7 ms·

Intel, once king of microchips, is now far behind competitors

16 points by carlycue 5y ago

chasil 5y ago
Intel just got 10nm up to reasonable yields last year, and their first "bigLITTLE" design is quite good. There have been obvious problems, but don't count them out just yet.
aurizon 5y ago
They wasted billions buying their stock to keep the share price high. That $$ was better spent on R&D. This accounting mind set has ruined many companies this way.
- j_walter 5y ago
  Thats what happens when you put a finance guy in charge of an engineering company. Lets see what the engineering guy can do now that he is at the top.
- ozzythecat 5y ago
  > They wasted billions buying their stock to keep the share price high. Can large tech companies reasonably run their business competitively without keeping their share price high? Not that it’s sustainable in the long term… As a non westerner, my (perhaps ignorant) understanding is that Western economies are in a rat race where large companies continuously have to meet or exceed investor “expectations”. This incentivizes the short term outcomes while leaving these companies less competitive or successful in the long term. And a recent example is Amazon. Amazon capped salaries and gave their corporate heads compensation that weighs heavily on stock. If the stock continues massive growth YoY, the party continues. Once the music started to slow down, suddenly Amazon bumped compensation ranges because their compensation simply wasn’t competitive with the market.
  - jlmorton 5y ago
    I'm not sure Amazon is a great example of a company that focused on short-term results to the detriment of long-term results. Amazon famously spent a couple decades re-investing every penny of cash flow into future products and services.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    I view share price purchases as an act of desperation caused by a reduction of the competitive position of the company vis-à-vis their competition - in this case the rise of AMD coupled with ARM based silicon eating up processor share, now we see Apple has gone ARM. AMD did well, no matter what Intel did. They tried bribery via chip-set linkage, and still AMD made progress. Intel changed to a protected interface(socket) yet maintained their basic x86 architecture. Intel practiced monopolistic patterns vis that cited chip set linkage. As their market price declined they tried buying 'paper' (their shares with zero value after destruction of the redeemed 'paper' = burning cash on a fire) so the apparent yield declined less and may have gone up?
ortusdux 5y ago
This makes me think of this quote from a 1995 interview with Steve Jobs: "It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that's required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really help the customers."
- folli 5y ago
  Kinda interesting to draw parallels to e.g. the 2022 iOS App Store.
daureg 5y ago
I'm not a native speaker, but it seems the original (https://theconversation.com/intel-cant-even-grow-profits-during-a-global-chip-shortage-where-did-it-all-go-wrong-175877 https://theconversation.com/intel-cant-even-grow-profits-dur..., left) is better written than this copy (right): - In his words, it was “an embarrassing thing to say” → In his phrases, it was “an embarrassing thing to say”. - The prowess of the machines trusted whether or not they had an “Intel inside”. → The prowess of the machines depended on whether they had an “Intel inside”. - In contrast, fellow US rivals like Qualcomm, Nvidia and AMD, have either shed their manufacturing capacity or never had it in the first place. → In distinction, fellow US rivals like Qualcomm, Nvidia and AMD, have both shed their manufacturing capability or by no means had it within the first place. …
- roywiggins 5y ago
  I suspect this link is just blogspam and someone went over the original with a thesaurus.
- T-A 5y ago
  "Samsung’s main business is memory chips" → "Samsung’s major enterprise is reminiscence chips" :D Now I want to read a SciFi story featuring reminiscence chips. Preferably edible. Eat them and you get new memories, somebody else's or synthetic. Or maybe you regain access to your own, long-lost memories.
paxys 5y ago
This site seems like a content farm

16 points by carlycue 5y ago

Intel just got 10nm up to reasonable yields last year, and their first "bigLITTLE" design is quite good. There have been obvious problems, but don't count them out just yet.

aurizon 5y ago

They wasted billions buying their stock to keep the share price high. That $$ was better spent on R&D. This accounting mind set has ruined many companies this way.

j_walter 5y ago
Thats what happens when you put a finance guy in charge of an engineering company. Lets see what the engineering guy can do now that he is at the top.
ozzythecat 5y ago
> They wasted billions buying their stock to keep the share price high. Can large tech companies reasonably run their business competitively without keeping their share price high? Not that it’s sustainable in the long term… As a non westerner, my (perhaps ignorant) understanding is that Western economies are in a rat race where large companies continuously have to meet or exceed investor “expectations”. This incentivizes the short term outcomes while leaving these companies less competitive or successful in the long term. And a recent example is Amazon. Amazon capped salaries and gave their corporate heads compensation that weighs heavily on stock. If the stock continues massive growth YoY, the party continues. Once the music started to slow down, suddenly Amazon bumped compensation ranges because their compensation simply wasn’t competitive with the market.
- jlmorton 5y ago
  I'm not sure Amazon is a great example of a company that focused on short-term results to the detriment of long-term results. Amazon famously spent a couple decades re-investing every penny of cash flow into future products and services.
- aurizon 5y ago
  I view share price purchases as an act of desperation caused by a reduction of the competitive position of the company vis-à-vis their competition - in this case the rise of AMD coupled with ARM based silicon eating up processor share, now we see Apple has gone ARM. AMD did well, no matter what Intel did. They tried bribery via chip-set linkage, and still AMD made progress. Intel changed to a protected interface(socket) yet maintained their basic x86 architecture. Intel practiced monopolistic patterns vis that cited chip set linkage. As their market price declined they tried buying 'paper' (their shares with zero value after destruction of the redeemed 'paper' = burning cash on a fire) so the apparent yield declined less and may have gone up?

ortusdux 5y ago

This makes me think of this quote from a 1995 interview with Steve Jobs: "It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that's required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really help the customers."

folli 5y ago
Kinda interesting to draw parallels to e.g. the 2022 iOS App Store.

daureg 5y ago

I'm not a native speaker, but it seems the original (https://theconversation.com/intel-cant-even-grow-profits-during-a-global-chip-shortage-where-did-it-all-go-wrong-175877 https://theconversation.com/intel-cant-even-grow-profits-dur..., left) is better written than this copy (right): - In his words, it was “an embarrassing thing to say” → In his phrases, it was “an embarrassing thing to say”. - The prowess of the machines trusted whether or not they had an “Intel inside”. → The prowess of the machines depended on whether they had an “Intel inside”. - In contrast, fellow US rivals like Qualcomm, Nvidia and AMD, have either shed their manufacturing capacity or never had it in the first place. → In distinction, fellow US rivals like Qualcomm, Nvidia and AMD, have both shed their manufacturing capability or by no means had it within the first place. …

roywiggins 5y ago
I suspect this link is just blogspam and someone went over the original with a thesaurus.
T-A 5y ago
"Samsung’s main business is memory chips" → "Samsung’s major enterprise is reminiscence chips" :D Now I want to read a SciFi story featuring reminiscence chips. Preferably edible. Eat them and you get new memories, somebody else's or synthetic. Or maybe you regain access to your own, long-lost memories.

paxys 5y ago

This site seems like a content farm