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Intel was the leader in process technology. It was reasonable that they wanted to reserve the leading edge for their own higher maigin products. What happened w

Intel was the leader in process technology. It was reasonable that they wanted to reserve the leading edge for their own higher maigin products. What happened was that smart phones eventually generated much higher volume than PCs, which gave TSMC the gross margin dollars to leapfrog in process tech. Meanwhile with less volume to amortize capital cost, Intel was conservative with EUV lithography. For a while they were actually hoping to get Nikon to be an ASML competitor in EUV. But to their advantage Moore's law has slowed down. They are still competitive in density, but they need to catch up on power consumption. This whole competitive dynamics is rather dissimilar to Nvidia's.

lmeyerov 5y ago
I'm not saying throw out the business. But when most of it's revenue is selling chips for devices and data centers, and they are losing revenue despite strongly expanding markets, it's crazy to me that the main innovation investments are to double down on more of what isn't growing. Competing chip makers are showing how to grow on worse process technology by investing in software codesign and vertical codesign -- smarter designs, heavy compilers, heavy ai, heavy solutions, and going hard on the bigger markets within that. Likewise, the Google hw moonshots are more interesting in practice and scale, afaict. Intel knows this, and I'm sure there are clever internal proposals for other orthogonal approaches. But like AMD, even if that stuff is happening, these statements suggest it will be without muscle. This is like a worse repeat of how they approached the rise of mobile devices. I want them to do well, it's frustrating to see them under leverage so much $ and talent year after year when everyone else is doing so well.
- fspeech 5y ago
  Yes it was a mistake to go after wireless instead of GPGPU, which is an area that they could utilize their existing strength. But it would have taken foresight. Before 2012 Nvidia's gross margin was significantly lower than now. The graphics card business was not attractive. The demand from AI training wasn't apparent. By the time it became apparent Intel was aleady falling behind on process technology, which they must focus on now. Certainly from the architecture side if they can innovate on the integration of NN acceleration with their CPU and enable an open ecosystem of compilers they could regain some lost ground.
  - lmeyerov 5y ago
    I don't think it was a mistake to go after mobile in general as much as in how in how they went after it. Apple, Google, Samsung, etc. approached the market differently so while most people talk about Intel messing up on the hw chip design, my meaning is they messed up the sw + vertical strategy for how to work with the market. I can imagine a world where they made made their own phone, OS, etc... just not with the current culture. If it was OK for a search engine + ads company to make their own phone designs + TPUs + OS + marketplace + apps + ..., why wasn't it for Intel? Building slightly better chips with light software support is 80s/90s thinking. They missed the wave in mobile, and I don't see the new CEO doing anything about using their position or $ to start competing differently. Jensen is inspiring in that he doesn't fight the last decade's battle: their architectures etc. keep getting better, but just as important, the market approach keeps evolving too.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  The software stack story is amazing at nvidia for sure
pedrocr 5y ago
How has Moore's law slowed down? All the data I've seen says it's right on track and projected to continue too. Do you mean a coloquial version of it that's about performance?

lmeyerov 5y ago

I'm not saying throw out the business. But when most of it's revenue is selling chips for devices and data centers, and they are losing revenue despite strongly expanding markets, it's crazy to me that the main innovation investments are to double down on more of what isn't growing. Competing chip makers are showing how to grow on worse process technology by investing in software codesign and vertical codesign -- smarter designs, heavy compilers, heavy ai, heavy solutions, and going hard on the bigger markets within that. Likewise, the Google hw moonshots are more interesting in practice and scale, afaict. Intel knows this, and I'm sure there are clever internal proposals for other orthogonal approaches. But like AMD, even if that stuff is happening, these statements suggest it will be without muscle. This is like a worse repeat of how they approached the rise of mobile devices. I want them to do well, it's frustrating to see them under leverage so much $ and talent year after year when everyone else is doing so well.

fspeech 5y ago
Yes it was a mistake to go after wireless instead of GPGPU, which is an area that they could utilize their existing strength. But it would have taken foresight. Before 2012 Nvidia's gross margin was significantly lower than now. The graphics card business was not attractive. The demand from AI training wasn't apparent. By the time it became apparent Intel was aleady falling behind on process technology, which they must focus on now. Certainly from the architecture side if they can innovate on the integration of NN acceleration with their CPU and enable an open ecosystem of compilers they could regain some lost ground.
- lmeyerov 5y ago
  I don't think it was a mistake to go after mobile in general as much as in how in how they went after it. Apple, Google, Samsung, etc. approached the market differently so while most people talk about Intel messing up on the hw chip design, my meaning is they messed up the sw + vertical strategy for how to work with the market. I can imagine a world where they made made their own phone, OS, etc... just not with the current culture. If it was OK for a search engine + ads company to make their own phone designs + TPUs + OS + marketplace + apps + ..., why wasn't it for Intel? Building slightly better chips with light software support is 80s/90s thinking. They missed the wave in mobile, and I don't see the new CEO doing anything about using their position or $ to start competing differently. Jensen is inspiring in that he doesn't fight the last decade's battle: their architectures etc. keep getting better, but just as important, the market approach keeps evolving too.
onphonenow 5y ago
The software stack story is amazing at nvidia for sure

pedrocr 5y ago

How has Moore's law slowed down? All the data I've seen says it's right on track and projected to continue too. Do you mean a coloquial version of it that's about performance?