part then. The boards are out there and they work, but I have no idea how the negotiations happened.
    - pclmulqdq 5y ago
      My impression is that if you are an open source project (especially one with a few already existing designs), you can actually get some design support from large companies. This is especially true if you either meet the right person in marketing at those companies or know someone on the inside. The Raspberry Pi uses chips from a very user-hostile company (Broadcom) because they started as a side project by a few engineers at Broadcom.
  - papercrane 5y ago
    > Intel and AMD are both like that, and it makes me wonder how much space they have opened up for ARM. Arguably, this is what led to the creation of ARM. Acorn wanted to make a computer with a 286, but Intel ignored them, so they decided to build their own RISC based CPU, the "Acorn RISC Machine".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yyyk 5y ago
>The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how humiliating must that be? Every chip Intel buys from TSMC is a chip not made by its competitors. Doing this is extremely useful for Intel to the point I wonder why TSMC agreed in the first place. After all, eventually Intel will improve their fabs, and then it's the non-Intel players that will order from TSMC. Why hamper TSMC's future customers? Intel must have offered a lot of money.
- hinkley 5y ago
  Didn't Apple already lock up the 'good stuff' from TSMC?
  - yyyk 5y ago
    It was reported Apple bought most of the immediate TSMC next-gen node production. This does indirectly helps Intel, since Apple is not a direct competitor. However, even TSMC current-node is very competitive, and the core logic still holds: Any fab time Intel buys is a chip AMD can't make. Since Intel is so much larger, they can significantly hurt AMD merely by outbidding them, and eventually still make profit. This is so effective I'm not sure this should have been allowed...
  - totalZero 5y ago
    Apple and Intel have both contracted the 'good stuff' from TSMC, to GP's point. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Apple-and-Intel-become-first-to-adopt-TSMC-s-latest-chip-tech https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Apple-a...
- ksec 5y ago
  >I wonder why TSMC agreed in the first place. Right now we dont have confirmation as what and when and volume of TSMC usage. Intel is making GPU on TSMC makes lots of sense. After all their GPU team are vastly more familiar with TSMC ecosystem. Other than that most of it are just rumours.
AdrianB1 5y ago
I read an interview a few years ago when the CEO at that time was boasting "Intel chips are so well known, even college students know them very well". What the article writer added was "Intel is losing experience engineers, replacing them with cheap students". Not sure how true is that, but if it is true then it explains the past 5-8 years. I saw it happen with a former large company (top dog in manufacturing solutions area) where in a the middle of a project all experienced people in USA were replaced with dozens of new hires in India. Half of the people in USA were fired, they were competent but considered too expensive. Talking to them, I found it was the norm for many years, now only some sales and management people are in USA, everyone else is in India. This causes companies to lose the competitive edge in engineering, cost was not really a problem and competing only on cost is meaningless, you lose to India and China on that ground alone.

by cletus 5y ago

mizzack 5y ago

> And on the server front, which I'm sure is what's keeping them in business now, they face an existential threat in the form of ARM. HPC and inertia. Lots of inertia.

petschge 5y ago
HPC still has a lot of Intel, because these systems run for ~5 years. But if I look at the Top500, there is systems with AMD Rome (and Milan and Naples). There is systems with IBM POWER9 (and POWER7) and the fastest system in the list is of course running Fujitsu A64FX. And there is exotic systems with Vector Engine, Marvell ThunderX2, Hygon Dhyana or Sunway. And while Xeon Phi (and predecessors) used to be very popular, the accelerator market is now dominated by Nvidia (mostly Volta, but also Ampere and Pascal) and AMD Vega. Actually only two systems (#7 in China and #10 in Texas) of the top 10 systems rely on Intel. And upcoming systems also feature a wild mix of architectures and vendors. So way less inertia that you might think.
dragontamer 5y ago
Intel has soundly lost HPC to NVidia at this point. Not only because of NVidia GPUs, but also because NVidia bought Mellanox (who makes those fancy InfiniBand NICs that those supercomputers use). Intel's Xeon Phi didn't work out so hot. They're working on Intel Xe (aka: Aurora Supercomputer), but Aurora has been bungled so hard that Intel's losing a lot of reputation right now. Intel needs to deliver Aurora if they want to be taken seriously.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  A lot of stuff in HPC still doesn't utilize GPUs (because the problem is not amenable to GPU architecture or laziness / lack of funding and interest) so at least for commercial deployments with a diverse set of solvers I'd say CPUs remain important. Intel might be unable to outperform their competitors at this time, but they have more than enough money to be temporarily cheaper to (seemingly) make up for that.

