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>> Every day I sell another x86 socket, that is the highest margin, most strategic thing that Intel can do This basically summarizes why Intel is in so much tr

>> Every day I sell another x86 socket, that is the highest margin, most strategic thing that Intel can do This basically summarizes why Intel is in so much trouble. They can execute well for the next 10 years and they are still hosed - they used to be practically the only supplier (AMD wasn't doing well) of the by far most used architecture in servers (and clients), and sold to 100s of thousands of customers, none of who could push them around. Now there are several architectures and several suppliers and the buyers are bigger and more concentrated than ever. They are just lucky the server market has been growing while the big cloud providers built out. It's not going to be a pretty 10 years to 2032... selling those x86's in 2032 won't be so.. high margin.

xchaotic 5y ago
It’s a classic innovator’s dilemma- they can continue milking the x86 or reinvent the company but not both at the same time.
- gumby 5y ago
  > but not both at the same time. For 20 years they could have afforded to. Now it may be too late. If they try I don’t think the market would punish them for it. And in fact they are famous for killing their cash cow (memory) and focusing on the new thing (microprocessors) in the 80s under Grove. They have fallen far. Other big companies, like Google, have this problem and haven’t made efforts to address it.
n7pdx 5y ago
Intel is not going to beat anyone else in architecture or design in any compute system besides x86. They don't have the experience, the talent, or the culture to do so. Heck, Intel can't even beat AMD in x86 power/perf. So Pat is just stating the obvious, Intel has no option but to go maximal x86.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  Yep, I'm not even saying he's making a mistake. Every option looks problematic and his choice might well be the least bad option.
initplus 5y ago
I'm not sure focusing on the instruction set is the right angle. x86 would be more competitive in the mobile space if Intel had offered efficient chips. Is the instruction set the biggest blocker that prevented this? Or is it the licensing model? Perhaps if Intel had licensed their architecture and instruction set to others, like ARM does, they would be in a better position? ARM's licensing model get's a lot more eyes on instructions sets and chip designs. It allows big companies like Apple come in and run the show, licensing just the instruction set. Why wasn't Intel working with large customers with an interest in custom x86 designs? In hindsight it seems presumptuous to assume there is no x86 talent outside Intel/AMD. Really impossible to know how much the actual instruction set is holding Intel back without being on the inside.
- convolvatron 5y ago
  true. but I really cant imagine that the area and latency associated with the uop translator is really where this is all falling down. i have always wondered how much support for the old vector units, segmentation and all the rest cost, but it cant really be that much since caches keep getting bigger and bigger. its a really good question.
  - e4e78a06 5y ago
    There are other costs that either make very wide OoO more difficult or more costly. x86 has a lot more flag-based instructions compared to Arm. That adds more dependencies that the reorder engine has to sort through. x86 variable length decoding takes log(n) in decode circuit depth, which either forces a longer pipeline or limits clocks. And obviously AVX512 units are just huge because a decision was made to make them the same latency as normal MUL/ADD/FMA. And x86 designs have to scale in clockspeed from server / tablet (~2.5GHz) to desktop and high perf laptop (5GHz+). That forces suboptimal designs like the 5 cycle L1 in Golden Cove. Meanwhile Apple has a 3 cycle 192kB L1.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  Yeah I think this is all valid - i really mean it more as a product line and the lack of practical substitutes before recently (especially on the server side), not the specific details of the instruction set v others. They were basically the only game in town for a while. Had they licensed it, yep, it would have been different.
tester756 5y ago
If Microsoft managed to do turn around, then why they cant?
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  The specifics of the situation are very different.
  - tester756 5y ago
    What do you mean?

xchaotic 5y ago

It’s a classic innovator’s dilemma- they can continue milking the x86 or reinvent the company but not both at the same time.

gumby 5y ago
> but not both at the same time. For 20 years they could have afforded to. Now it may be too late. If they try I don’t think the market would punish them for it. And in fact they are famous for killing their cash cow (memory) and focusing on the new thing (microprocessors) in the 80s under Grove. They have fallen far. Other big companies, like Google, have this problem and haven’t made efforts to address it.

n7pdx 5y ago

Intel is not going to beat anyone else in architecture or design in any compute system besides x86. They don't have the experience, the talent, or the culture to do so. Heck, Intel can't even beat AMD in x86 power/perf. So Pat is just stating the obvious, Intel has no option but to go maximal x86.

danielmarkbruce 5y ago
Yep, I'm not even saying he's making a mistake. Every option looks problematic and his choice might well be the least bad option.

initplus 5y ago

I'm not sure focusing on the instruction set is the right angle. x86 would be more competitive in the mobile space if Intel had offered efficient chips. Is the instruction set the biggest blocker that prevented this? Or is it the licensing model? Perhaps if Intel had licensed their architecture and instruction set to others, like ARM does, they would be in a better position? ARM's licensing model get's a lot more eyes on instructions sets and chip designs. It allows big companies like Apple come in and run the show, licensing just the instruction set. Why wasn't Intel working with large customers with an interest in custom x86 designs? In hindsight it seems presumptuous to assume there is no x86 talent outside Intel/AMD. Really impossible to know how much the actual instruction set is holding Intel back without being on the inside.

convolvatron 5y ago
true. but I really cant imagine that the area and latency associated with the uop translator is really where this is all falling down. i have always wondered how much support for the old vector units, segmentation and all the rest cost, but it cant really be that much since caches keep getting bigger and bigger. its a really good question.
- e4e78a06 5y ago
  There are other costs that either make very wide OoO more difficult or more costly. x86 has a lot more flag-based instructions compared to Arm. That adds more dependencies that the reorder engine has to sort through. x86 variable length decoding takes log(n) in decode circuit depth, which either forces a longer pipeline or limits clocks. And obviously AVX512 units are just huge because a decision was made to make them the same latency as normal MUL/ADD/FMA. And x86 designs have to scale in clockspeed from server / tablet (~2.5GHz) to desktop and high perf laptop (5GHz+). That forces suboptimal designs like the 5 cycle L1 in Golden Cove. Meanwhile Apple has a 3 cycle 192kB L1.
danielmarkbruce 5y ago
Yeah I think this is all valid - i really mean it more as a product line and the lack of practical substitutes before recently (especially on the server side), not the specific details of the instruction set v others. They were basically the only game in town for a while. Had they licensed it, yep, it would have been different.

tester756 5y ago

If Microsoft managed to do turn around, then why they cant?

danielmarkbruce 5y ago
The specifics of the situation are very different.
- tester756 5y ago
  What do you mean?