mmastrac 5y ago

XScale was an awesome processor. Not only was it competitive, but it was 100% completely open and documented.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago
I used it in a design. What I remember (it was a while ago) was the lack of OS and driver support from third party software houses. It was a mistake to use it.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  That's a shame. I only used it at a hobby level and found the Linux kernel to be surprisingly stable on it (before Linux really ran on a lot of phones). This was just before Palm started going all-in on Linux/WebOS. With time I think it could have been a real contender.

woofie11 5y ago

I think one more issue is support. If I want a chip from TI, Analog Devices, etc., I fill out a web form and get a sample. If I want to talk to an engineer, I place a phone call. If I want to order a dozen of a part, I go to Digikey. If I want a datasheet, it's online. Intel won't give you the time of day unless you're HP or Dell. That's optimal for capitalizing on old markets, but it means it's never in new markets. It always starts at a disadvantage. It's not that Intel never has chips startups want to use; it's that it's impossible to engineer with most of them. By the time a product has enough marketshare for Intel to care, they need to displace an existing supplier. This means they could never really diversify outside of PCs.

pclmulqdq 5y ago
Intel and AMD are both like that, and it makes me wonder how much space they have opened up for ARM. I would love a small x86 SoC if it came with the same level of support that an NXP or TI ARM chip has, but they don't.
- myself248 5y ago
  I wonder how a small outfit like UDOO manages to design around an AMD embedded part then. The boards are out there and they work, but I have no idea how the negotiations happened.
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    My impression is that if you are an open source project (especially one with a few already existing designs), you can actually get some design support from large companies. This is especially true if you either meet the right person in marketing at those companies or know someone on the inside. The Raspberry Pi uses chips from a very user-hostile company (Broadcom) because they started as a side project by a few engineers at Broadcom.
- papercrane 5y ago
  > Intel and AMD are both like that, and it makes me wonder how much space they have opened up for ARM. Arguably, this is what led to the creation of ARM. Acorn wanted to make a computer with a 286, but Intel ignored them, so they decided to build their own RISC based CPU, the "Acorn RISC Machine".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

yyyk 5y ago

>The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how humiliating must that be? Every chip Intel buys from TSMC is a chip not made by its competitors. Doing this is extremely useful for Intel to the point I wonder why TSMC agreed in the first place. After all, eventually Intel will improve their fabs, and then it's the non-Intel players that will order from TSMC. Why hamper TSMC's future customers? Intel must have offered a lot of money.

hinkley 5y ago
Didn't Apple already lock up the 'good stuff' from TSMC?
- yyyk 5y ago
  It was reported Apple bought most of the immediate TSMC next-gen node production. This does indirectly helps Intel, since Apple is not a direct competitor. However, even TSMC current-node is very competitive, and the core logic still holds: Any fab time Intel buys is a chip AMD can't make. Since Intel is so much larger, they can significantly hurt AMD merely by outbidding them, and eventually still make profit. This is so effective I'm not sure this should have been allowed...
- totalZero 5y ago
  Apple and Intel have both contracted the 'good stuff' from TSMC, to GP's point. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Apple-and-Intel-become-first-to-adopt-TSMC-s-latest-chip-tech https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Apple-a...
ksec 5y ago
>I wonder why TSMC agreed in the first place. Right now we dont have confirmation as what and when and volume of TSMC usage. Intel is making GPU on TSMC makes lots of sense. After all their GPU team are vastly more familiar with TSMC ecosystem. Other than that most of it are just rumours.

AdrianB1 5y ago

I read an interview a few years ago when the CEO at that time was boasting "Intel chips are so well known, even college students know them very well". What the article writer added was "Intel is losing experience engineers, replacing them with cheap students". Not sure how true is that, but if it is true then it explains the past 5-8 years. I saw it happen with a former large company (top dog in manufacturing solutions area) where in a the middle of a project all experienced people in USA were replaced with dozens of new hires in India. Half of the people in USA were fired, they were competent but considered too expensive. Talking to them, I found it was the norm for many years, now only some sales and management people are in USA, everyone else is in India. This causes companies to lose the competitive edge in engineering, cost was not really a problem and competing only on cost is meaningless, you lose to India and China on that ground alone.